First Garage Sale of the Season!

We had a nice day forecast for today, so I decided to have the first garage sale of the season.  I started getting ready for it earlier in the week.  I set it up in my shop, and I let a couple of fellow auction buyers come over and set some of their stuff up too.  I put an ad in the newspaper that will/did run Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and picked up a few more garage sale signs from Lowe's.  Also ran a large ad on CL last night.

This morning, we got there early and put a lot of larger stuff outside and had the rest of the shop set up really well.  We put out about 7 garage sale signs (only had one stolen by the end of the day!) and the people were rolling in all day.

So, at the end of the first day, we did a little over $1800 between all of us.  We still have tomorrow to go, but we probably won't do it on Sunday.  So far, so good!

Well, wrapped up the first garage sale of the season today (calling for lots of rain tomorrow, in fact, it started raining 10 minutes after we closed it today!)

All in all I feel it was quite the success.  We did a little over $1400 for today between the group.  I'll probably do it again toward the end of May.  It was actually kind of fun.  People were pretty friendly and excited to be out in the nice weather and to be able to get out and buy stuff after a long crappy winter!

Teacher, you said you set up in your shop. What kind of shop? Thrift store or at home in a wood shop? I'm toying with a small shop idea. Here's how it goes. Our local attic storage facilities have the usual inside the fence units but they also have outside the fence business units that have a 10x20 wharehouse with a rollup door facing the parking lot and it includes an attache 10x12 office bathroom and closet. All that space for $450 a month. I'm currently paying 89 a month for a small locker just for storage and anytime I have a yard sale which is once a month I have to bring the stuff home so here's my thought. Rent this space, drop the storage unit. Put display shelves along the wharehouse walls for general merchandise and in the office for 'better' stuff. Hold yardsales inside and bring some stuff outside bu do it twice a month as a minimum. This gives me storage and display space along with sorting and storeage thats not at my home. What does everyone think of that kind of an idea? I'm going to start a new thred in other forms of selling also to get opinions.

I actually have a 30' x 60' shop (has an office and bathroom and overhead storage) in a commercial building along a fairly well traveled road.  I mainly use it for storage, and this is the first time I have ever actually held a sale there.  I have meant to have a sale before, but usually I have so much stuff crammed in there, I don't want to take the time to set it all up. 

This worked out well because I had just dropped off two trailer loads of tools at the auction house a couple of weeks ago, and sold some other stuff, so I had it cleaned out enough to actually get it organized again for the first time in a long time. 

I know it seems kind of counter productive to invite other auction buyers to come sell at my sale, but we have a mostly different mix of stuff and it was awesome to have the help, as well as blowing people away with the selection of stuff to buy!