7 Tips To Bring Your Garage Sale Into The Modern Age
People hold garage sales for a variety of reasons, whether it's to get extra cash when times are tough, get ready for a big move, or say goodbye to things owned by friends or family members who have passed on. In many ways, garage sales are great for the environment — in that they reduce waste and encourage reuse — and a way for many people to own products at a fraction of their brand-new price. While the traditional way of doing garage or yard sales meant laying out stuff in your garage or front yard and letting the neighbors have a look, there are plenty of things you can do to make your garage sale more fun and easy to manage.
By making the garage sale experience more fun, people will be more likely to buy from you and share your sale details with their friends and family. Aside from playing some music, being pleasant, and offering free refreshments, you can also use technology to significantly enhance the garage sale experience. From organizing your items for sale, pricing your items, and managing payments to promoting your sale, here are some tips that you can follow to give your garage sale a modern twist.
Create a home inventory
Before you can jump into the garage sale itself, the first and arguably most important thing you can do is conduct a proper home inventory. After all, you don't want to go through all the effort of planning, organizing, and promoting your garage sale when there are barely any items listed. Previously, this meant going through each room with a box, pen, and paper on hand. However, these days, there are a variety of home inventory apps that you can use to get started.
When doing a home inventory, you can go room by room to document things that you own and want to get rid of, taking care to note things like damage, repeated items, or expiration dates. Once you have this information, you can better decide what items are for keeping, repairing, selling, donating, recycling, or throwing in the trash. Afterward, you can sort them into boxes and start preparing them for their new owners (or the landfill).
If you're half-hearted about letting go of some items, like clothes, you can use tools like Google Lens to try out new styles before deciding to let them go. On the other hand, if you have a mountain of unwanted devices, you can also explore ways to repurpose or recycle your old tech. Some charities work to recycle tech products properly and use the value created for their good works.
How to price your items
Pricing your items can be tricky, especially if they are items that you did not buy yourself or have had in storage for years. While people don't expect to shell out a lot of money during garage sales, it's still okay to set a price and expect some haggling. Thankfully, there are now several online tools to track prices, and that help you find out how much your items are worth when they're new. So, you can work backward to estimate how much it can be worth secondhand in its current condition. On the other hand, you can also check the prices for similar items on eBay or from other online retailers who offer secondhand goods.
When it comes to vintage items, it can be challenging to know their actual value unless you have specialized knowledge in the field. If you plan to sell antique furniture, jewelry, fine art, or luxury goods, you can use appraisal websites like ValueMyStuff, Iegor, or MutualArt. Depending on the appraiser, they might charge a small fee or even do it for free.
When pricing your items, you can take inspiration from your local retailers. For example, you can bundle items together or add freebies after spending a certain amount. You can even use the sneaky pricing strategy of ending the prices with nine instead of zero (e.g., $4.99 vs $5).
Manage your cash better
People who go to in-person garage sales often prefer to pay in cash. Because of this, you might want to get a few things that can help you manage cash more effectively. For example, while you can probably use an old shoe box or fanny pack to keep your money during a garage sale, you might want to invest in a money-safe cash box with special compartments for cash, coins, and a lock. Among cash boxes, SentrySafe Money Safe Cash Box with Money Tray and Key Lock ($27.40) has an average rating of 4.7 across almost 13,000 reviews. Dealing with cash often means needing a ton of loose change, which you can easily manage using coin sorters. Depending on your budget, you can get a manual coin counter and sorter tray ($18.99) or a fancy electric one like the Cassida C100 ($236).
You might also want to consider buying tools to check whether or not bills are counterfeit. For example, the Money Marker ($9.89) is a cheap anti-counterfeit option with an average rating of 4.7 from over 13,600 reviews, which uses color-changing ink to indicate whether a bill is genuine. By swiping the Money Marker on a bill, the mark will appear gold if it's genuine and black if it's not. Alternatively, you can invest in a machine like the Kolibri Money Counter Machine ($99), which has an average 4.4 rating from over 3,000 customers, and can help count bills while detecting fake ones.
Set up your digital payment channels
These days, there are plenty of cashless payment options and eWallets, like CashApp, Venmo, and PayPal. However, when used for garage sales, it's important to be aware of hidden charges. For example, there are two options when sending money on PayPal: as Goods and Services or To a Friend. If you choose the Goods and Services option, the buyer will have purchase protection but there will be extra fees. Plus, the sale might even be taxable, because PayPal reports transactions to the IRS if you receive $600 worth from Goods and Services within the same year. If the buyer uses a PayPal-linked credit card, you'll also need to decide if you're willing to shoulder the 3% fee.
Aside from PayPal, you can also use platforms like Square to accept credit card payments. Previously, you may have needed to factor in how long it would take to ship the magstripe reader. But these days, you can easily enable Square's Tap to Pay option for select mobile phones. Although Square doesn't have long-term contracts, you should expect to pay a fee of 2.6% plus 10 cents for every in-person transaction. Alternatively, Stripe charges a slightly higher fee at $2.9% plus 30 cents.
Before the garage sale, make sure to test digital payments with a trusted friend or family member first to avoid sending money to the wrong account, and make sure to print out a sign that tells people what payment platforms you accept.
Sell some things online
If you have some high-value items, selling them online might be a way to make more money than from a typical garage sale. This is especially true if you own niche items like sports equipment or art supplies, potential hobbyist restoration projects like old furniture, or something collectors would be interested in. On platforms like Facebook, it can be as simple as posting in the general marketplace, your neighborhood's buy and sell group, or a niche interest group's feed.
If you're feeling brave, you can even post your items on places like eBay or Craigslist. Just make sure that when you are meeting strangers off the internet, you're mindful about giving your home or work address and opt to meet them in a public place if possible. Alternatively, if you don't feel safe or don't have the time to meet up with potential buyers, you can also sell some of your items directly to online secondhand retailers. For example, you can offload your old AirPods and other electronics to Best Buy or Decluttr for a set amount.
If you end up selling your high-value items at your in-person garage sale, make an effort to display them well and give buyers the option to test them. For example, if you're selling battery-powered Bluetooth speakers, keep them fully charged and ready to be paired. Or, if you're planning to sell an old turntable, have some vinyl on hand for prospective buyers to see that it works.
Promote your garage sale
How you promote your garage sale can impact how many people drop by and take a look at your wares. Thankfully, there are plenty of tools to create eye-catching designs for promotional posters that you can post online or print out to hang as flyers.
For example, Canva has plenty of free and paid garage sale poster templates at your disposal. To find these templates, simply go to Canva and type "garage sale" into the search bar. Afterward, select your preferred template, then edit the date, time, address, and contact details. If you want to print out the actual flyers, Canva also offers printing and delivery services directly. After customizing the size, paper type, paper finish, and quantity, you can finalize the print request, confirm your delivery address, and pay the quoted fee.
While you can make handmade signs that say "garage sale," you can also take your promotions further by using LED displays to draw people's attention. So, if you already own something like the RayHome Scrolling Bright Advertising LED Sign ($69.99), you can use it to display words like "garage sale" or "big discounts." You can even offer discounts if they post their buys on social media and encourage neighbors to drop by. Not only can this help build your legitimacy as a seller, but it's low-effort and practically free marketing.
Labelling your products
In some cases, garage sales are shared among multiple friends or family members who are selling their things. Usually, you would have to split things into piles using picnic mats, foldable tables, or storage boxes. While this can work, it can become confusing for both buyers and the sellers taking note of their own sales, especially when similar items are sold. To mitigate this, people used to write on masking tape, slap on colored stickers, or print tags that indicated seller names and prices.
Thankfully, there are now more convenient ways to make sure the right people get paid, such as using thermal sticker label makers. With over 16,000 reviews and a 4.3 rating on Amazon, the Phomemo D30 Label Maker ($23.98) can help you make inkless thermal stickers using only your mobile phone. Similarly, you can also use a label sticker maker to include details like prices, clothing sizes, barcodes, and expiration dates.
While it's good to properly price and track the owners of your garage sale items, you should also align with your co-sellers on what items you just want out of your hair. With a label printer, you can make a special tag for items to be sold at a big discount at the end of the day. You can even have a free pile that people can grab from if they make a purchase. This will make it easier to offload things you were planning to throw in the trash or donate anyway.