Photos From the Fall Garage Sale in Texarkana

The fall garage sale has come and gone for 2016. It was my first time as a vendor at the event. I learned a few lessons and made a few sales that I didn't expect.

People were lined up from the door to the parking lot waiting to get in to shop. I was at the end of one of the rows of booths on the arena floor so shoppers could either turn to the left or right to find more booths to shop. Around noon, an announcement was made that we had one more hour to go and a lady standing at my booth asked what that meant so I told her the sale ended at 1PM. She quickly realized that there was no way to make it through all of the booths in an hour's time.

Lesson number one, get to the sale early.

I loved the fact that we could set up the day before. I made a lot of deals from the get-go. I sold old bikes and trikes, clothes and a bunch of Beanie Babies. The one thing I desperately wanted to sell but didn’t was the leather loveseat that I am allergic to. I marked it down from my original asking price then marked it down again before the end of the sale. If I didn’t sell it, I wasn’t sure how I was going to get it out of there because it came in a truck which I didn’t have access to when we were packing up. Furniture has horrible resale value but I wasn’t going to just give it away so when it didn’t sell, I had to pack up smart. Check out my picture below. Loading the trailer took two-and-a-half hours but I got it all piled on.

Lesson number two, have a backup plan for items that don't sell.

I had big plans for all the money I was going to make and all of the stuff I was going to get rid of but there was one flaw in my plan, I was the only one doing it. I suggest having help. A buddy system will keep the evil procrastination bug at bay.

Lesson number three, have people to help with the preparations and set up, and at least one good sales type friend on the day of the event to push your wares on shoppers.

I sold some items that I didn't really expect to sell during the event but they looked good in my booth so I set them up anyway. I took photos of my stuff and posted them online to get people to come out to my booth and it worked. I sold one of the items that I didn't think I would.

Lesson number four, don't assume to know what will and what won't sell.

Below are photos taken by our digital managing editor of items at the garage sale. I’m happy I wasn’t the one in charge of walking around and taking these pictures or I would have spent a lot of money instead of selling items to make money.