Little traffic, but those that showed.....bought~

We rarely do yard sales as we live quite rural and foot traffic is quite minimal.  But with us landing 5 lockers in a week and a half our yard was overrun and storms were threatening, so we went for it.

3 days of sorting and organizing and sweating and moaning and we were ready.
I billed the thing as 5 storage locker accumulation sale and had folks calling to find out more.  Expected a big crowd, but alas......it was quiet.  When we opened (at 5:30) there was nobody here.  Usually we have people waiting at the gate, but it was after 6 before we heard tires in the gravel.  Folks slowly trickled in.  I'd say we had a total of 80 customers all day and of those maybe 70 purchased items.  Most folks were great with only two (groups) that I wanted off my property due to rudeness.  I did mention in the ad that prices were subject to customers attitude (so smile!)~

We ended up making over $500 which added nicely to the $440 we did the day before selling some 'old' stock in the jbl speakers & a brush guard.  Oh yeah and sold just over $100 of mother-in-laws items~

Just a couple highlights~
I had the air jordans displayed and this young hispanic kid saw them.  It was instant draw with his eyes growing huge as he made an immediate beeline to them.  The young black man that was with him followed his gaze and both were devastated to find they were all too small.  I had such a good time with those two and they helped me immensely with all the hip-hop items.  A couple things I learned is that my prices were more than fair and that yes.......those hats & jeans are supposed to look ripped and torn.....dang I'm gettin' old!

Another great experience was with Steve.  A great older biker kinda guy who, at our last yard sale, bought a bundle of old coins in which he gave us market value.  we sat and talked and I mentioned our gold (very small amount of 10k).  He wanted to take a look at it.  He was digging through some of our 'cheap' jewelry so I thought I'd bring out our bowl of crap jewelry which he painstakingly went through. 

He pulled out maybe 8 pieces and told me to check these for silver and these for gold.  We haggled about the 10k and he said he could only go about $10 a gram on it as 10k is iffy.  We couldn't agree on a price and I told him I'd just hold it for now.  I got his number and said I'd call if we came across any coins.

After he left traffic was light so I sat and tested the items he pulled.  Most were crap but I found one sterling chain bracelet and the one piece he thought was German hollow link gold (white).  It tested out at 18K!!

I called him back and told him I'd agree to his price for the 10k as he just found me a 100 dollar bill.  He came back and we struck the deal and I threw in a questionable piece with the stipulation if he made millions off it to remember me.
Fast forward to yesterday morning when Steve showed up and said "About that heart pendant? Well we both have to get better at testing as it was 10k."  He handed me another $10.

I'm telling you folks......honesty like that just isn't seen too often these days.

All in all it was a great sale with numerous new friends/customers!

We've sold another $80 or so since the sale ended so even with the sweltering temps and threat of rain, things are looking up.  And my inventory has never been so well organized!!

Have auctions (two different caravans) today and again on Weds/Thurs so I'm glad I found my backyard.....hopefully I have the opportunity to muck it all up again~

Always nice when things work out !

Number of customers sounds pretty good and of course the bottom line...how much cash comes in...was great !

In my never-ending quest for statistics, I'm thinking of at least counting the number of transactions I have at my Saturday flea and then divding the income by that number to see what my average sale figure is. Only takes a few $25 sales (or a $100 sale) to skew things, but would be of interest anyway.

Extension of that would be to tally the number of people who stop by and at least browse, but now we're talking too much bookkeeping !

The above was spawned by a recent couple of reports by a flea friend who claimed to do $600 in sales of 50 cent clothing items (that's 1,200 transactions) !  My educated guess is that I have 25 to 50 cash transactions in a day for a typical income of $250 to $350, so a day or two of tallying will be revealing.

Rockin sounds good. Miss you around here. But glad things are really working for you. 

I two managed to get to the thrift parking lot. Sales not so great had a lot of my previous customers so that was nice.

@Movieman got what I took so was not expecting high return.

Did manage to rearrange the stored stuff in the van. I had to put the tables in too. (husband had to work so on my own).  Did manage to hang with the thrift owner. (she is so positive, really). So she got me motivated to get two of the Chester drawers down to her she had people looking for them.  Did not feel they were good enough to take down there.

Well after working in the sun for (felt like all day) maybe an hour and half. Got two of them cleaned up and they were better than I thought. So got those loaded and down to her on SAT. Was so tired from the heat had to take the drawers out to get them in the van.    Starting to see our storage floor again.

And Movieman you need to count Why can't we have the statistics of what color hair your customers have.  JK  Good luck with your ~~~~~~~whatever. 

Ok Movieman - you piked my interest so I had to go check my excel sheets.  I started to keep track of my sales (what and how much) to do some trending.  Not much for stats but I have had the following avg per sale at the flea:
2.54
4.46
4.19
2.84
3.52
6.49
2.55
6.77
4.78

avg total: 4.24 per sale

At the yard sale I did 10.03 per sale avg.

I only deal with smalls at the flea / yard.  All my big items are sold via CL, ebay, or thrift store.  So I'm sure many people will go "dang that is low" but it works for me.  Keeps my cash flow going and inventory going to the door.

Ok Movieman - you piked my interest so I had to go check my excel sheets.  I started to keep track of my sales (what and how much) to do some trending.  Not much for stats but I have had the following avg per sale at the flea:
2.54
4.46
4.19
2.84
3.52
6.49
2.55
6.77
4.78

avg total: 4.24 per sale

At the yard sale I did 10.03 per sale avg.

I only deal with smalls at the flea / yard.  All my big items are sold via CL, ebay, or thrift store.  So I'm sure many people will go "dang that is low" but it works for me.  Keeps my cash flow going and inventory going to the door.

WOW! and I thought I was a data/statistics nut! Never occured to me to count how many transactions I had to determine average transaction value per customer at the flea market or yard sale. I do track the larger items, mainly furniture, so I know what the average sale price for piece is when I see them in a unit.

That $4.24 per customer at the flea market sounds pretty good. I would have assumed for me the average is around $2 - $2.50 per customer.

I don't know how my average price at flea will come out. I sell a fair amount of $20 to $30 items, but I DO sell $1 items as well, so we'll see. Just off the top I did $200 last Saturday and maybe had 20 or so transactions (unless I just plain forgot a bunch of smaller ones) and that works out to $10 a transaction, so need some hard tallying to really figure this one out.