The season is starting — for many adults, it generates just as much excitement as Christmas and birthdays combined for their children. Different places call them different things, but regardless of where you live, the start of the rummage sale, garage sale, or yard sale season is a time of rejoicing.

We live in the northern plains states, so things may be a little different around here, but the general process is the same. Our season starts a bit later than a lot of other areas (some parts of the southern states don’t slow down much during the winter months), so it’s much more satisfying to check the classifieds and see more than two advertisements. Last weekend was the real start to our rummage sale season in Fargo; flooding was mostly over, and the snow had been gone for at least a week most places, so garage doors were flung open, card tables ceased being spider lairs in the basement, and WalMart’s shelves emptied of pre-printed pricing labels. Here’s the kinds of sales we’ve met recently:

• The Permanent/SemiPermanent Sale: If you go rummaging more than twice in a town, you’ll start to recognize these sales. The deja-vu hits you: you’re certain you’ve picked up the same item before, offered a little less for it, got the same story from the proprietor, and set it back down. You’re driving down the street and the excitement hits you when you see the sign, but the handwriting seems a bit too familiar, the address to similar. These rummage sales are run by people too attached to their items to just donate them to charity, too cash-conscious to rent space in an antique mall or flea market. Often, they’re advertised as an estate sale, even though it’s been running for years now. Collectors will find that the wares at these sales are heavily picked-over, but you stand the chance of getting a look at new things every so often, as the tables empty enough to make room for another box from the basement, but stopping at them more than once every month or two is useless. Sometimes, these are run by actual antique dealers interested in liquidating items that didn’t go well in an antique mall or eBay, so quite often you’ll run across quality items. It’s often wise to chit-chat with the proprietor about your collection: they might have something in the house or behind the table that you’re looking for.

• The Genuine Estate Sale: Run by a professional, a real estate sale (unlike the Permanent Sale, or people who think the contents of their basement constitute an ‘estate’) can be a boon for collectors. Sadly, an estate sale usually happens when the owners are forced, or at least have a heavy incentive, to sell everything and move out, so you’ll often see the collections the owner wouldn’t have parted with at an estate sale. Also, if you’re a collector of ephemeral items (keychains, silverware, refrigerator magnets) you’re likely to find large numbers boxed together as lots. Prices are a bit higher than usual, but not unreasonable because the people behind the estate sale know what the market can bear within a dime’s-width. Get there early, because everybody else knows these things, too: be prepared to fight through crowds and grab what you want right away, because it might not be there if you take a few minutes to think about it.

• The Nouveau Riche Developments: These homes are the ones that you saw advertised in the paper last year as “Lots starting at $200,000!” The houses are huge, the cars in the driveway are similarly big, the lawns still look good because the sod has just taken root, and they usually have garages big enough to hold multifamily sales inside (which is good if it’s raining). Collectors will find these as hit-and-miss: most of the items for sale are too new to be collectible, although some households will have new brand-authorized collectibles (Coca-Cola, beer signs, automobile brands) that they no longer have room for when they moved in last fall. These rummage sales are usually priced higher than what you’d expect if you came from an older part of town, because the proprietor remembers how much they spent on the item in the first place: sure, the kid’s jelly shoes cost $25 at the mall, but nobody’s going to pay $10 for them used. By the second day of the sale, however, they’re usually ready to negotiate much lower priced when faced with the prospect of putting everything back in the basement.

• College Kids / New Parents: These are people on the move who must leave things behind as their lives change. Collectors of kitsch and toys will always find something at these sales (although the New Parent genre tend to have piles of baby clothes to get around). As their lives move on, a college student may decide they’d rather have cash than their collection of LPs, and a young wife may decide her crystal figurines don’t mean as much now that she’s got a husband and a baby in her life. They’re found in the ‘apartment section’ of town, or on the edges of the ’small house’ areas; often, they either have a tiny garage, or none at all, anf you might just drive by when you see only the one small table of items. It only takes a few seconds to walk through, and you might find something you didn’t expect.

• Basement Cleaners: Our own sales fall into this category. We keep acquiring stuff, older things get boxed up (or were never unboxed when we moved in), and the basement is reaching it’s bursting point. These will have a lot of clothes, but you’ll probably see two big tables towards the back (you’ll identify these tables by the breadmaker and the shelf stereo system) of household items haphazardly crammed in to fit as much as possible. These are usually found in the developments that were new around 20 years ago, giving the current residents plenty of time to fill their closets and attics, so collectors interested in the 70s and 80s are likely to have something catch their eye. Collectors of both antiques and toys can do well at these: that basement likely held both grandma’s fineries inherited in the 80s and the abandoned toys of the kids who went off to college in the 90s. These sales are usually priced to get rid of everything, so while you’re likely to find some good deals, once the basement is empty there won’t be any more sales, and past the point of value-vs-effort everything will be donated.

• Grandma’s Favorite Weekend: These proprietors have been living in the same house for 40 years and probably go to rummage sales themselves, hence all the items they’ve got for sale might look like they came from the last sale you stopped at. After a few years in the same town, you’ll know these because they’ll happen every year, around the same time of year, and you’ll get a nose for the good ones. You won’t find tables of kid’s clothes and boxes of videotapes recorded off HBO at these sales. Often, these have a large number of collectibles, but the quality can be spotty. Don’t be tricked into self-debate when finding something you’ve already got one of: for a quarter, go sell it on eBay and make another collector happy. The prices are usually very good, but accurate for the quality of the items, and you’re likely to see things you haven’t seen before or had forgotten about from your childhood.

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Article Tags: estate, garage, Nouveau, Riche, rumage, sales, yard

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 24th, 2006 at 8:54 am and is filed under collecting fyi, events, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.