By Rodney Southern
Yard sales can be a great way to save money on things that you need or want. You can also waste a lot of money at yard sales if you don’t follow some very simple yard sale shopping tips to get the most for your money.
Haggle
Half the fun of going to yard sales is that you get to haggle for what you want. People are selling these items because they want them out of their house. Yes, they want to make money as well, but the one thing they don’t want to do is put those items back in the house.
Once you get used to haggling, it’s a fun experience. It doesn’t take long at all to learn how low of an amount to offer. The worst they will do is stick with their original price.
Avoid Supplying Your Own Yard Sale
A great deal is only a great deal if you are going to use the item you are buying. Yard sales are fantastic places to obtain collectibles, but they are also gathering places for junk. If it won’t benefit you in the near future, don’t buy it. Otherwise you are just stocking up for your own yard sale.
Know What You Are Looking For
If you need something, then look for it at yard sales. Know what you are looking for and stop at that. Any other approach means you will get sucked into buying things that you don’t really want or need.
Be Friendly
For the most part, people are just looking to get rid of items they aren’t using. While they hope to make a bit of cash, they are also apt to give you a great deal if you are friendly and personable. Remember, they really don’t want to pack this stuff up for next year’s yard sale.
Barter
As you talk with the people running the yard sale, don’t be afraid to barter your services or something you have in return for something they are selling. This is especially true if you have some skill in an area that you can see needs addressed, like roofing.
Make Sure Electronics and Other Electric Items Work
There is nothing like getting a great deal on an item only to bring it home and find out it doesn’t work. If you can’t test the item at the yard sale, it may not be a good idea to buy it. For this reason, you may want to keep several batteries in your car to use on items you are looking to buy. Electrical items can be plugged in. If the people hosting the yard sale don’t want to plug it in then it probably doesn’t work.
Remember that you are buying used items. Put your own skills to work to create some great yard sale tips of your own. For example, if you are a master at getting stains out of clothes, start buying clothes at yard sales and cleaning them up for use by your family or for arts and crafts projects.
Rodney Southern is a long time content writer specializing in a wide array of niches both online and in print. His work has been featured on sites such as Yahoo.com, The Sporting News and numerous others over an eleven plus year career. He also runs his own website on diabetes called Dashing Diabetes. He was the National Call for Content Winner for 2008. Southern resides in Greensboro, NC with his wife, Julie, and identical twin daughters, Valerie and Brooke.
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Davey Pockets says
Hey there, great tips for yard sales. Have definitely used your haggle method many times. One of my favorite things to do is get them to come down in price then ask if they will meet in the middle. Hard for a seller of house clutter to turn down someone meeting in the middle. The trick is to wait until after they are already down from original price then ask! Lol good luck with the blog and finding great deals!
Davey Pockets