Yard Sale help...

I have never hosted one before and I never really go to them...but I think before we move there is a lot of stuff that is not worth packing up and moving with (esp baby stuff and clothes)

Any tips on how to price items, what goes the best

AND most importantly how do I advertise?

Any tips to this yard sale newbie would be greatly appreciated!

Yard Sale help...

Price things cheap. People won't pay much at a garage sale.

Advertise on Craigslist (free) or pay for Newsday/local paper (Pennysaver).

Put signs up in your neighborhood. Start early. I had one start at 8am and people were driving by while I was setting up.

Good luck.

ETA: You can buy little stickers at CVS that you can put on your stuff for the prices.

Message edited 1/18/2013 9:55:32 AM.

Yard Sale help...

DH and I had one when we were moving 2 years ago. We were newbies, so we made a TON of posters and posted them all over our town on telephone polls. We drove our cars up to our main cross street with a garage sale sign. We posted an ad on CL about it as well.

We just wanted to get rid of everything (anything that didnt sell we just threw out), so we priced everything low. Had a lot of grouped specials (5 dvds for $5, 5 shirts for $10 etc). Furniture we sold very cheap- $20 for a couch, $15 for a kitchen table, etc. We made a decent amount of money and were only left with a few bags of stuff that we just tossed.

The one thing that we completely sold out of was jewelry- we had a ton of collectors coming by looking for any antiques, gold pieces and watches. I found that these type of people were very specific in what they wanted, and didn't bother looking through the "junk".

Also, on your last day price everything half off- we had a several repeat customers come towards the end of our last day and at that point we just halfed everything just so we could get rid of it


Good Luck

Re: Yard Sale help...

My only advice is that you have to let go of the "emotional" attachment to the stuff you're trying to sell. Any time I had a yard sale, I had a hard time pricing it so low that people were dying to buy it because either it meant something to me at some point in time, or I knew the real value of it, and I got angry when other people acted like it was "junk".

Re: Yard Sale help...

As for advertising, does your town have a Patch? Some of the Patch sites do run garage sale listings.

Yard Sale help...

Definitely post on craigslist and hang up some flyers. I wouldn't spend money on posting something in newsday or an expensive ad unless you know you will make a good profit and it would be worth the cost. Keep everything very organized so people can get a good look at things and try to separate into categories. Usually with clothes, people like to get them for very cheap and buy in bundles so maybe offer 5 clothing items for x amount of dollars. Good luck!!