The second day of the yard sale didn't go anywhere near as well as the first did on Friday. Yesterday, I had about ten people come by all day. On Friday, I was having ten people come by every hour. Roughly. At least until the later afternoon hours, anyhow.
Despite that, I did get rid of some of the stuff I wanted to be rid of yesterday morning; I had a decent morning, but by around 11 it had dried up (so to speak) and nobody but the kids across the street (who bought a ton of my Hot Wheels) came by past noon. Several people drove down the street, turned around and gawked at me and my stuff, and didn't stop. I haaaaaate people who do that almost as much as the people who come, give me shit about the prices of things, and then leave without buying anything. Because of the way my yard is positioned, you couldn't see a lot of stuff (except for the bigger items and the art) from the street -- you had to stop, walk up, and look if you wanted to see what I had. On both days, I had a fair amount of people do that, even if said people got one little thing or nothing. At least they gave it a chance and looked. I had several people come by and get a single book, or a single 50-cent item, and that alone was worth it to me. When I go yard-sale-ing, unless all I can see is baby stuff or women's dresses, I'll almost always stop to look, at least, at what a place has if any of the rest of it looks interesting or I can't see what it is from the street.
Yesterday's highlights were a couple in their early forties who got several different items (the husband was primarily interested in the Hot Wheels, and bought a good twenty of them), including some CDs and DVDs, amongst other little things. Later I had a pair of grandparents with their granddaughter, who bought both of my Paper Jamz guitars and the amplifier for them. The grandmother asked me, once she noticed the huge tub of Hot Wheels, how much I'd take for all of them.
"Well, they're 50 cents each, and there's probably a good 100 of them left in there, roughly," I said, "So...if you want the whole tub, make an offer. I'll cut you a deal on them."
No, that wasn't an exaggeration -- for those of you who don't know, for about two years I collected Hot Wheels (which I would've kept doing had I not become so poor and too busy with teaching/grad school to continue looking for the ones I wanted). Every time I went to Walmart or to Dillon's, I would look through the racks and probably get five to ten of them, which I would take home and put neatly into a large Sterilite plastic tub. I never opened any of them, because doing so destroys any collector's value they may hold in the future. After I got poor, said tub was sealed and basically forgotten about -- it acted as the stand for my Xbox in my Man Cave -- and it was only as an afterthought that I'd taken it out and decided to open it up to sell at the yard sale.
I'm not an idiot, of course -- I pulled out the ones I definitely wanted to keep, like the special edition Delorean time machines and the Ghostbusters Ecto-1s, before I took the tub downstairs. I'm glad I did -- overall at the yard sale, I probably sold more Hot Wheels than anything else.
Now, back to the grandmother -- I told her I'd cut her a deal because, well, if I didn't, 100 Hot Wheels for 50 cents each would be $50 (which, to collectors, would make them ejaculate in their pants, as some of the cars are probably worth several dollars each). I'm pretty sure she didn't want to spend $50 on a tub of toy cars. She wasn't interested in making an offer even after I told her to name her price. I probably would've let the whole tub go for $30, to be honest with you. They left.
Later in the morning, and shortly before/after noon, the two kids across the street (maybe ten or eleven years old, something like that) came by with money they'd made from having their own yard sale, and went through them meticulously. They apparently have a bunch of the tracks and wanted to race the cars up and down them, and ended up buying close to $20 worth of them overall. They came by a few times to get ones they hadn't gotten before. Sweet kids. Nice kids.
And those kids were my last customers of the day. I sat out there until after 3 with nobody else coming by, even though I'd updated my Craigslist ad to say that everything (except the Hot Wheels) was half-off after noon. The sale was supposed to run until 5, but as I hadn't gotten any other visitors/customers for three hours, I said fuck it and started packing everything in by 3:30. By 4, everything was back inside the garage to be sorted later today, and I went upstairs to eat and talk to Daisy -- who was just getting up to be able to go to work last night.
The final count? I made $102 in bills alone on Friday, and another $47 in bills yesterday. I sold about half of the DVDs and games I had out, more than half of the Hot Wheels, a few books, a few CDs, a few of the small appliances, the vacuum, all three of the plug-and-play game systems, and a bunch of other little odds-and-ends...but the vast majority of what I wanted to get rid of remained -- including all of the free stuff like the grill and the lamp, the folding chairs, the bookcase, etc. Nobody wanted any of it, not even for free. I was really frustrated I couldn't get rid of more than I did. I was also surprised that nobody wanted the weed-eater trimmer.
It's a decent monetary haul, yes, but I now have an entire garage full of stuff again and nowhere to put it. Some of it will be sorted and kept/packed up, yes -- I want to keep most of the DVDs and games I didn't sell, obviously -- but the rest of it I have nowhere to put, except probably in the trash and recycling.
However...
I learned yesterday afternoon that the DAV (Disabled American Veterans) thrift stores people make runs for pick-up donations, and that I can call them, give them my address, and they'll come pick up whatever I want to donate in their trucks. This is, well, nothing short of awesome. I plan to call them tomorrow, as they schedule their runs a few days in advance. With them, I can get rid of almost anything I want to get out of this house, provided that I can get it downstairs to the basement/garage. I may not even have to do that if they can move some of the larger stuff (like the massive, heavy fold-out couch in the living room) themselves -- I have no way (or help) to move that, and I desperately wish I did.
"Get a receipt for tax purposes," Daisy told me.
Apparently with large charitable donations you can write them off on your taxes. I wouldn't know, as I've only ever donated a bag or two of clothes at a time over the years, and when I was offered receipts for them I always declined because eh, it's not that important to me. When it comes to stuff like this, though? Yeah, I'll totally be getting a receipt when they come pick up the stuff.
In the meantime, I posted on Facebook that for anyone who wants to come up here and look through what's left can take it for free (read: please, take it) if they want to come up today or tomorrow before I schedule the pickup. More than anything else I just want the stuff gone.
Well, except for the Hot Wheels. Those I'll reorganize and keep, and find something to do with them.
In other news, hilariously enough, yesterday I got a jury duty summons in the mail. For anytime between the 4th Monday in June through the 4th Monday in December. Regardless of whether you can do it or not, you have to mail the form back to the courthouse with your information on it. Under the "reasons you may not be able to perform jury service" line, I wrote "I will be permanently relocating to Omaha, Nebraska on May 19, 2014." Under the line where it asked me what my round-trip mileage would be for such a summons, I wrote "after May 19, it will be approximately 600 miles."
And then I sealed it up and stuck it back in the outgoing mail.
It's the only time I've ever been summoned for jury duty, and believe me, I hope the fact that I'm moving 300 miles away a full month before I'd be called in for it anyway would mean they'll take me off the list automatically once they read that.
"They may ask me to prove I'm moving somehow," I told Daisy, "and as of right now I don't know how I could do that. They may ask for a copy of the lease to our new place, which I won't sign until I move there, or a copy of a bill in my name at the new place, which I also don't have yet."
Well, if nothing else, my landlord (at least until the end of this month) is the mayor of this fair city, and if nothing else, if they want proof, I could ask him to vouch for me that I am indeed moving out of state as my proof that I won't be living here anymore, maybe fax my 30 days' notice to them, etc. I don't know.
"Meh, it'll be fine," Daisy said.
It probably will be, but still -- said notice comes at a really strange transition time for me, when it's going to be hard for me to prove anything on paper right now if asked for that proof. It'll be really easy after the move, but right now? Not so much.
Anyway. We'll see what happens, I suppose.
I actually have a fair amount to do over the course of the next several days. I still haven't graded my 102s' finals yet, nor have I put the grades of their final papers up on Blackboard, because I was working the yard sale through yesterday afternoon and passed out on the couch last night when it was done. I also got a mild sunburn on my forehead and forearms when I was out in the sun as well, but it's very mild and is fading fast. Ironically, I was out in the sun more on Friday than I was yesterday -- I laid on one of the blankets in my yard and read a book for probably two or three hours of Friday afternoon's sale -- and yet yesterday, when I went out into the sun only to warm myself up and stretch my legs, that's when I got the mild sunburn. Oh well.
We've now officially entered "summer weather" here in Kansas -- today the high is supposed to be 97 (it's 91 now) and it's supposed to be in the high 80s and low 90s for most of this coming week, with the possibility for severe storms later in the week. This doesn't necessarily bother me; I have but one class left to teach (Tuesday night, on main campus) for the remainder of the semester, and a full week or so later I have but one final to give and grade for that class. The rest of the time, I'll be at home -- and continuing to pack and clean everything possible to ready for the move regardless of weather. It is during this next week or so that I will be taking care of everything regarding the utilities and credit cards (address changes, turn-off notices and the like) and trying to make sure everything will be wrapped up with a neat little bow before I move out of here. I'll also (most assuredly) have to go get more boxes in the middle of the night from Walmart, and will be packing anything non-essential-to-daily-life into those boxes before I drive the car up to Omaha and we return to get the truck (and everything else) for the move itself.
So, yeah, so far it's been a good weekend, and it's really only about halfway over for me, but I've got a lot left to do whether I like it or not. Woo. Good times, right?
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