1/19/2023 0 Comments Garagesale http ebayBut he keeps doing it because he loves it. He doesn’t sell a lot even during the best of times, but the last few months have been even harder. We talked about the economy, and he told me business has been rough lately. He doesn’t actually make the mechanisms, but he creates artistic clockfaces. I thought of a conversation I’d had earlier in the evening with one of the artists. If you do it just for the money, there’s a good chance you won’t stick with it because you’ll discover you don’t like it.” You have to take other stuff into consideration. He says that you can’t do it for the money, though. “A friend of mine is always trying to convince others to start side businesses. But she doesn’t care because she had a blast garage-saling for three days. There’s a lot of time my mom buys stuff and gets nothing. “She’d do the garage sales even if it wasn’t a way to earn extra money. “The thing is, my mom loves this,” Jonathan said. They may be mad, but they’re happy to take her money.” Love It or Leave It A lot of people turn her away, but many don’t. “Sure, they get mad, but she doesn’t care. “When Kris and I hold sales, it drives us crazy when people show up early.” She’ll read about a sale in the paper, and she’ll be there early, trying to get the best deals.” She’s one of those who’s knocking on doors at 7am. He paused for a moment and then added, “My mom has no shame. Some are just collectors, but others are like my mom, who will just turn around and sell the stuff for a profit on eBay.” He somehow knew every single hard-to-find or expensive disc that I’d accumulated over the past decade. Eventually, he came up and tried to talk me down on prices, but I wouldn’t do it. Kris told me he’d been at it for about an hour. I came home from work, and Kris pointed out a guy rummaging through my compact discs. “I remember once we were having a garage sale. They know one thing really well, and they hunt at garage sales until they find it.” There’s a group of them that go around from sale to sale. “Your mother and your aunt have competitors?” I asked. It sold for two grand!” Competitive Business Her son told her to do it, but she didn’t. She knew it was worth more, but she couldn’t bring herself to buy it. “My aunt once found a nice set of luggage marked at $100. “That happens all of the time,” Jonathan said. There were a couple of thousand dollars worth of comics there!” I was going to lie to him and say they were for my non-existent kid. I thought about making an offer of $100 or $200 for the entire lot. He wanted $5 a piece for them, which was more than fair. Usually garage sale comic books are junk, but this guy had a bunch of great stuff from the late 1960s. This guy had a couple of boxes of comic books. “A friend called to tell me about a nearby garage sale. “That reminds me of something that happened a few years ago,” I said. If you find a great value, you don’t want to appear over-eager.” Sometimes you have to play dumb, you know. People don’t know what they have, so if you’re educated about what certain things go for, you can get some great deals. “A monkey perfume bottle?” I asked, completely baffled. “Recently, my mom bought a monkey perfume bottle for ten bucks. They buy them, take them home, and auction them on eBay. They each have certain things they know a lot about, and so they go from garage sale to garage sale, searching for hidden treasures. “She shops at garage sales,” Jonathan said. So, she’s found a way to generate extra cash that she saves just so she can off to Europe - to France or to Italy. “She likes to travel, but it’s not something she could normally afford to do. “My mother makes money on eBay,” Jonathan said. “Let me tell you how my mother earns extra money.” Garage Sale Gold I’ve been picking the brains of these artists, hoping to find a story, but I haven’t found one yet.” “That’s the topic for the podcast I’m doing Monday afternoon, and I think it would be fun to also post an article related to the subject. “Well, I’d like to write about earning extra money,” I said. “What are you going to write about tomorrow?” he said. Later in the evening, I spent some time chatting with my friend Jonathan. I don’t know many artists, so it was fascinating to listen to their stories, especially about the economics of selling art during a recession. On Saturday night, I attended a party with some of my former high-school classmates.
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