Easily the WORST estate sale I have ever seen...

T

Tallone

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Sep 4, 2013
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In a gloomy castle on a lonely hill
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... and probably the most misleading advertisement. Early this week, I saw an ad in the Craigslist garage sales that looked intriguing. The sale was scheduled to start at 8AM on Thursday (today). My first thought was this would be one of those tag sales run by a professional outfit with everything WAY over-priced. But I have become pretty good at spotting the ad styles of these outfits and this ad didn't seem like one of those. The text of the ad was intriguing:

ANTIQUES, SOME ART, ECLECTIC, COOL AND FUNKY STUFF. YEARS OF COLLECTING. BOOKS, CLOTHES, RUGS, INDONESIAN SCREEN, LOTS OF LAMPS, HUGE METAL GLOBE. SOME PET THINGS. MOTHER WAS AN ANTIQUE DEALER. FAIR PRICES.

Years of collecting, huh? Sounds good. They put a bunch of pictures in their ad. All were taken in the house and there seemed to be some interesting stuff. OK, they reference their mother so this is clearly a family run deal not a professional group. Now you have my attention.

They listed the address. Very interesting... the house is in one of the old neighborhoods with lots of large, charming homes. I looked it up in Google Street view:

wilsonhouse.jpg

Nice! And big! Now I'm getting excited. This could be epic. So I show up 15 minutes early. One other couple is there waiting outside the front door. 10 minutes later, one other person shows up. I'm getting a little worried. Where is the crowd? Have they re-scheduled and I missed the notice? There are people in the house so something is going on. 8:00 arrives and no one opens the door. We wait and we wait. I'm starting to get anxious because I need to head off to work soon. Finally, at about 8:20 a guy opens the front door and looks very surprised to see a small crowd of people outside. I ask if there is an estate sale going on. The guy answers: "Oh, yeah. it's around back." For Pete's sake, dude, would it be too much trouble to put a sign in front telling people to come around back?

So, the 4 of us hustle around behind the house to find... 2 little tables and a crappy looking old dresser with maybe a couple of dozen pieces of worthless junk, some soap, and maybe 10 pieces of cheap costume jewelry. The whole arrangement consumed maybe 30 square feet of grass. The only thing that looked even remotely interesting was a bicycle with some quality components on it leaning up against the dresser. I asked how much for the bike. "Oh, that's not for sale. It belongs to my brother." I asked the lady if the stuff they had out was all they were selling. Yup. Is there anything in the house for sale? Nope.

The couple ahead of me left after about 30 seconds - clearly pissed off. I was right behind them. Another guy pulled up just as I was about to get in my truck. I told him this was a complete waste of time but if he wanted to look, he should pull around the corner where he could see what was being offered. He followed me around the corner, slowed down to take a look, and kept right on driving.

If there had ever been anything worthwhile for sale, they probably sold it to dealers before the announced 8AM start time.
 

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you should put in your profile your location ...You know what state or city ...
 

I would have clearly given them a piece of my mind for such a deceptive ad. Were any signs up near by? Those might get "recycled" right away.

Or stand out front for as long as you can and tell everyone that drive up it has been cancelled.
 

I have considered posting something on Craigslist to let people know just how misleading this is. I stopped by this place again on my lunch hour to see if, by some weird chance, they had brought more stuff out of the house. It didn't look like it. In case anybody thinks I am exaggerating in my description, I took a picture:

photo.JPG

What you see is the total extent of this "estate sale". I mean, I'm used to people exaggerating how fabulous their garage sale is (was there ever a yard sale that wasn't "huge"?) but this is ridiculous. You can't see it very well but, on the table just to left of the guy in the red hat, is a bag full of... lemons. How fitting.
 

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Mother was an antique dealer would have kept me away.
I could see asking them what estate sale their craigslist add was referring to and when it starts.Then ask who,s real estate company or political campaign the author of add worked for.Followed by a," B.S. of a sale!false advertising,bait and switch" rant.Well I would want to anyway...add sure worked.
 

It's happened to me before, more than once. You have to admit though, a house that size, is an "estate." lol.
I like the ones that have exactly one of each item they had listed in their ad. One little table full of stuff for a 3 paragraph ad.
Went to one last Sunday. Listed on both CL and the local newspaper, spelled out "Sunday Dec. 8 only," no mention of Saturday. Guess what, she comes to the door finally after the third person knocked (it was listed as an estate sale) and says "oh, the sale was yesterday." Really? Your ad did not mention Saturday, it said Sunday only. "No, I don't think so," she says, looking at us like we are the crazy ones. Some people are cuckoo for cocoa puffs.
 

I think you were rather nice about it. I would have said where's all the stuff you mentioned in your ad? then if I did not see anything I wanted I would have said "I will haul all of this junk out of here for you if you give me a hundred bucks!" and then left. Lately around here it seems like if a ad is only posted on craigslist,9 out of 10 times it is a dud, ie: opens late or not at all, sold most of the stuff before listed date, not what they advertised and so on. Good luck......Scott.
 

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You should have Metal Detected the yard before you left and not fill in the holes :)

---yard holes.jpg
 

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There was a garage sale advertised here a few years ago where the guy blanketed the town with signs.

"HUGE multi-family Garage sale-10 Families- DON'T MISS" the signs read. I am not kidding, this guy put up at least 50 signs, almost one on every corner.

We were headed to a wedding, but after seeing the big signs on every corner, and since I am full time in the flipping business, I told the wife "We have to go."

I turned around, and drove to the GS, just to find three card tables and one six foot table full of the trashiest junk you've ever seen.

"I thought this was a huge sale" I asked the twenty-something boy that was having it.

The kid started laughing. "Everyone puts those words on their signs, and I thought it would be funny for us to do it too" he said. He was still laughing, as if he had said the funniest thing in the world.

I may or may not have stopped being a gentleman at that point. I may or may not have said some harsh words to him about wasting my time and gasoline at $4 a gallon.

As his face turned red and as he shrank back into his lawn chair, the guys wife stepped into the garage. She looked at him and said "See? I told you not to do that with those signs" and gave him one of those looks that only a woman can give that says "You were being an idiot".
 

I have become completely immune to the word "HUGE" when it comes to advertisements for garage sales. I would bet that at least half the garage sale listings on Craigslist use the word "HUGE" or some similar term. I have been to plenty of garage sales that weren't much bigger than this one. I have even picked up a few nice pieces at such small sales. But what really burned my biscuits about this one was the grossly misleading terminology and photos. Leaving us standing outside for 20 minutes past the designated start time was just insult to injury.

The only other sale I have been to where I felt like I had been tricked into showing up was one put on by a local Women's Club. Their ad made it sound like a bunch of old ladies got together, pooled some belongings they wanted to get rid of, and put on a sale in a local meeting hall. It sounded like a pretty good opportunity so I drove all the way across town to go to it. When I arrived, there were a couple of sweet old ladies at the door collecting a $3 donation to get in. That was a little irritating because they didn't say anything about an entry fee in their ad but I thought, what the heck, it's a small amount for a worthy cause and I'm already here. I paid and went in only to find that the sale was comprised entirely of local antique dealers hawking their (very expensive) wares. The ad conveniently never mentioned that little fact. On my way out, I mentioned to the ladies at the entrance how misleading their ad was. They were very offended by my comments.

Oh well, being played for a sucker once in a while is all part of the game I guess.
 

that sucks you wasted your time on that. It certainly had all the makings of a good one though lol. We have been to a few like that sometimes just a few items on a milk crate. But i still get out and look, you never know what is sitting there.
 

At least it was actually a sale. Where I am at someone posts fake sales every week. I guess they are trying to throw off the competition.
 

Nickleanddime said:
Or they are 3 month old signs with no date on them.
Click to expand...

Not far from where I live is an area called Oak Park. A very nice upper middle class area with a nice mixture of people with Entertainment Industry people. I try to run the sales there every week. For the last 3 months there has been a neighborhood sale sign from a Real Estate Agent. These neighborhood sales are GOLD, but the sale must have happened the ONE week I was not running the neighborhood...
 

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