Posted ads for my garage sale online

About the only way to sell "niche" collectibles is to list them on internet sites where they reach those who want them.

But then, you usually have to ship them and Deb won't do that.

Anyone who really wants to get rid of stuff has to be willing to do whatever it takes to do so.

I found in the past if I put something bulky outdoors and put a $5 price tag on it, somebody will come along and steal it. Takes care of the problem and I don't have to load it up and take it to the dump.
 
jujube said:
About the only way to sell "niche" collectibles is to list them on internet sites where they reach those who want them.

But then, you usually have to ship them and Deb won't do that.

Anyone who really wants to get rid of stuff has to be willing to do whatever it takes to do so.

I found in the past if I put something bulky outdoors and put a $5 price tag on it, somebody will come along and steal it. Takes care of the problem and I don't have to load it up and take it to the dump.
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Genius! 😊
 
debodun said:
My mom was like a "hoarder collector". She would go to garage and estate sales and just buy without any rhyme or reason and bring home a carload of things she never used, but had a magnificent collections in cabinets and shelves. I am sure I posted that somewhere on this site. But back then - in the 70s and 80s, there were still avid collectors of just about anything. Now it seems most people have given up collecting "clutter".
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I think your Mom would tell you that she had a lot of fun collecting those things. I also think she would tell you that she knows now that they are just worldly things and not meant to be a burden for you.

I'm facing this with DH's plus his parents " stuff". I don't think they'd want me to toss it in the garbage (maybe some of it) but rather find homes and give it away. I'm finding groups on Facebook of various collectors and giving it to them.
I will definitely sell some of it but directly to people who will use it. I'll seek them out.
These are people who will honor your stuff, not just resell it on ebay.

If you need the money, by all means, try to sell it. If not, have fun making people's day.

What would your Mom do?

DH left this world with nothing but I believe he has everything.
 
Towards the end of his life, my late hubs told me he was comforted by having all his stuff (and there was a lot). I never brought up the subject of getting rid of anything again. After he died, I had three garage sales: one for tools, one for hobbies, and one for miscellaneous. Dividing it up like that was genius (not my idea, though). We leaned a piece of plywood up against a tree near the road, painted "Tool Man Sale" on it and within minutes, the men started coming. No ads anywhere. Just the sign.

The cool thing was with the tool sale, guys would swap work for certain tools. One man was an electrician who wanted a pressure washer. He installed a 50 amp outlet (for an RV I had) in exchange for it. Another wanted certain table saws so I had him put up a fence in part of the yard in exchange (I paid for the materials). It was great for both of us.
 
bowmore said:
This is a very good article
https://www.moneytalksnews.com/slideshows/commonly-inherited-items-worth-almost-nothing/

I think you should just toss all the stuff. I remember your comments about finding curtains your mother bought that would not fit any window.
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My grandmother was a "neat" hoarder. She loved to shop and get a bargain. Everything in her house was neat and put away out of sight. When she died, we had a massive garage sale.

One of the items she had bought on sale was a set of pink custom-made brocade drapes. 90" length, heavily lined, one set was for a 20-foot wide window (which she didn't have), several sets for double windows (of which she had one in her house) about about 12 sets of single windows. She loved pink and couldn't pass these up. They had originally been about $3600 (this was a looong time ago so I can't imagine what that would have been today) and eventually marked down, marked down, marked down to $100. She couldn't pass them up! So she brought them home and neatly packed them away.

I brought them out at the garage sale and one woman took a look at them and almost screamed. They were EXACTLY what her daughter wanted for her new house (doing it up in burgundy and pink....<gag> but who am I to criticize anyone else's taste?) and she had huge windows and lots of them. She called her daughter, who, I'm sure broke the speed limit getting over there, and we settled on $200 for the lot. I was delighted to get rid of what felt like 500 pounds of heavy pink brocade drapes and she was delighted to save several thousand dollars on drapes. Win-win!
 
debodun said:
An aunt of mine invested in Beanie Babies thinking they were collectible "sleepers"*. They are still sleeping and she has a basement full of them.
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My daughter kept telling me to hold on to her childhood Beenie Babies because some were valuable. A couple of years back while her and her husband were on vacation I took them to her house and spread them all over with little notes like "I missed you Kristin" or "why did you leave us?.

Now they're sleeping at her house.lol
 
You never know what people will buy. When I set a thing out I would say to myself, "This will be the first thing snapped up." and it's still sitting on the table at the end of the sale. On the other hand, I will think, "I don't know who would ever buy this." and it's one of the first items sold. Go figure.

I didn't hold out much hope last year for this salad/dessert bowl set, but it sold the second day for the asking price and the woman buyer just gushed over it.

bowl set1.jpg
 
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debodun said:
You never know what people will buy. When I set a thing out I would say to myself, "This will be the first thing snapped up." and it's still sitting on the table at the end of the sale. On the other hand, I will think, "I don't know who would ever buy this." and it's one of the first items sold. Go figure.

I didn't hold out much hope last year for this salad set, but it sold the second day for the asking price and the woman buyer just gushed over it.

View attachment 500821
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I like it. I've never had a salad bowl with matching serving bowls.
 
LoveTulips said:
If you really cannot sell or donate or re-cycle, why not just just get all together and hire a junk removal company to take it away @debodun ?
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I've received a few responses to my Marketplace ad from people that run clean-out businesses. I am walking on the razor's edge between thinking things are too good to trash yet no one seems to want. Every year I do sell things, but they are what antiquers refer to as "smalls" - things that don't make much difference in the volume and don't add much to the till.
 
If what you are doing is worth all your time, effort, and energy that you put into it, continue doing what you are doing.
If not, clean it out.


I would have been rid of it long ago. I have better things to invest my time into. Dusting, listing, advertising, displaying for sales, dealing with no-shows, etc., etc., ... for what? A few dollars?
Not my idea of a good time.

Getting rid of excess can be quite freeing!
 
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