A Very Good Day...

I have mentioned that I go to garage sales. Well, today was a hit! From one sale I got a SnapOn tool box, probably 80# or so. A 24" dog cage (I sell the crap out of dog cages!) A Stainless steel OTR GE MW. Three stove cords. I also got a 5" magnifying glass and an earth box, but they are for me and the Mrs.' and will be used. In the tool box was 8# of brass and 4#-ish of steel, and a bunch of torx bits and tiny allen wrenches and a spanner wrench. I paid $22 for it all. I will list the tool box and the micro and dog cage on CL and will probably get at least $200. I got a Dell computer and the CRT for $2. I got a brass lamp for $2 (I need lamp parts for a project I am working on). I figure I will probably clear $250+ once all is said and done for my $25 investment plus a few things I will use.

Woot! Woot!

Nice scores!

Congrats. Good score. Good luck.

I'd like to find a couple of rummage sales like that. People around here tend to be a bit touched in the head when selling tools. I've seen people trying to sell very used tools for 80% of what cheap big box store similar items go for new. Some stuff may be of better quality but how many hundreds or thousands of hours has it been used already?? I do find some good things but often I go through 20-25 rummages to find a few good ones. Some of the nicer neighborhoods in this metro have a crappiest rummages for at least the stuff I'm looking for. Still keep looking though. The thrill of the hunt!

P.S. What's an "earth box"??

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Originally Posted by DakotaRog

I'd like to find a couple of rummage sales like that. People around here tend to be a bit touched in the head when selling tools. I've seen people trying to sell very used tools for 80% of what cheap big box store similar items go for new. Some stuff may be of better quality but how many hundreds or thousands of hours has it been used already?? I do find some good things but often I go through 20-25 rummages to find a few good ones. Some of the nicer neighborhoods in this metro have a crappiest rummages for at least the stuff I'm looking for. Still keep looking though. The thrill of the hunt!

P.S. What's an "earth box"??

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I have found that if you just go looking for one item, or a specific item, results will be disappointing. I go out every week not knowing what I will be buying, I do look for things, but I look for money left on the table. Sarasota seems to be a very good area for the hunt. Yesterday I found a small air compressor ($10... I needed one for my shop), a four cycle Troy Built string trimmer power head (420.. I hope it is mere reliable than the two stroke jobbies), a medium sized TV wall mount bracket ($3... for the TV that will eventually be put out on the back portch), a few tools, and had a great time with my Uncle. Saturday was a good day for me.

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As I read a lot of different threads on here, a guy (I'm a professional geographer so maybe we think more about crap such as this more) sees a lot of different cultural traits or the how the size of a metro area matters around the country. The Sarasota area is certainly bigger than the SxFalls area and is filled with people that have come from other parts of the country. Maybe many of these folks just want to get rid of their stuff at a rummage and be done with it.

Up here, there are basically two groups of people that do rummages; those that want to move their stuff and price to sell (we fall into that category and always move alot of stuff at our rummages) and those people who think they are an extension of some retail place and try to sell much closer to retail than I ever would. Maybe they find people who are willing to buy at those prices but not from me. Or some folks don't have much money (or money saved up) so they price stuff higher to make every buck they can on the stuff they have. I'm mostly a very small scale "picker" and I'm interested in re-selling on ebay. Occasionally, I'll buy for myself if there something I think I can use at a good prices or I'm adding to one of my own collections. Like I said, I usually go to 20+ rummages on a Sat. morning and maybe end up with 10 things or less in my car.

Same thing when it goes to driving around and picking stuff up. I see guys on here who constantly find truck loads of stuff. I just don't see that much stuff laying around this metro area. Don't get me wrong, I do and have scored some stuff waiting for the trash guys, usually next to apartment building dumpsters but its occasional. Now, I'm sure there are curbside scrappers in SxFalls who get enough stuff to make it worth their while. They probably have certain neighborhoods, businesses, or whatever that they know of or have made connections. But generally a guy just doesn't see a lot of scrap laying around, even by house garbage cans on the various trash days. I think culturally people around here generally tend to hang on to their stuff long after they use it regularly. A lot of folks in this metro grew up in small towns or farms and stuff is just generally kept. Stuff that I do see laying around tend to be in lower socioeconomic neighborhoods. Last winter, I scored 3-4 big TVs, a small frig, a larger water cooler/heater, and some occasional steel pieces out of 1 apt. complex in my bedroom town. I tried to expand this by checking out all of this little town's apt. complexes on Sunday afternoons during the winter and I couldn't justify my gas mileage (about a 10 miles loop or so) on what I found. I'll admit that I only was doing drive by checking and something either had to be next to or sticking out of a dumpster but I just didn't find much...