I have recently begun going to yard sales again on Saturday mornings, after giving it up for several years when I realized I already had too much stuff.  I still don’t need any more stuff, but there’s nothing much going on at my house at 8 a.m. on a Saturday, so lately I’ve been checking the garage sale listings in my morning paper, and if there is something nearby and it sounds interesting, I’ll grab some dollar bills and quarters, pull on my coat, and head out to peruse someone else’s superfluous trash and treasures.

Yard sales almost always look a lot better in your mind before you actually pull up in front of someone’s house, with its cardboard sign sloppily taped to the mailbox, and maybe a couple of halfhearted balloons rapidly deflating in the cool morning air. Sometimes, before you even step out of your car, you just know its going to be a crappy yard sale. You’ve seen the kind I mean: a folding table holding a group of chipped coffee mugs, souvenir glasses from Panama Beach, old craft projects someone’s child made out of popsicle sticks, and an old toaster, surrounded by a rack of clothing from the seventies, old mini-blinds, a box of Harlequin romance novels, and a couple pieces of lumpy furniture even the Salvation Army would reject.

But even though this describes most of the garage sales I have attended recently, hope springs eternal in the human heart. I guess it’s kind of like fishing. You might sit out on the lake for hours without a bite, but you still wait in anticipation of that huge bass grabbing your bait and almost pulling you out of the boat. And yard sailers are perpetually energized by the dream of a Big Score: the ’52 telecaster that someone has had in their attic since Billy died in Vietnam; the first edition signed by Ernest Hemingway at the bottom of a box of musty books; the long-forgotten Grandma Moses folk art painting; or a box of 1950’s era baseball cards that someone’s mom forgot to throw away.

   But chances are pretty slim that a rank amateur like myself would ever find one of those things. By the time I arrive at a sale, perhaps just five minutes after the posted starting time, most of the “good stuff” has already been snapped up by professionals. These are folks that show up in junky looking trucks with tools and household items already piled in the back, a good 45 minutes before a sale is advertised to begin. While the yard sale family is blearily chugging their coffee and trying to bring their junk out to the driveway, the pro’s will shout out low-ball offers as each new item emerges. They don’t care about being perceived as annoying or rude—they’ve got plenty of other sales to get to. 

Then, they might show up later in the day and make really low offers on remaining stuff, which the homeowners will accept just to get it out of there. The relatively valuable items will be resold on Ebay or Craigslist, and the dross will show up in a flea market stall or one of those yard sales that are held every week. (That must drive the re-sellers’ neighbors crazy!) 

So anyway, I hardly ever buy anything at yard sales. I guess it’s just a chance to get out of the house and gaze at my neighbor’s tawdry discards, instead of cleaning the bathrooms like my wife asked me to do. But I did get lucky last week—I was driving by a church that was having a big sale in the parking lot, and someone had donated about ten boxes of very new-looking novels, in the detective and thriller genres that I enjoy. I picked up about two dozen books for a quarter apiece. 

Score!