During those peak summer months, local garage “salers” have an array of options that covers the entire town, from estate sales in Mansion Heights to yard sales on the Northside.
There's enough variety in Missoula to keep even the most frequent garage-hoppers happy, said Theresa Johnson, who spends at least two Saturdays a month scouring the city for one-of-a-kind finds and bargains and will also make unplanned stops for random signs.
“There's that saying: One man's trash is another man's treasure,” Johnson said recently while holding a Tigger toothbrush holder at a garage sale a few blocks west of Reserve Street. “You never know what you're going to find.”
For example, she recently picked up an antique coffee pot with a cowboy logo on it for $7.
“I thought, if I ever go on ‘Antiques Roadshow' and find out it's worth thousands of dollars, I'll be pretty happy,” she said. “I've never seen another one like it.”
In the meantime, she added, it looks pretty good sitting on her kitchen table.
Heather Deschamps has also found her share of unique treasures. In fact, some of them were up for grabs at her moving sale in Mansion Heights.
“She's the queen of not only having them, but going to them, too,” said her niece, Colleen Rogers, who was helping out at the June sale and often spends her Saturdays combing the local sales with her aunt.
For her part, Deschamps always heads out expecting a bargain, she said, “and I always get one.”
Fridays are usually the best days for deals, said Deschamps, who estimates she's been hitting the sales and hosting her own for more than 20 years. While the cut-rate deals usually come at the end of a sale on Sunday afternoon, by then all the best items are gone, she explained.
At her own sale, Deschamps almost immediately sold her best and most unusual items, including a big-screen TV and a statue of a standing dalmatian.
“I don't want to pack it up,” she explained.
She is moving to Texas, and selling off all the knickknacks and miscellaneous things she doesn't want to take with her. The cash from the garage sale, she said, would also help cover her moving expenses.
At previous garage sales, she's made “anywhere from $100 to $500” in profit, she said.
The trick to pocketing more profit at a garage sale is to keep costs as low as possible, said Amy Thompson.
While most people are tempted to make more money by pricing their items higher, all that does is keep the items from being sold, Thompson said. If people see that your prices are reasonable and you're willing to barter, they'll often buy much more than they would have otherwise - and spend more in the process.
At Thompson's multifamily garage sale, for instance, a set of wheels worth $1,000 was priced at $200 and sold for $100.
“If you want to sell it, keep the prices low,” Thompson said.
And she is keen, she explained, to sell as much as possible. How else was she going to get rid of four Lean Mean Fat-Grilling Machines, two vacuums, a box of dishes, two dozen records and a collectible Britney Spears bear?
Her startup costs were minimal, she added. She borrowed several folding tables, bought a $32 ad in the newspaper and spent an additional $3 on stickers and signs, she said.
“And I believe we've made probably over $300,” Thompson said. “I'll bet we've had probably more than 100 customers today.”
Setting up a garage sale, she said, is mostly an investment in time. She estimates she spent at least six hours setting the whole thing up, plus two eight-hour days attending the actual sale, and another couple of hours putting everything away afterward.
Garage sales are more work than you may think, said Jacque Jurenic and Hunter Andrews, who were attending a table facing the alley behind a house in the University Area.
Their sale was relatively small, but it still required at least four hours of prep time, they said. And they weren't hoping to make a lot of money.
Their goal, Andrews added, was “spring cleaning,” and everything was accordingly priced to sell.
“It's junk, so I just want to get rid of it, because whatever I don't sell I'm just going to give to Goodwill,” said Jurenic, who has lived in the house for five years.
Garage sales are such an enticingly low-cost way to clear out unwanted inventory, even some businesses will
try them.
The employees at Heinrich Floral and A to Z Personnel, for example, decided to put together a one-day “garage” sale in the lot outside their shared building on Southwest Higgins Avenue.
At least half a dozen of them rooted through their personal belongings for items to contribute, and they also cleared out the extra inventory that had been gathering dust in the basement of the business, said Brianne McAllister, manager of Heinrich Floral.
“We all have collections of stuff at our houses and it was an easier location,” McAllister said, pointing out that the business offers more visibility and sees more traffic than any of their individual homes.
They didn't even need to make any signs, she added. They just used the business's notice board.
The sale brought in maybe a couple hundred dollars, she said, but they weren't expecting to make a lot of money. More than anything, McAllister said, they were just trying to free up some extra space on their shelves.
“Everything,” she said, “is priced to sell.”
Coming soonFor this story and others about the region's summer economy, pick up the July issue of Western Montana InBusiness Monthly.
Reporter Tyler Christensen can be reached at 523-5215 or at tyler.christensen@lee.net.
|
 |
 |
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)