Are garage sales obsolete?

Last weekend we participated in a garage sale with some other members of our family. Unfortunately it was mostly a bust. Our gross sales were about $150, and that was split among four households. I'd estimate that we sold about 1% of the goods we offered for sale. It was nice to get rid of the stuff, but still, we were disappointed.

I have to wonder what went wrong. Very few shoppers came. The ones that did bought a pretty decent amount of stuff, so I don't think there was a problem with the goods or the way we laid them out. I think the sale was well advertised and there were no weather problems, so I think it was simply lack of interest in garage sales.

My hypothesis is that three trends are killing garage sales.

The first is fuel prices. The value proposition of a garage sale gets a lot worse when it costs a few dollars to drive to it. So I bet some garage sale veterans are (rationally) choosing to go garage-saling less.

The second trend is the rise of eBay, Craigslist, and Freecycle. All three are more convenient than garage sales since they let you shop for precisely what you want instead of sifting through a pile of everything. Most people probably prefer Craigslist and Freecycle for nearly-free stuff, and eBay and thrift stores for more valuable used items. That leaves a very narrow gap for garage sales to fill.

Finally I think this is part of the broader trend of Generation Y's preference for electronically-mediated interactions. Craigslist and eBay are fully Web 2.0-ified, but a garage sale is a purely in-person, face-to-face, analog affair. Our sale's customers support this idea, at least anecdotally. Almost all our customers were middle aged or older; we only had one group under the age of thirty, and the neighborhood kids ignored us entirely.

Selling clutter-books on Amazon

Lately I've been weeding out possessions I don't really need as part of my quest to simplify things. I've been a working student my whole adult life, so I haven't accumulated a whole lot of "stuff." However I have found some things to get rid of: media I don't need or like any more, semi-obsolete computer parts, and materials for hobbies I no longer practice.

Most of these things have very little value, so I donate or recycle them. But a few seem valuable enough that I ought to sell them. I don't have a lot of time or energy for this, so I try to sell this stuff in ways that are fast and painless, even if I don't maximize the proceeds. I've been happy selling books through Amazon's used book marketplace and shipping them with USPS flat rate envelopes.

My process works like this:

• Find the book's page on Amazon, enter the book's condition (e.g. "Used - Good"), and a brief description (e.g. "Crease on cover"), and my price. I usually set my price so my book is one of the cheapest available.
• Wait for an email from Amazon saying that a book sold.
  
• Go to Amazon's page and print an invoice for the book.
• Put the book and invoice in a Flat Rate Envelope.
• Go to the USPS web page and use their "Click'n'Ship" facility to buy flat rate postage and print a shipping label.
• Tape the label to the envelope and drop it in a mailbox.
• Go back to Amazon's page and send the buyer a message with the tracking number.

After some practice this only takes about 5 or 10 minutes per book. I've found it helps to keep a "workstation," with a pile of the envelopes and a roll of packing tape, near the printer.

The beauty of this system is that once it's set up, I can sell books without interacting with customers or leaving the house!