Bex Scott shares her garage sale adventures, as both a buyer and a seller, in this episode. Garage sales can offer up vintage treasures among all the worthless items, and visiting the sales can require a bit of a strong mindset for negotiating, as Bex learned, and can be intimidating at times. But she also describes how the fun is not just in finding the valuable pieces but in meeting the people around them.
Bex Scott shares her garage sale adventures, as both a buyer and a seller, in this episode. Garage sales can offer up vintage treasures among all the worthless items, and visiting the sales can require a bit of a strong mindset for negotiating, as Bex learned, and can be intimidating at times. But she also describes how the fun is not just in finding the valuable pieces but in meeting the people around them.
Bex has fond memories of visiting garage sales with her mom growing up, so she tries to take her oldest son with her when she visits the sales now. Some of the garage sales she visited throughout the summer offered up beautiful vintage Christmas decorations and the hidden gems of Pyrex sold cheap because it wasn’t able to be cleaned (Bex knows better). Other sales visited offered only eccentric encounters with the people running the sales and a learning curve in bartering. Bex then recounts what she learned from hosting her own garage sale and encourages collectors to be prepared when visiting to enjoy the finds and strangeness alike.
Resources discussed in this episode:
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Transcript
Bex Scott: [00:00:02] Hey everybody, it's Bex Scott and welcome to the Pyrex with Bex podcast where, you guessed it, I talk about vintage Pyrex, but also all things vintage housewares. I'll take you on my latest thrifting adventures, talk about reselling, chat with other enthusiasts about their collections, and learn about a bunch of really awesome items from the past. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you love listening to podcasts so you don't miss a beat.
Bex Scott: [00:00:31] Hey, everybody, this is Bex Scott, and you're listening to the Pyrex with Bex podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in. So today I thought I would talk a little bit about garage sales, and I know that garage sales are not for everyone, but I've always loved them. And sadly, garage sale season is fully over here in Canada. We're located where it's starting to get rainy and a little bit chilly, and really not a lot of people, unless you're super brave, are deciding to have garage sales anymore. And I'm always jealous when I hear of people in the States or the warmer climates that can have a garage sale all year round. And this is something that I never really thought about before, but they can have a garage sale any weekend they want as long as the weather cooperates. And we definitely can't do that with all of the snow and the cold weather that we get here. So growing up, my parents would frequently have garage sales on the weekends. We'd set up our clothes and toys and get up super early because we were so excited. And I remember putting out my toys, people coming up and saying, oh, could I buy this? Can you give me change? And it just being a really great memory and then at the end, counting all our money and looking back at all the hard work that we put into these sales to come out with, I don't even know how much, an extra $30 or $40 as a kid, which was really fun.
Bex Scott: [00:01:54] So as I grew up, it changed into me going to other people's garage sales with my mom. We would look through the newspaper every week and circle the ones that were close to us, and pack up the car and go driving around to find these sales. And at that time, it was mostly me buying toys and Barbies and Polly Pockets and all of that kind of fun stuff as a young girl. And the tables really turned now with what I'm looking for as a vintage collector and a reseller. We live just outside of a small town in Alberta, where the population is around 8000 people. So it's not the smallest, but it is a lot smaller than what I came from growing up as a city girl. So I would say that a decent portion of the population is older here, and I did manage to make it out to some garage sales this summer. It was our first summer here, so trying to get a little bit of a lay of the land and see what the town is like, and it really didn't disappoint in terms of what is able to pick up and also some of the stories that I came out of these sales with.
Bex Scott: [00:03:04] So the first sale that I went to, and I try to take our oldest son with me when I go, he's 13 and he loves garage sales. He doesn't necessarily love vintage, but he does love coming with me and tagging along and seeing what we can find. So the first sale we went to was a mother/daughter sale. Both of them were selling off a whole bunch of vintage items that I'm sure were her parents'. Everything was priced really well and I have to give it to them, because when you walked in, you saw this legend with all these color coded sticky dots, and the dots corresponded with the items that they were selling, which worked really well. And I don't think there was anything that was over $5. So this was super ideal for a garage sale. So we're walking around and the first thing that my son sees is this super old vintage mop and broom set. And we have a young daughter as well, and he was hell bent on buying this set so that we could teach her how to clean. So that was the first item we got, and I guess coming up will be once she's old enough, she'll be learning how to clean the house with this little vintage set.
Bex Scott: [00:04:14] Next up, I don't know why, but I always seem to find lasagna pans. They're attracted to me for some reason. So I found a Verdi 933 lasagna pan for $3, and something that I thought was that I keep finding, I guess, out in the wild and at these sales is that people will use their Pyrex, but they won't clean them. I don't know if it's that they don't know how to properly clean them, or that they're just too lazy. I'm not sure, but a huge majority of these casserole dishes that I find have baked on grease, have markings from where the tin foil was resting on them, and they're put out for sale at super low prices. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that they think that they can't be fixed. So I love grabbing these dishes and using oven cleaner and peak to really give them a new life and to clean them up, and most of them end up looking brand new in the end. Things that I found were probably my favorite at this garage sale, and if you know me, you know that I love Christmas, so I found some awesome vintage Christmas items. The first one was called a Bubbling Electric Christmas Lamp, and a bunch of you will probably remember the little bubbling candlesticks that you could get for your tree that you just screwed into the light bulb base, and there's liquid in them, and the bubbles went up and down.
Bex Scott: [00:05:45] And this is an actual lamp that has one of them in it. It looks like one of the vintage oil lamps, but there's a little bubbling Christmas light inside, and it has holly berries in the bottom and a nice gold stand. So I thought that was pretty cool, because I remember having the bubbling lights on our tree and being a little kid and touching them and remembering them being really warm when you touch them and thinking, now, thinking back on that, I'm sure these ones were fine to put on the tree. But I've come across a lot of vintage Christmas lights that were wrapped in paper or had little paper lanterns, or were definitely now probably considered a huge fire hazard, but really beautifully designed and just pretty for trees and decorating. The next thing I found was an Alpine Village set of little lights on a string by Universal Lights, and it says, contains a set of ten miniature lights with eight cottages and a cathedral. And these are super cute. They're red, yellow, green, blue and white, and I'm really looking forward to setting them up this Christmas.
Bex Scott: [00:06:59] Okay, so next we went to another sale. Now this one I had reservations about going to. It was one of those sales that when you look up online, this one was on marketplace, and the pictures show a massive amount of could be junk, could be really great treasures, but either way, we went to it and we pulled up and we walked into the back and there was this massive detached garage, and they opened up the garage door and it was stuffed full to the brim from floor to ceiling, with what looked like could have been a liquidated antique store or just collections of things from over the years. And we looked around a little bit. There was a little old man that lived there. He came out and he started following us around. We went to the back of the garage sale, where they had a bunch of china cabinets set up, and the man came over, and this was really funny, he starts telling my son that he should be buying some of these super ancient looking rum bottles and booze bottles. And our son was looking at me like, what do I do? I don't know what to do. I don't need these bottles. But this man was convinced that they were meant for him and that he would really love to have them in his collection. Next up, I ended up getting myself into the world's most awkward price conversation, and it was over a lamp that I didn't necessarily even need. It was an old gold painted lamp with glass shades. Nothing too exciting, but I was thinking of maybe putting it in my daughter's room. So he pulls it off the shelf and there's a little sticky price tag on it that says $15. And he looks at me and he says, well, that was priced years ago, so make me an offer.
Bex Scott: [00:08:45] So I'm standing there thinking that he meant that it was so long ago that the price didn't make sense anymore, and that I could go lower because it really wasn't anything special. So I - side note, I hate negotiating, I'm the world's most passive person and talking about money makes me so uncomfortable - so I'm standing there fidgeting, holding my breath and I say, okay, $10. And he looks at me like he was the most offended he's ever been and says, this is very old, very old, you can't give me just $10. So then I panic and go the other way and I say $30. He still wasn't happy. So I tried backtracking and at this point I don't know what I'm doing. So I said to him, please suggest me a price. And this whole time his lovely wife was listening in and standing there drinking her coffee, obviously thinking this was hilarious and entertaining for her, and she says something to him and ends up just giving me the lamp for $15, which was on the sticker to begin with. But at this point, I want to get out of there because I'm uncomfortable. I feel bad for low balling him. And so he takes the lamp from me and he says, no, no, no, you have to go in. You have to keep looking. So we go back into the garage and I end up going into where the china cabinets were again, because his wife said there might be some Pyrex back there.
Bex Scott: [00:10:19] Realizing that there wasn't, we turn around and he's there, standing, blocking the only exit out of this garage and pointing at things, just saying how old and nice they were, how we should take them. And I'm starting to panic because we can't get out and he's not making any move to leave. I think me and my son, we ended up standing there for a good, awkward five minutes until he decided to move on and find something else in the garage or go talk to somebody else. But I'm obviously not capable of going to garage sales without adult supervision because this one, I have to say, was a little bit stressful. But that didn't stop us from going to a few more that day. Our next stop was at an elderly couple's house where it looked like they were downsizing. This sale, I have to say, started off strong. We walked in and right as we started looking around, everyone in the garage stopped and someone brought out a birthday cake with lit candles. So we're standing there awkward and everybody starts singing around us, so we decide the only thing we can do is to join in. We start singing Happy Birthday to a random man in this garage, and it ended up being kind of the highlight of our day. But moving on to some of the things that we found there, I wanted to bring up this set of bowls that I found because, as you know, I'm a Pyrex lover, but I found a set of Hazel-Atlas bowls that were pretty cool.
Bex Scott: [00:11:49] So if you haven't heard of Hazel-Atlas spaghetti string bowls, now, I don't know if that's the correct term for them, but this is what I found when I googled them. These bowls were four little serving bowls and a large salad bowl, and the ones that I found were white milk glass with a yellow gold spaghetti string design, which I believe is called Hazel-Atlas spaghetti string butterscotch. And it looked like someone had taken paint and drizzled it all over the bowls. And the best part was the woman comes over and she looks at me and she says, I was given these bowls for my wedding 60 years ago, and they've never seen the light of day. And this is what makes garage saleing so fun, is that you actually get the back stories from people on who gave them these items, why they have them, why they're getting rid of them. And that makes it even more special when you add them to your collection. So to finish off, I thought I would tell you a little bit about the garage sale that I decided to have over the summer.
Bex Scott: [00:12:54] So during the pandemic, I had gone a little bit crazy with my collecting, and I ended up with around 60 banker's boxes of vintage items. And these items started with me at a whole other house. I started collecting, and they just kept adding up and adding up and I was making sales, so that's great. But at this point, my Poshmark and my Marketplace sales had slowed down, and I was honestly tired of seeing it hanging around, and some of these items were things that I had thought would sell and hadn't yet. And a large portion of it was actually Pyrex. Pyrex dishes that I started collecting, thought I was going to continue with that pattern, and then kind of went on to the next one and abandoned it. So I had a ton of vintage Pyrex. I had mugs, figurines, a whole bunch of brass. I think I should do a whole episode on brass, because my husband hates it so much that I try to keep it out of the house. The other day I was listing a whole bunch of things in the basement, and he came across this box of brass. It was actually a cereal box that I had stuffed all the brass into, and he was like, what is this, I thought you got rid of these. I started to panic a little bit. Don't worry, I'm going to sell them. They're going. They're leaving the house. Don't worry. Anyway, so I decided to have this garage sale and we live out in the country so I had it in the city at my parents house, and I was a little bit nervous about it because I had so many items and I didn't want to sell them too low, but I didn't want to go too high, so pricing them was an issue.
Bex Scott: [00:14:36] We spent probably a good five hours the night before unboxing everything, setting it up, trying to put stickers on things. I even attempted to do the color coordinated dot, but I had so many items that I ended up pricing maybe a quarter of them, and then leaving the rest and just hoping I would price them throughout the day or that people would ask me how much things cost, and then I would just kind of negotiate with them from there. Little did I know, that was a mistake. And now looking back on it, I think that was a no-no of garage sailing etiquette. So I set this garage sale to start at 9:00. And I didn't know that people lined up for hours before to get into these sales first. So I'm looking out the window, and my parents are like, there's a guy sitting out there in his car. So I start panicking. Do I let him in? Do I not let him in? I think at the end of the day, I ended up letting him in a few minutes early. But I go out there and I open the garage sale, and this guy gets out of his car and he's making a big production of stretching, and he's yawning and groaning. I'm like, oh, great, here we go, this is my first customer and it's already not going well.
Bex Scott: [00:15:55] So he walks up and he says, I was beginning to think this was the wrong house. Well, I had it set for 9:00 and he just walked by. I said good morning and he kind of just huffed past me. So he starts looking around. And he's asking me what prices are. He said there's no price tags on these things. I said, yeah, I know I haven't gotten around to all of it yet, but feel free to ask me if you're curious about something and I'll let you know. So he's going around and instantly you can tell he's a reseller. He's looking at the Pyrex, he has his phone out, he's googling things, so he asks me how much for this, like mint condition set of spring blossom Pyrex dishes. And I think I ended up saying, both of these are $35. And at this point, somebody else had come into the garage and it was one of his friends or a reseller that he knew. And he looked at this guy and he said, well, I guess that's why it's called a vintage sale. And at this point I'm panicking because I'm obviously messing up the garage sale already, don't know what to do. So he looks at me and says, how much would you want for everything here? And in the back of my mind I had kind of thought of a number already in case this had happened. I didn't think he was, I don't think he was being serious, but he said, throw out a number. So I said, well, for everything I would want $2,000. And he looks at me and says, well, that would be all the money I had for the whole day and walks out.
Bex Scott: [00:17:36] And so I felt like I had started off my garage sale on a strong note, and it was quickly becoming something that I was not familiar with, and I felt like I was a little bit in over my head. So as the day progressed, things got a little better. I realized that I needed to put stickers on things. I needed to lower the prices and just hope for the best. So another big portion of the garage sale items that I had were CorningWare casseroles. And I found it really funny because I tried to price these relatively low to get rid of them. I don't collect CorningWare, but I found a lot of success over the years in reselling it, and there are some pieces that go for a lot more than others like the brownie pans, the pie plates, the little petites with the plastic lids. Those are the more sought after pieces and not so much the everyday casserole dishes. So I had a bunch of just the run of the mill casseroles in my sale, some of the teapots, and I remember people coming in and saying, oh, you're selling these for like $1 to $5, that's way too cheap, these things are worth a ton of money. And then kind of giggling to myself, because the person before them had told me that I had priced them way too high in that same price range, and that I wouldn't sell any of them.
Bex Scott: [00:19:06] So it's funny how different people perceive things to have different values. And I know as a collector and somebody who buys off of eBay and Marketplace, that there's been a lot of conversations in groups around these CorningWare dishes that have been selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and there's been suspected money laundering happening through them. And this has kind of skewed people's perception and skewed people listing this CorningWare on these places for the proper price, so it could be your regular Spice of Life casserole, but it's being sold on eBay for $8,000, when really it's worth like $5 or $10. So it's just interesting that things like that are happening and that it's hard to price things to make everybody happy because you can't. So you have to go in with the best price for you and what you believe to be the best price for things.
Bex Scott: [00:20:06] And to wrap up, I thought I would go over a few of the other funny things that I experienced in my garage sale. So in the end, we ended up having about 4 or 5 weekends of garage sales because I had so many items to get rid of and we were doing quite well with them. And some of the highlights of my garage sales were definitely people complaining about prices being too high or too low. One man came in and told me that he was very upset because I didn't have any items for men. Another woman told me that she goes to many, many garage sales and that my items probably wouldn't sell. I had some really old vintage squeaker toys and they were both for a dollar, and somebody asked me if they could have them for $0.25 because all they were going to was his dog as a chew toy. And this kind of just made the whole experience a little bit more fun in the end, because I got to look back and think of all of the funny things that I came across, all the funny things that were said to me, and I would say garage sales are definitely not for the faint of heart. But if you are up for putting in the effort and taking the time, it is really fun because you do get the experience of meeting people and making connections and just having some fun while you're at it. I did come across a bunch of awesome other resellers that came to my sale, and we've connected since then. And my final story is, I remember one lady telling me that she got the full pumpkin set of butterprint Cinderella dishes for $65 at a garage sale. And that right there is my dream. So garage sales will always be near and dear to my heart, and I'll always keep going to them.