postbear
yard sale leftovers
we had our junk purge on the saturday, like most of the neighbours, but not again on sunday as quite a few people decided to do. so, sunday afternoon and evening i went for a wander, as every year people leave out on the sidewalks the remains of their sales and i wanted to take a few pictures. it's also possible to pick up some decent junk, occasionally, and i usually come home with a bag full of books. this year i brought home a few stamps, a couple of records and some odd metal tags - no books, though.
i did spot these beauties. the barbecue was glowing in the sun and inside the box from the cantaloupes was an old ibm package that had been designed well (black background and dynamic, brightly coloured stripes). the painting was nearby, leaning up against a cd tower and beside some skanky kitchenware. that lot had all been left out in the rain the night before, but the painting was impervious to mere weather.
our yard sale was a success, mostly because we all managed to rid ourselves of the bulk of what we had to sell. priced properly, pretty much everything goes. the real useless nonsense was marked free much of the day and left on the sidewalk afterward and it was all gone an hour later. the decent leftovers are all being donated to various charities, something planned on going into the sale. PWA and sunnybrook hospital are getting all the books, cds and housewares and a junk shop to be selected soon is taking the clothing.
i'm not a people person and i fully expected to have to toss out obnoxious people at some point during the day. surprisingly, the vast majority of people were fairly sane. we did have some stuff stolen (really, people, $1 cds are affordable), dead robot and sharkboy noticing more than i did. two people really stood out on the obnoxious side: the angry guy who snarled at sharkboy that we were just selling junk and complained that we weren't set up five minutes after we started carrying boxes outside, and one cheapskate who whined that the dvd she wanted to buy from me was too expensive (at $1.50). note: the dvd, while not in a plastic dvd case, was still shrinkwrapped from the store and had never been opened or played. she was too cheap to buy a brand new dvd for a buck and a half.
the angry guy returned later (i'm 99% sure it was him) - he flipped through my cds and dvds quickly and loudly, grumbling the whole time. i was hoping he'd knock something over so i could charge him for it. i have no idea why he was so pissed off, but it had nothing to do with us. i saw him across the street later vibrating bitch waves in all directions.
i did forget one other idiot, sorry - i had a rack of shirts out near the sidewalk and people walking by would reach over the fence and riffle through them. one woman took every hanger off the rack and held the shirts up in the air, then hung them on the fence and carefully examined them. she would slowly return them, one by one, but kept a few on the fence. she seemed so nervous and darted her head around so much that i kept an eye on her without being obvious. sure enough, she tried to slip one shirt in her bag. when she saw i was watching, the shirt somehow found its way back on the hanger and then on the rack. the shirts, like the cds, were priced at $1 apiece.
event autopsy: only worth the time if you can do it with friends. the profit is negligible, but shedding deadweight possessions is the real goal, so the cash is unimportant. there were, i might add, some fun people who showed up and said hello, some being remembered favourably even if they didn't buy anything. a few people actually gave me more money than i asked for because they felt i was ripping myself off - oddly, two of the people who did this bought very similar items, but hours apart (knife sets). one woman bought a stack of books from me and after i threw in a few freebies she had picked up but decided not to buy, came back into the yard and handed me another fifty cents.
now i just have to find a way to get the remains to the charities....
yard sale leftovers
we had our junk purge on the saturday, like most of the neighbours, but not again on sunday as quite a few people decided to do. so, sunday afternoon and evening i went for a wander, as every year people leave out on the sidewalks the remains of their sales and i wanted to take a few pictures. it's also possible to pick up some decent junk, occasionally, and i usually come home with a bag full of books. this year i brought home a few stamps, a couple of records and some odd metal tags - no books, though.
i did spot these beauties. the barbecue was glowing in the sun and inside the box from the cantaloupes was an old ibm package that had been designed well (black background and dynamic, brightly coloured stripes). the painting was nearby, leaning up against a cd tower and beside some skanky kitchenware. that lot had all been left out in the rain the night before, but the painting was impervious to mere weather.
our yard sale was a success, mostly because we all managed to rid ourselves of the bulk of what we had to sell. priced properly, pretty much everything goes. the real useless nonsense was marked free much of the day and left on the sidewalk afterward and it was all gone an hour later. the decent leftovers are all being donated to various charities, something planned on going into the sale. PWA and sunnybrook hospital are getting all the books, cds and housewares and a junk shop to be selected soon is taking the clothing.
i'm not a people person and i fully expected to have to toss out obnoxious people at some point during the day. surprisingly, the vast majority of people were fairly sane. we did have some stuff stolen (really, people, $1 cds are affordable), dead robot and sharkboy noticing more than i did. two people really stood out on the obnoxious side: the angry guy who snarled at sharkboy that we were just selling junk and complained that we weren't set up five minutes after we started carrying boxes outside, and one cheapskate who whined that the dvd she wanted to buy from me was too expensive (at $1.50). note: the dvd, while not in a plastic dvd case, was still shrinkwrapped from the store and had never been opened or played. she was too cheap to buy a brand new dvd for a buck and a half.
the angry guy returned later (i'm 99% sure it was him) - he flipped through my cds and dvds quickly and loudly, grumbling the whole time. i was hoping he'd knock something over so i could charge him for it. i have no idea why he was so pissed off, but it had nothing to do with us. i saw him across the street later vibrating bitch waves in all directions.
i did forget one other idiot, sorry - i had a rack of shirts out near the sidewalk and people walking by would reach over the fence and riffle through them. one woman took every hanger off the rack and held the shirts up in the air, then hung them on the fence and carefully examined them. she would slowly return them, one by one, but kept a few on the fence. she seemed so nervous and darted her head around so much that i kept an eye on her without being obvious. sure enough, she tried to slip one shirt in her bag. when she saw i was watching, the shirt somehow found its way back on the hanger and then on the rack. the shirts, like the cds, were priced at $1 apiece.
event autopsy: only worth the time if you can do it with friends. the profit is negligible, but shedding deadweight possessions is the real goal, so the cash is unimportant. there were, i might add, some fun people who showed up and said hello, some being remembered favourably even if they didn't buy anything. a few people actually gave me more money than i asked for because they felt i was ripping myself off - oddly, two of the people who did this bought very similar items, but hours apart (knife sets). one woman bought a stack of books from me and after i threw in a few freebies she had picked up but decided not to buy, came back into the yard and handed me another fifty cents.
now i just have to find a way to get the remains to the charities....