Hello everyone and welcome to America under the Microscope advanced level, hi Lulu.
Hi James. So last time we were talking about garage sales and you were saying that a lot of the things are really, really cheap. They're like a dollar or a few dollars.
Sure sure.
But is it possible that you can actually find something that's truly valuable, that just kind of the original owner they did not realize how valuable they are?
Oh you mean finding buried treasure?
Oh yeah.
Absolutely! In fact this is one of the reasons why some people like to go to these yard sales and garage sales because they're trying to find these valuable items that the owners may not realize are valuable.
Like antiques.
Yeah antiques, like there are certain antiques furniture people might have a hundred years old or so that they could maybe repair and then resell for a much higher value.
Yeah, especially for example, if it's estate sale, like we talked about last time if it's someone else' s stuff, you don't really know whether it is valuable or not. Some of the old furniture they may look like piece of rubbish to you, but it might actually be a period piece.
But it's not just limited to furniture. Some people are scouring for like music albums, rare music albums, rare books, things like that, even rare video games that very few people have. They are hunting for all kinds of buried treasure that you can find in garage sales.
So when I was in the UK, there were so many TV shows about old things, just old things that you keep generally in your attic or in your garage. And then they have this kind of things almost like an antique roadshow and then they get experts in and all these people would bring their old stuff out that they found, perhaps at a garage sale.
Yeah, might like that TV show.
All right. So there are TV shows like that.
Yeah. And they're usually on the weekends. I wanna say they're super popular, but they do have a strong following. So yeah people like to, you know, take their products into this to get them appraised and they don't always sell them at the road shows though. Some people just want to know whether they have something valuable or not.
So I'm assuming there are people who actually do this quite regularly or even professionally going through garage sales, yard sales and trying to find things.
Well, there are some people who actually run antique stores and they do sometimes do a scour or yard sales to find these items that they could sell in their shops because they may be more aware of what the real value is, so they can turn a nice profit on them. Nowadays also people do it on the Internet, so they might find things on the yard sale then resell on eBay for a much higher price, make some money that way.
I guess if you find buried treasure you don't tell the owner. You just buy the …
That gives you a weak negotiating again.
Just pay the sticker price. And then, are there any tips about going to these garage sales?
Yes. One of the biggest tips for going to garage sales is show up early. All the good stuff will be sold very fast. So usually on their advertisements they'll have a time when they're gonna start, something like weekend it might be 8 am or 9 am, yeah. Be there early because the high popular items like furniture or things with any real value, they're gonna be gone. They will sell them off real quick. And bring a truck, if you have so much to buy, pick up a truck; you would wanna be able to get the stuff.
Yeah, if you're buying certain pieces of furniture. Then do they always have price tags or do you have actually have to just ask the owner?
Actually, a lot of do color coding, so they'll put like circle stickers on like a red, blue, green, purple and so on like this and then they'll have like just a pricing chart. Yellow sticker is a dollar, red sticker is five dollars, blue sticker is ten dollars and so on and so on.
I really don't want to be bothered with pricing every item.
That happens a lot. They might just have a table. It's like that's a dollar table, anything for that it is a dollar.
But by the end of the day for sure they are certain things, certain items that nobody want to buy anyways. So what do they do with the rest? Do they throw them away or take them back into the garage?
They usually just get them donated to second hand stores. So there are places that will accept donation and they'll give them off there because if you donate stuff you can sometimes get a receipt that you can use for tax deduction purposes, and then those secondhand stores will either try to sell them or they will recycle them or …
Like charity shops, aren't they?

Yeah, they are, but we just call them second hand stores.
I guess it's, these kind of garage sales would be a good opportunity for, let's say, penniless students.
Oh, they're fantastic for students. I love them as a student because when you're a student, for the most part, money is tight and there are things you need because a lot of Americans don't live in dormitories. They rent a room in a house, so they need furniture, they need stuff. And in college towns, yard sales, garage sales are common because students come and go. They don't want to keep all their stuff, they want money. So it's very easy for students to go to many college towns to you know, find garage sales to buy some pieces of furniture, buy your chair. You can buy sofa, you can buy TVs, you can buy all kinds of things.
Can you also buy books? As a student, obviously you need lots of books.
Books if you just want general books for reading and stuff, yes, textbooks, not so much because they keep coming out with new editions of textbooks. And if you buy an old textbook, it might not be usable in the class.
Oh, so this is very different because in China sometimes I think one of the most frequently seen items in one of those sales is these textbooks in university towns or on university campuses.
I mean, I like used textbooks because someone else already did all the work. It's like oh, they took notes for me, how nice.
Great. Yeah. But one thing though, a lot of these garage sales or yard sales are based on houses. When you live in an apartment what do you do? You don't have a yard, you don't have garage.
Right, they do have sales like this in apartment communities, but usually it'll be kind of a community event, so they'll use a community center and then they'll do a community wide garage sale type thing. So each family might get a spot in the center and they can sell or trade in this way.
That sounds like a good idea actually, so to make it into a real community event.
Right.
Um so to wrap this episode up, let's talk about bargaining because if you ever have the opportunity to go to your garage sale yard sale, how do you bargain? Can we just say, ten dollars? Too expensive!
Being a very aggressive in these ways, you're most likely not to get any kind of benefit from it. If you say it's like, ten dollars that's too expensive, then the owner kind of like oh that's too bad. So we don't want to use phrases like oh that's too expensive, but we will use things, we will be kind of direct about it, but in a more polite way, we’ll say things like ten dollars? I could give you five dollars for it or things like if I buy these together, could you go down a little bit?
So basically offering something, offering something, it's like um basically can you make a concession, a compromise.
Yeah, a lot of things they will be willing to go down. OK. You don't want to push too hard because most Americans in this situation if you push too hard, they're just going to shut you down and just simply say no, I'll give you a hard no.
Yeah, but do people usually set a ridiculously high price at a garage sale anyway?
From time to time, it does happen. For several reasons, first one is owners might overvalue the things that they're selling.
Okay.
So like for example, maybe the adult book they're selling and they sell it for a hundred dollars, and you realize, in this day and age you just go on to the Internet and like, I found this book on the eBay, same book and quality, ten dollars. Yeah. You're way over charging for that. Secondly is sometimes they are just greedy. They want to make as much money as possible. So they just marked the prices higher.
So I guess it's, it's better to have a general idea of what everything is worth really and then bargain on that, on the basis of that.
Yeah and don't go down too far because they're gonna just say no. Just try to shave off maybe a dollar or two if you can.
I mean if it's only five dollars, shaving off one dollar or two is already like twenty …
That's twenty percent discount right there.
Exactly, so if they actually do say no, going more aggressive is not gonna help your case.
They might ask you to leave.
So, if you're ever in the United States, if you ever go to garage sales, these are some of the bargaining tips that you can use. So hopefully you enjoy today's episode. And if you have anything to say, if you have ever been in this kind of situations in any country, let us know in the comment section, we would really appreciate your comments and your experiences. We'll see you next time.
Bye everyone.
Bye.

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