Memorial Day Weekend opens the unofficial beginning of summer, and with it, the beginning of yard sale season, at least here in Northern Michigan, and the yard sales, rummage sales, and garage sales are now out in full force. It is a great time to go out and find some fantastic deals on previously owned items. I generally do not look for anything in particular when I go to garage sales; I look for a little bit of everything instead. There are often many good deals, you just have to find them and sometimes that is as easy as stumbling upon them as you are walking through.
I sometimes will buy clothes for myself, or my children at the sales. Often they will be selling clothes for 25-50 cents that look brand new, and sometimes you can even get them for $1 or two for a bag full of clothes. This is especially true of some of the larger rummages and the church rummages. When I was pregnant for my first child and had very little money, I went to a rummage and asked them what they wanted for the whole lot of baby clothes that were marked 10-25 cents each. I did not expect to get much of a discount, but had hoped that perhaps they might give me a slight break if I took all of them. As it turned out, they were grateful to get rid of everything at once, so for $3.00, I ended up getting four big boxes of baby clothes and blankets, a baby swing, and a walker. I could not beat that bargain.
Many times I will not find anything that strikes me at a yard sale and I will walk away empty-handed. Other times I have come home with dressers, chairs, toys, bicycles, fencing, plants, tools, rubber rafts, a stereo, tapes and Cd’s, games and puzzles, fans, a vacuum, dishes, a trampoline, and much more. There have been times when I bought so much at a yard sale that I could not bring it all home in a single trip. There have even been times when I brought my original load home, then had a friend follow me back with a pickup and a trailer to get the remainder of the items purchased. That is the fun of it; it is kind of like a treasure hunt. You never know what you might find.
Even if you are not looking for, or do not see anything that you are interested in buying for yourself though, there are many treasures out there just waiting to be discovered. Sometimes if you know what to look for you can buy items that are worth quite a bit of money for just pennies on the dollar. Some may need a bit of cleaning up, or even restoration work, but I have a friend that has made considerable money by picking things up from sales and putting them on eBay once they are cleaned up and ready to sell. He makes quite a nice profit without defrauding anyone, because they really are nice items. Either the owners did not know what they were worth, or just wanted to get rid of them. In any case, he got great deals and if you keep an eye out and know what to look for, this is a great way to supplement your income. Many items sell for very low prices, and if you know what will sell on eBay, this is a great way to pick them up at a low cost.
You can find these bargains throughout the summer yard sale season which usually extends from Memorial Day Weekend through Labor Day Weekend, so get out there and see what you can find.
