Barnestorming: More to yard sales than selling old stuff

There is a song by singer-songwriter Cheryl Wheeler called “Estate Sale,” which I found myself humming last weekend as I lorded over a yard sale at my home in Templeton.

I think about Cheryl Wheeler a lot this time of year because of her song “When Fall Comes to New England,” but “Estate Sale” is a good one as well. It tells about “going through dead people’s houses” to see and possibly buy wonderful things inside.

Yard sales are a lot like estate sales, only more intense. At estate sales, people spend half the day wandering around one house until they are kicked out. At yard sales, shoppers are frantic, rushing to get from one sale to the next.

The final weekend of September was a good time to clean out household junk. Not only Templeton, but Petersham, Hubbardston and Princeton had townwide yard sale days. Fall is the perfect season for yard sales. Leicester has scheduled its big event for the first day of October.

I have always been on the bottom of the food chain as far as what I have for sale. I am jealous of “those people” who sell antiques, lightly used toys of a quality Barron Trump might have gotten from an overindulgent family member, and all sorts of good tools.

I try to get the maximum use out of anything I own. I won’t sell anything broken, and what I have left are often things I never really wanted anyway; things left when our kids moved away; and strange things given me by well-meaning people.

Last weekend, after what seemed like a crazy amount of effort to get my yard sale set up by 8 a.m., I had high hopes. Waiting for customers, I sat at a money table on the front lawn. Cars drove slowly by checking us out. As one car after another passed by without stopping, I felt my heart sink.

Got guns?

People were rejecting us and driving off. I was almost to the point of despair when a car stopped and a guy got out. Smiling, he greeted me and asked a question I wasn’t prepared for.

“Do you have any guns?”

I fought hard to keep a neutral face as I told him, “No. Sorry.”

My first thought was, “Hmmm. I heard they were coming to take our guns, but I didn’t realize it would be at a yard sale.”

He smiled again, “How about any other weapons?”

Was he FBI? Our conversation was not going the way I expected. I thought I would be chatting with people about the value of blenders.

The closest I had to weapons were a hand-held scythe, and a hatchet that also served as a nail puller and hammer. They were not on his list. I was apologetic, but he kept smiling.

“That’s OK, do you have any antiques?”

At some point I realized he wasn’t FBI or some guy worried about defending himself if society collapsed. This was his business.

Laid-back approach

After he headed off, I decided I needed a strategy. If people were driving by and they saw me watching them, they might not stop. My solution was to avoid making eye contact.

Yard sale shoppers generally do their own thing. They don’t need a pushy homeowner bugging them. I tried to give off a laid-back vibe.

I hold yard sales for reasons that have nothing to do with money — the need to get rid of stuff and because it is a great social event where I meet lots of nice people.

My favorite moment all day came after we had sold enough and opened the sale for free. A young girl stopped by and started digging through our boxes of old National Geographic magazines.

National Geographic is a truly beloved publication. It is one of the few I always read cover-to-cover. But they do not sell as well as guns and antiques. People already have rooms full of the magazines, some collected over generations. They are too loved to get rid of, and few people want more magazines.

We put out four boxes, not expecting much, but hoping for just the right person to take them. One guy bought a few early on, but that was all.

As I was sitting there, the girl suddenly let out a delighted yelp and held one up to show a family member.

“Look! Animals,” she said.

She ended up taking six that featured fun stories about animals. The day ended with most of the magazines still on the lawn, but at least one girl went home happy.

We didn’t make a lot at the yard sale. We gave away more than we sold, we still have a box of much-loved old dolls, but it was a great time. We cleaned out many of our old-person closets, met some good people and hopefully a little of it will end up in someone’s estate sale.

George Barnes is a former reporter for the Telegram & Gazette. His column will appear regularly in the Sunday Telegram.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: George Barnes column on holding yard sales and meeting customers