Let's make a deal

First day of the garage sale, and I'm glad it will be over tomorrow.

There seems to be a special breed of person who tours garage sales each weekend. Last night Tami warned me to expect people knocking on my door an hour before we opened. Apparently some people feel the need to get a jump on everyone else. If they had knocked on my door, they would not have met a friendly face. I told myself I would charge them $20 just to open the garage door if they showed up an hour early. I hadn't put the house numbers on the house after painting a couple weeks ago, so that probably bought us both a little peace.  They would have needed to be extra bold to knock on a random house.

I hate to haggle, and that is all people wanted to do today. If I say $40, they say $30. If I go cheap and say $5, they have to counter with $3. If I ask them to make an offer, they refuse. The first couple wouldn't pay $1 for two wood figurines J and I bought on our honeymoon. They had to haggle down to 50 cents. Is that really such a thrill for them? Can't imagine that saving 50 cents is all that important.

The figurines themselves had the stain of haggling on them. We were dragged into this bazaar by someone who would not let us leave until we bought something. He wouldn't name a price, and when I did he went into the theatrics of being offended. I should have just told him to shove it, but being our honeymoon, well you know. Later, I couldn't see the figurines without thinking about the guy who sold them to us. Not the souvenir I was looking for. Having someone later haggle them down to 50 cents somehow makes the circle complete.

We ended up selling a few things. We got rid of the washer and dryer, so that added nicely to the total and cleared out some space in the garage. Other things that sold seemed to be the stuff we threw in at the last minute. The first couple also bought paper plates, I sold an old bicycle with flat tires and no seat, a generator that I put a sign on that said "don't know if it runs", and a camouflage net that the buyer said "I don't know what I will do with this, but I have to have it".

There is still a ton of stuff for tomorrow. Anything of any value that doesn't go tomorrow will go up on Craigslist. I'm not sure if the Craigslist crowd will be any better.