A Garage Sale Story

Last weekend we had a garage sale. As we were setting it up, something happened that took me back to my childhood. I had to share.

The wonderful woman pictured above is my grandma. We spent almost every Sunday with her. She always made ravioli, spaghetti, breaded steak, chicken, or some amazing meal for us. I loved our visits there – unless we had to go to the store or garage sale shopping.

My grandma was always looking for a deal. She could haggle like no one else I know. If she was buying a car, she always talked them into a full set of floor mats, coupons for car washes, full tanks of gas, or seat covers. She knew how to wheel and deal and we often saw this when she was garage sale shopping. Often times, we’d drive around for hours stopping here and there. If I had to wager a guess, we probably wasted more gas than anything. It seemed like she hardly ever bought anything.

Now here is the thing I remember most about visiting garage sales with my grandma. She’s wait until we all got back in the car and once the doors closed, she’d proclaim, “They’re high!” or “They were too high!” or “Those prices were high!” I’d say that 95% of the time it was simply, “They’re high!”

Now, back to our garage sale. The first morning we were setting up, Sam really hadn’t decided on prices for things. She had an idea for the baby clothes and such, but the big ticket items, she didn’t.

I was out pricing these things as she called out what she wanted for them. For one stroller she said she wanted $50 for it. I’m sure that was probably a fair price, but immediately in my head, I hear my grandma saying, “They’re high!” This happened on a few other items, too. Rather than suggest to my wife that the prices were high (because they may not have been), I simply said, “If you get a good offer on this – we should just take it.”

We really didn’t have a whole lot of people stop out, so I can’t say that the items didn’t sell because of their price. I’m sure if more folks had come, if we had more signs, or if we had advertised it we would have had a better turn out.

I was glad that this funny little memory popped into my head. I miss my grandma a lot!