Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Garage sale gold

We don’t have garage sales and I rarely go to other’s. I have picked up some great deals at garage sales, mostly fishing stuff. I bought 6 Taylor round inflatable floats for crabbing, shrimping or as boat fenders when rafting up at a marina. I will go to the church sale, Boy Scouts fundraisers and other charitable sales since it goes to a good cause. I’m donating a new GLoomis IMX rod to our football team and their silent auction and dinner event but getting rid of even one fishing rod is tough, despite my having 50+ more rods. 😫

My wife and I don’t want people poking around or scoping out our stuff. We live in the country and are surrounded by good people but garage sales attract the riff raff. I’d rather donate, dump or giveaway stuff instead of inviting a bunch of cheapskates to dig around through my garage.....besides.....why sell things that are useful? I’m a pack rat and I don’t want other rats sniffing around my territory. 😁

Went to a few Garage Sales. Tried to talk the Lady down on a couple of items but she wouldn’t budge. End of the day I drove past the trash pile after they shut it down. Dug the items I originally wanted out of the garbage pile. It only cost me a few drops of sweat.

My sister's mother in law, decided to have a yard sale many years back, as she was going to remodel the summer fishing cabin in Pa. Took a rug out that had endured many a dripping bass and sunfish, and two guys showed up and started a bidding war. She scored $18 K. Had either one showed up solo, they could have carried it off for $50. Seems it was a Persian rug from the 30's.

Can't bring myself to do yard sales unless it's an immediate neighbor and I can simply walk over.

This only applies to Southern folk

Go to a yardsale in an uppity part town, works great if there's a couple of little old sweet ladies runnin it.

Start on an intense quest going through everything,...them ask them...WHERE'S ALL THE PLAYBOYS AT???

Same type deal, southern little old ladies. Stop by an adult bookstore and get one of them rubber ding dongs. Put on there table amongst a bunch of other misc junk. Best while really busy. Just hang back and watch the gold.

Love garage sales, have found some great stuff over the years.

I will not have one myself though. When I have a $10 item priced at $.50 and you try to Joo me to $.25 we’re done doing business. I’m pretty cheap but I ain’t gonna chisel on you on a sub $5 item.

The uppity places are ones I will hit.
We used to go to a huge one in Hagerstown Md.
Hit all the affluent housing projects (rich city folk love it when you
are walking around a fancy development and call it a project),
rich folk have the nicest junk to sell.

You don't want my stuff. If I didn't want it, I wouldn't have bought it.
If I don't want it anymore, it's junk.

I don't do yard sales but my wife was hired to run a church owned thrift store . she goy me 8 pair of name brand cargo shorts for 2 $ a piece their 30 to 45 $ new. 4 still had the tags on them .a 100 $ pair of danner hiking boots new in the box for 10$.found a 177cal pellet gun in a pile of stuff. the people that own the store said get rid of it she gave the store 10 $ for it its a 100 $ new brake barrel 1200fps Crossman

I don't like it either, its a lot of work and dealing with people has never been my strong suit.

Haven't had any great scores lately, but I go when I can and have gotten some good deals. My best deal was two Marlins 336's for $200.00. Both in good condition, and one was a .35 Remington and had a K 2.5 Weaver on it. Best shooting Marlin I ever fired. Easily less than 1" groups off the sand bags. I sold it for a LOT more than I paid for it. Wish I'd have just hung on to it.

This sounds like a job for "The Black Mamba"!

The Internet has mostly ruined garage sales as a lot of them I have gone too had e bay prices....but some are just moving and blowing stuff out...I don't go to them much ..mostly junk I don't want....
My brother does a few flea markets a year...he goes to auctions a lot and try's to buy big boxes cheap and hopes to find one item to make it worth going...he usually does too...one time he was at a garage sale and the people were moving and had to have everything gone that day...towards the end of the day they were giving stuff away...he offered to take it all ...a 4 horse trailer full of boxes...he still hasn't gone through it all...lots of old glass ware that had been packaged away in the 80 s according to the newspaper...probably there parents stuff...there have been some good flea market stuff in it....
Me I got a rem Classic in 350 mag..with a leupold scope sling gun case and several boxes of ammo all for 250 bucks..

Not a garage sale but at a thrift shop my buddy picked me up a Manfrotto tripod with a Gitzo head for $18.00 !

Same thing happened to me last summer at a yard sale.

I spied some axes and splitting mauls on a table and by the time I navigated my way there, a woman was holding a brand new Granfors Bruk splitting maul. The thing had never made contact with a block of wood. I knew GFB mauls went for about $250 new and the sticker on it said $10. She even asked me if I knew anything about mauls and if $10 was a good deal? I couldn't lie and told her to buy it as it is a great maul at a screaming deal . She did buy it. Next to the axes though was a brand new GFB splitting wedge so I snagged that sucker. They run about a $100 and I paid $7. Still haven't been able to bring myself to use the wedge though.

I picked up a Ludwig snare drum for $15 - actually he through it in for free after we bought a select comfort bed from his guest room for $100. I ended up selling the snare on Ebay for $2000.

Just remembered that I bought a RCBS Rock Chucker press for $7 years ago at a garage sale in Wenatchee, WA.

Garage sales come in two flavors:

1. The seller thinks his stuff is gold and asks close to full retail price.
2. The seller wants to get rid of stuff, sets low prices and will take any reasonable offer, maybe even unreasonable ones.

Re #2: One guy told me that he would sell me an item I wanted even cheaper if I would also take three partial rolls of construction plastic sheeting for free. I got a near lifetime supply of 4 and 6 mil plastic tarps and ground sheets.

Haven't been to a garage sale or auction for quite some time. But, I do need to have one of my own (garage sale) to get rid of some of the stuff I bought from sales and never used. It's a vicious circle.

My town has citywide sales spring and fall. Sometimes I read the listing to see if anyone has anything good. No kidding, there will be 10 breast pumps among the 40 garage sales. I never even knew such a thing existed for humans until I started reading the garage sale ads. But I rarely see anything I want. I bought a Weber B-B-Kettle from the 70s for $3 about 5 years ago. I use it all the time, steak yesterday, steak today. Never any guns or anything.

Have had 2 garage sales, first and last, even though we’ve more stuff we need to get rid of.


1st garage sale, we’ve about got everything set out minus a table and we need to move vehicles down the hill so customers have a space to park up close to our garage. It’s at this juncture my wife says she’ll leave to go set up signs while I finish setting up and them wake the boys to move vehicles. Which is another thing I need to get rid of, too many vehicles 🤦🏼‍♂️

So she leaves, but does she go to the farthest point we’re gonna place signs and work her way back to the house ?

Oh no! She sets the first sign up at the bottom of the driveway, so before I can set up the last table, get change money ready or even wake the boys, I’ve got 6 cars up at our house. 🤦🏼‍♂️

I sold $600 worth of junk in the first 30 minutes 🤷🏻‍♂️

But man it’s taking her a long time to set up signs and get back, hope she’s okay.

Now an hour has passed and there’s a momentary lull in the action, so I whip out the cell to call her, she calls me right at that time 🤷🏻‍♂️

Where are you? Are you ok ?

Yes she’s fine but she’s stopped at a garage sale 😳🤦🏼‍♂️😱

When she told me what she was looking at......... BUY IT NOW !

Was a propane stove oven, for one of the cabins.

Next day was sunny and nice and all of our kids headed to the lake. 😞. We wanted to go too, so we grabbed our gear and started picking up signs and to the lake we went.

We’re a lot better at buying up other folks junk than getting rid of our own.

My first cousin found a J.O. Bass curb bit in a garage sale for $2.00. He wouldn't tell me how much he sold it for.