Planning a good Rummaging trip:
If you want the good stuff, get out there early! We have never experienced a sale that opens later than 10am on a Saturday – and that is considered a very late start (we hit these late ones on our way home!) You have to plan for starts as early as 7:00am. We prepare the night ahead for the greatest success.
We start at craigslist to find sales that look good to us by searching in our city for “rummage sale” and “garage sale.” We then use googlemaps (yahoo maps, and mapquest work too!) to coordinate our entire route of sale hopping so there is no confusion about where to head next. We can also use our route to plan alternate stops—if things start going downhill, we can go get a breakfast snack, walk through a good park, or stop at Target.
We make sure we have cash on hand (including $1 bills) as most sales won’t accept checks or credit cards. Cash makes it easier to haggle, too. It’s hard to convince someone to sell you their $5 bookshelf for $3 when you are standing there with a fiver in your hand.
It is our experience that church rummage sales are notorious for advertising a specific start time for the sale but actually opening their doors at least ½ hour ahead of time. Garage sales and flea markets seem to react the least kindly to early arrivals. Many ads for garage sales specify “No Early Birds!” That said, we highly recommend that you arrive right on time (doors open) for the best selections. We’ve seen rummage sales with only bits and pieces remaining a ½ hour after the start of the sale.
The flip side is that you can also plan to arrive late for the best prices. People are most willing to negotiate (we’ll discuss pricing and haggling in a later post) as the sale is winding down. And the ‘Free” box tends to grow as the sale winds down. We think of Grandma, who drove a hard bargain at a garage sale: “If you won’t meet my price, you can just carry that back to your basement.”
But remember that not everything is a bargain. Even things in the Free Box aren’t worth it if those items just add to your junk pile.