The world's longest yard sale runs for nearly 700 miles
September 2, 2015 2:34 PM Subscribe
It seems fair to say that the average yard sale has a few hundred items for purchase, maybe a thousand, between the bins of baby clothes and the stacks of books and the junk boxes full of old Happy Meal toys. That's a dense concentration of the evidence of lived human lives. But imagine even more. Imagine the sheer scale of humanity at the largest yard sale there's ever been.
Nobody. Tell. My mother.
posted by AdamCSnider at 2:45 PM on September 2, 2015 [11 favorites]
posted by AdamCSnider at 2:45 PM on September 2, 2015 [11 favorites]
"I've collected Barbies for years. She's my favorite, Princess Di," she said. I asked her why she was selling the doll if she loved it so much. "My husband passed, and I've got so much stuff," she answered. "I'm 76 years old. Well, I know I haven't got long to live now, and I'll just get rid of it."
Not far away, out of her sightline, there was another table also piled with boxes of Barbies. I asked the man running it if he knew the woman selling on the other side of the lawn. "Yes ma'am, she's my grandma," he said. His 10-year-old daughter chirped up: "She gives us these dolls every year for Christmas and we don't really want ‘em. So we're selling ‘em."
Ouch.
posted by asperity at 2:56 PM on September 2, 2015 [5 favorites]
Not far away, out of her sightline, there was another table also piled with boxes of Barbies. I asked the man running it if he knew the woman selling on the other side of the lawn. "Yes ma'am, she's my grandma," he said. His 10-year-old daughter chirped up: "She gives us these dolls every year for Christmas and we don't really want ‘em. So we're selling ‘em."
Ouch.
posted by asperity at 2:56 PM on September 2, 2015 [5 favorites]
Nobody. Tell. My mother.AdamCSnider, you beat me to it.
posted by adamrice at 2:59 PM on September 2, 2015
I almost bought a grandfather clock for $8 the other day. The yard sale was down the street, and the clock was obviously a '60s plastic wood replica with ordinary workings and no pendulum, but I thought, $8 and I can carry it down the street and I'll own a grandfather clock!
Just now I was looking for used Pyrex when I decided to read this article instead. I think I would drive myself mad at this place.
posted by Countess Elena at 3:44 PM on September 2, 2015
Just now I was looking for used Pyrex when I decided to read this article instead. I think I would drive myself mad at this place.
posted by Countess Elena at 3:44 PM on September 2, 2015
Seasoned buyers are skeptical of professional dealers. They're storytellers, for one, inclined to dress up a stoneware pitcher with some anodyne Civil War backstory to help ease a sale.
I sell collectibles on eBay, mostly cast iron, old tools, and old cameras. There's this phenomenon I encounter every. single. time I go to a flea market: I, a woman who looks young and who dresses like a 12-year-old boy (I am told), pick up an item and examine it. Let's say it's an old brace drill. It has a price tag of, say, $40. The (older, male) vendor tells me that the item is, like, 50 years old -- practically an antique! -- and that he got it from this old guy who took really good care of it and that it's worth quite a bit of money. I nod and act impressed, continuing to thoroughly examine the item. I ask if he'll take $3 for it, or maybe $5.
He is offended, but stops short of saying "You stupid girl," and instead reminds me that the price tag says $40 and that it's very old. I then tell him "Yes, I know. It was made sometime between 1945 and 1950, but then the company was bought out by Such-and-Such corporation and they discontinued this model when they came out with Model XYZ, which featured a much-improved thingy widget. Plus, because it was made after the beginning of WWII, it uses inferior metal and isn't worth as much as it would be if it had been made earlier or later."
I set it down and walk away and he sheepishly calls after me, "Okay, I'll take $5 for it."
It is the sweetest victory I know.
Everywhere I stopped, I saw at least two or three people pick something up, put it down, then pull out their phone and start speedily typing. Anyone looking to buy things of real value — mid-century teak, Prohibition-era bottleware, pop-culture kitsch — had a tiny computer in her pocket that was already cued up to open eBay and Etsy Vintage and AbeBooks, and double-check the going rate against what the seller was asking.
They're doing it wrong! You have to look the thing over, memorize any relevant part numbers, and then feign disinterest and walk away. Only when you're out of sight of the dealer do you pull out your phone and do the research. Then, if you want the thing, you circle back nonchalantly and look it over again. And then the conversation that I relayed above commences.
And to the Adams above: I am not your mother.
posted by mudpuppie at 3:51 PM on September 2, 2015 [16 favorites]
I sell collectibles on eBay, mostly cast iron, old tools, and old cameras. There's this phenomenon I encounter every. single. time I go to a flea market: I, a woman who looks young and who dresses like a 12-year-old boy (I am told), pick up an item and examine it. Let's say it's an old brace drill. It has a price tag of, say, $40. The (older, male) vendor tells me that the item is, like, 50 years old -- practically an antique! -- and that he got it from this old guy who took really good care of it and that it's worth quite a bit of money. I nod and act impressed, continuing to thoroughly examine the item. I ask if he'll take $3 for it, or maybe $5.
He is offended, but stops short of saying "You stupid girl," and instead reminds me that the price tag says $40 and that it's very old. I then tell him "Yes, I know. It was made sometime between 1945 and 1950, but then the company was bought out by Such-and-Such corporation and they discontinued this model when they came out with Model XYZ, which featured a much-improved thingy widget. Plus, because it was made after the beginning of WWII, it uses inferior metal and isn't worth as much as it would be if it had been made earlier or later."
I set it down and walk away and he sheepishly calls after me, "Okay, I'll take $5 for it."
It is the sweetest victory I know.
Everywhere I stopped, I saw at least two or three people pick something up, put it down, then pull out their phone and start speedily typing. Anyone looking to buy things of real value — mid-century teak, Prohibition-era bottleware, pop-culture kitsch — had a tiny computer in her pocket that was already cued up to open eBay and Etsy Vintage and AbeBooks, and double-check the going rate against what the seller was asking.
They're doing it wrong! You have to look the thing over, memorize any relevant part numbers, and then feign disinterest and walk away. Only when you're out of sight of the dealer do you pull out your phone and do the research. Then, if you want the thing, you circle back nonchalantly and look it over again. And then the conversation that I relayed above commences.
And to the Adams above: I am not your mother.
posted by mudpuppie at 3:51 PM on September 2, 2015 [16 favorites]
Australia has a pretty big garage sale culture and I keep meaning to go to them but they always start at 6 and I don't get up until well after 6 on the days they are on and I know that by the time I get there all the good stuff will be gone and I'll be left feigning interest over an old bowling ball inside an old golf bag next to a mixed pile of tent poles and probably a tomato box full of Reader's Digest collected editions and that fucking Paul Reiser book and I'll just feel like an asshole because literally everybody who lives in that house is sitting in a lawn chair watching me.
Also.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:55 PM on September 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
Also.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:55 PM on September 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
that fucking Paul Reiser book
IKR? Years of loving and owning books has taught me never to buy a humor book unless it's a) an ebook or b) something that you are absolutely sure you are going to adore for a long time. A collection of wacky essays by someone that a talk show host would describe as a "funnyman," or trend crapola, is just going to make you sad about a bunch of trees that died in vain. And you cannot give them away.
(But do buy the ebooks! Support your local hardworking ghostwriter of ephemera!)
posted by Countess Elena at 4:04 PM on September 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
IKR? Years of loving and owning books has taught me never to buy a humor book unless it's a) an ebook or b) something that you are absolutely sure you are going to adore for a long time. A collection of wacky essays by someone that a talk show host would describe as a "funnyman," or trend crapola, is just going to make you sad about a bunch of trees that died in vain. And you cannot give them away.
(But do buy the ebooks! Support your local hardworking ghostwriter of ephemera!)
posted by Countess Elena at 4:04 PM on September 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
The first 100 miles are just beanie babies.
man I really want to go to that. I love a good yard sale
posted by littlesq at 4:44 PM on September 2, 2015
man I really want to go to that. I love a good yard sale
posted by littlesq at 4:44 PM on September 2, 2015
If you're looking for the complete Backstreet Boys discography...
posted by davebush at 4:44 PM on September 2, 2015
posted by davebush at 4:44 PM on September 2, 2015
I bought Sports by Huey Lewis and the NEWS and Hunting High and Low by A-ha on cassette tapes at garage sales, years ago. In a way, it is the platonic ideal of how to own these albums.
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:55 PM on September 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:55 PM on September 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
That's not a yard sale, that's the Great Barrier Reef.
posted by tspae at 5:31 PM on September 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by tspae at 5:31 PM on September 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
There is a pleasure in ridding yourself of excess. I'm not saying that everybody should live like a monk but there is definitely a point at which owning more stuff seems to have a net negative effect. Own your things, don't let your things own you.
posted by LastOfHisKind at 6:21 PM on September 2, 2015
posted by LastOfHisKind at 6:21 PM on September 2, 2015
Yonge St?
posted by hwestiii at 6:38 PM on September 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by hwestiii at 6:38 PM on September 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
It's gotten to the point that I avoid these so I won't have to re-sell stuff again later in another yard sale. Or be haunted by guilt when I send it to a landfill. Or worry that my child will have to after I'm gone.
What I would like is the ability to really recycle stuff. Not just certain kinds of plastic, metal, glass, but everything. Old furniture (not antique, just old and worn-out). Shoes and purses. All kinds of metal, all kinds of plastic. Ugly pictures in broken frames.* I'd love to be able to feed them into a machine that broke them down and turned them back into something harmless, like dirt. Or use them as the raw material for new things, but with less waste and pollution.
Basically, I want Star Trek replicator technology to come along so we can get rid of all this crap (and most of it is crap) and also so we can empty the landfills.
*I know that you can recycle many/most of these things, one way or another, or at least give them to people who claim to recycle them. But I also know a lot of it ends up in the third world, or a different landfill, or being burned, instead of truly recycled.
posted by emjaybee at 6:38 PM on September 2, 2015
What I would like is the ability to really recycle stuff. Not just certain kinds of plastic, metal, glass, but everything. Old furniture (not antique, just old and worn-out). Shoes and purses. All kinds of metal, all kinds of plastic. Ugly pictures in broken frames.* I'd love to be able to feed them into a machine that broke them down and turned them back into something harmless, like dirt. Or use them as the raw material for new things, but with less waste and pollution.
Basically, I want Star Trek replicator technology to come along so we can get rid of all this crap (and most of it is crap) and also so we can empty the landfills.
*I know that you can recycle many/most of these things, one way or another, or at least give them to people who claim to recycle them. But I also know a lot of it ends up in the third world, or a different landfill, or being burned, instead of truly recycled.
posted by emjaybee at 6:38 PM on September 2, 2015
If you're willing to travel to the Lake George area in New York, you might want to check out the "Warrensburg Garage Sale," also billed as the worlds largest. It's not 700 miles, but it's pretty big.
posted by Marky at 7:06 PM on September 2, 2015
posted by Marky at 7:06 PM on September 2, 2015
700 miles? that's 1,232,000 yards!
sorry
posted by yeolcoatl at 8:14 PM on September 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
sorry
posted by yeolcoatl at 8:14 PM on September 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
Shopping a 700-mile yard sale would be like swimming over the Mariana Trench. At that scale, it really doesn't matter how big it is.
Pittsburgh, which is divided into a lot of small and distinct neighborhoods, has a lot of annual, neighborhood-wide yard sales. The best ones, often with several dozen homes participating, are in dense, affluent neighborhoods and attract food trucks and shoppers numbering into the thousands. Sometimes there's beer. Heavy traffic, narrow streets and very limited parking make driving through impractical; you've got to walk. On a nice day the competition makes really great deals difficult to get, but it's a fun way to kill a weekend morning.
posted by jon1270 at 5:15 AM on September 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
Pittsburgh, which is divided into a lot of small and distinct neighborhoods, has a lot of annual, neighborhood-wide yard sales. The best ones, often with several dozen homes participating, are in dense, affluent neighborhoods and attract food trucks and shoppers numbering into the thousands. Sometimes there's beer. Heavy traffic, narrow streets and very limited parking make driving through impractical; you've got to walk. On a nice day the competition makes really great deals difficult to get, but it's a fun way to kill a weekend morning.
posted by jon1270 at 5:15 AM on September 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
My neighborhood has an annual yard sale that is about 1 mile long. I get a serious headache by the end, and everything begins to look the same.
But, god, I want to go to this so badly.
posted by ElleElle at 12:39 PM on September 3, 2015
But, god, I want to go to this so badly.
posted by ElleElle at 12:39 PM on September 3, 2015
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