It’s Saturday. Time to hit the garage sales!
Before you go there’s a few things you should know, and as a garage sale expert I will be happy to tell you.
I know what you’re thinking. One day you’ll walk into a garage sale and buy a funny-looking painting for $5 that turns out to be an original Picasso worth $2 million.
It could happen on Antiques Road Show, but in the real world not so much. But take heart, it could happen to you.
But anyway, let’s get started.
First, there are three types of garage sale people: Early Birds, Old Timers and Furniture Hunters.
Early Birds are people who don’t have a life and show up at a garage sale at 5 in the morning. They charge up the driveway in the dark shouting “Hello! The Early Birds are here!” They are greeted with a string of cuss words and then mauled by the owner’s dog.
Next are Old Timers who know a few yard sale secrets. Humbly, I admit I am one of these.
Lastly, there are the Furniture Hunters. These are people who spent their last paycheck to move to Hawaii and rent a place, and are left with about $35 to furnish their entire house. They go out and scour the garage sales for deals on mattresses and end tables.
You will see them with couches, beds and La-Z-Boys piled high on their truck looking like the Beverly Hillbillies.
Since you are a normal person and not one of these hardcore garage sale types, you should know a few secrets of successful garage sailing.
First, you have to know how to read the signs.
If you are driving along and see a sign that says “Huge Sale” it will turn out to be two card tables of rusty silverware, cheap earrings and some keiki clothes. A big nothing.
But if it is a small sign with one word, “Sale” it is usually the size of the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet! It will have five tarps under which dazzling treasures abound. Here you might find that Picasso.
Sometimes you’ll see a yard and a garage strewn with junk that looks like a yard sale. Before you stop make sure it is really a sale and not just someone’s messy yard. People get mad when you think their yard is a yard sale.
But you have to know Standard Garage Sale Prices, the proper price of stuff. DVD movies and CDs should be $1, CDs maybe 50 cents. If they want $2, they are greedy, and if they want $5 there is something seriously wrong with them.
Dress shirts should be $3, aloha shirts a little more. T-shirts should be $2, and $1 for everything that looks like it should cost $1.
I am always leery of yard sales with a cause. People having a sale to send 50 kids and adults to a checker tournament in Miami, Florida. In one garage sale they need to make enough for 100 round-trip plane tickets, hotel rooms and food. Yea, right.
Then come the videos, those little black bricks stacked in the corner of every moving sale. They are like plastic fossils preserving an embarrassing past.
Seeing shiny video cases of Bambi, Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid and Lethal Weapon one through nine makes me feel a little silly to think that for 10 years those wacky little tapes were the center of our TV world.
And those clunky VCRs were high tech and could cost $400. Now they use them for landfill.
Now these old time videos are $1 for a box of 40. Makes sense since there there’s no way to watch them.
So there you have it, a few secrets of the sales. Go forth and get those deals. And always make sure your yard doesn’t look like a yard sale.
Dennis Gregory writes a bi-monthly column for West Hawaii Today and welcomes your comments at makewavess@yahoo.com.