I suck at garage sales. When it comes to bargain hunting I have a split personality.
Or maybe split isn’t even right. It’s more of a fragmented one.
I love a great bargain but feel guilty if I pay too little. I have the bartering skills of a chimpanzee. For me, the most dreaded words on the garage sale trail are “Make me an offer.”
I might as well throw my hands in the air and hand over my purse. When you make an offer and the person’s eyes widen and they say, “Really? Um...I mean, okay. If you’re sure.” you know you’re not exactly a tough negotiator.
Sometimes the person names their number—an outrageous number—and out of fear of insulting them I pay it and then grumble about it all the way home.
A fear of insulting someone is not a good personality trait for garage sales.
We went to one sale a few years ago at a farm located almost an hour from town.
We were the only ones there and given how excited the couple seemed to be to see us, I worried we were the only ones that had been there all day.
They had lots of fabulous antiques but all marked way beyond my price range even if we had the space for them...which we didn’t. I felt awkward leaving without buying something (another personality strike against me when it comes to garage sales) so I picked up two red juice glasses.
They weren’t priced, but they were just glasses. Glasses usually go at garage sales for between a dime and a quarter a piece.
I thought I could smash them to use in a mosaic piece I was working on. I set them on the table by the cashbox and reached into my purse for some coins.
“Ten bucks,” the lady said.
“Are...are they antique?” I stammered.
“Nope,” she replied.
And then...I paid it.
Those glasses sat on my mosaic table for months before I was able to finally shatter them. It’s not easy to take a hammer to five dollar glasses.
Since the day of the blue glasses I made a vow to only buy things that are already priced. Well, unless it’s something very special.
One time I came across a beautiful tea set—a pot, creamer, sugar bowl and six little mugs—that I recognized as the handiwork of a local potter whose work I have always admired.
I tilted the teapot and sure enough, there were her initials etched in the clay below. I looked for a price to no avail. For the first time since the red glasses debacle I broke my rule.
However, this time I asked the man what he was asking for the set before simply carrying them to the cashbox.
“Make me an offer,” he replied.
A multitude of figures raced through my head, none of them cheap. Before I could put words to a figure he said, “Ah, just give me two bucks.”
“Two...two dollars?” I squeaked.
“Yup.”
I handed over a toonie in disbelief and he rushed to find me a box to put the set in. Now every time I use that tea set I feel a strange mixture of delight and guilt.
But perhaps the biggest rupture in my personality is my love of shiny objects contrasted by how very much I detest clutter.
I am continuously beating the drum of less is more, or in the words of Thoreau, simplify, simplify, simplify. And yet I can’t seem to resist the thrill of the hunt, the rush of adrenalin that hits early on a work free Saturday morning.
Or these days, it is more the Friday afternoon. When it comes to garage sales being first on the scene is crucial (except in the case of red glasses) and Fridays have become the new Saturday. Some are even launching on Thursday evenings. If the trend keeps up soon we’ll be able to garage sale all week long. Is that a good thing?
A bad thing? Like everything to do with garage sales, I just don’t know.
Shannon McKinnon is a syndicated columnist from Northern BC. You can catch up on past columns by visiting www.shannonmckinnon.com