Finding great deals at garage sales

For anyone trying to save money, there is little doubt the advantage that garage sales have. With websites named the queen of garage sales and other interesting mentions of them, there is little doubt that people around the country love going to these and finding great deals. The real reason that my wife and I go is because of the deals and we will continue in the future.

But in order to find the best garage sales, there are a lot of different things that you must keep in mind first. Are you able to go on Thursday or Friday morning? While I have a lot of flexibility with my job, it is amazing to me the amount of people who also have flexibility to be going to garage sales during a time that most people would be in the office.

Because my wife works a normal 9-5 job five days per week, most of our garage sales come on Saturday morning. Sometime late in the week (Thursday or Friday would work), I start to scout out where we want to go. Because of the price of gas, I would prefer not to drive all around our town in search of something that may not even be there. So what I normally do is pick an area close to our house and start looking.

What I use to find garage sales is the local newspaper and Craigslist. The local newspaper is nice enough to even have the garage sales separated by the area of town and I can easily find where the Craigslist garage sales are by using Mapquest. The majority of the garage sales mention what they have. For example, we were looking for a ladder last year so we would search if any had the ladder. Even if it was out of our area, that would still be something we would look into visiting.

Once I have found some in the area, I make sure that the first day they are holding the garage sale is the day that we are looking. While there may be a chance that you could find something you are looking for at a garage sale that has been opened for two days, chances are much smaller because the majority of good items have already been picked over.

In the past, I normally typed/wrote directions to all the different garage sales using Mapquest. While we would make detours to any that we saw on the way, this was a pretty good guide to where were headed. With Craigslist being free and all, there is no reason why you should not post your garage sale and what is available on the site.

While many people are fans of the drive by (Where they slowly drive by and stare down what is available), if I have driven there, I feel I might as well get out of the car and see what they have to offer. You are never going to be able to see everything that they have while trying to drive at the same time.

The best garage sales are normally the ones where you get there early or late. If it is early, the best items should still be available (If there are any in the first place). If you are among the last people there, the selection will not be as good but I am willing to bet that they want to sell their stuff or it will end up at Goodwill later in the day.

If you can, keep an eye out for block sales. These are among my favorite because it gives you the option to walk to multiple yard sales. Going to a block sale is normally worth the extra driving simple because you have so many different options. The only problem with that is some people will want to be apart of the block sale and end up putting ten items out that they should just throw away.

When my wife and I look for garage sales, we keep an eye on what we need and what we could possibly sell on ebay. While ebay is not our primary reason for going, I was able to hit a jackpot a few years back. We were at a block sale and the lady had a few newer items and three adobe products for a Mac. While I did/do not own a Mac, the items were unopened and price for only $20. I tried haggling with her but ended up walking away. We went to another garage sale and I kept thinking about the items.

Eventually, we made our way back to the first garage sale and purchased the Adobe programs. I was not sure if they were academic copies but I knew I could get more than $20 for anything Adobe on ebay. While unsure about it, I ended up selling all three copies for somewhere near $600. That treasure helped us pay for our eventual washer and drier when we ended up moving.

While I still search for something like that today, chances of anything similar happening again are small. But then again, you just never know. Garage sales are in a way like treasure hunts simply because you never know what will be available.