Sellers beware...

[Sheldon J]

Had this happen a number of years back to me....

My kids had a garage sale at Mom's apartment (I own the building) and the shop had some of her stuff in storage... A nice Layne cedar chest with momentous in it, with a large hand lettered sign "NOT FOR SALE".... There were tables of various items that the kids had for sale....


I was at work the kids were making summer money, when this one guy walks up with a box full of stuff he had picked up from the tables and asks "How much for the whole box....


You guessed it he had opened up the cedar chest and helped himself placing her stuff on the bottom.... The kids did only a surface inspection...

PISSED you bet, but that is water over the damn now.. So is anyone says how much for the box.... Look carefully and if they try anything HAVE THEM ARRESTED!!!

 

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[diggummup]

A hard lesson learned. If it's not for sale, it's not going to be in my selling area. I already know how these "people" (I use that term lightly) operate around here. I am planning a blowout garage sale in the next month or so to get rid of much of my excess stuff, I will have extra sets eyes and hands to watch and help. The game is cut throat around here and these people are devious. Any funny stuff will be dealt with accordingly.

 

[jerseyben]

Had this happen a number of years back to me....

My kids had a garage sale at Mom's apartment (I own the building) and the shop had some of her stuff in storage... A nice Layne cedar chest with momentous in it, with a large hand lettered sign "NOT FOR SALE".... There were tables of various items that the kids had for sale....


I was at work the kids were making summer money, when this one guy walks up with a box full of stuff he had picked up from the tables and asks "How much for the whole box....


You guessed it he had opened up the cedar chest and helped himself placing her stuff on the bottom.... The kids did only a surface inspection...

PISSED you bet, but that is water over the damn now.. So is anyone says how much for the box.... Look carefully and if they try anything HAVE THEM ARRESTED!!!

No offense... but am I the only one who sees MULTIPLE problems with this situation?

 

[Keppy]

No offense... but am I the only one who sees MULTIPLE problems with this situation?

No i see all those problems also.......... And most of them came from who set the garage sale up..........
...

 

[Rodbuster209]

It is unfortuneate but you cannot trust people anymore. Granted there still honest people but you always have to be watching, I am only talking about here anyways, by the way how old are your kids?

 

[bazinga]

Any number of things could have happened. The sign could have easily fallen off? The guy maybe didn't see it. Since you weren't there, it's tough to pass too much judgement.

 

[MinerGirl]

Bazinga...Sorry...I'm sure thats not the case here.

I've had many sales and several "bad" sales stories...The one that sticks out is when I had my personal coat in the way back of the garage sale and I saw this woman routing like crazy through my pockets...I knew I had some money in the pockets and said, "Hi...Can I help you"?...she said "I want to buy this coat!...How Much"?...I told her the coat is a dollar but my personal items in the coat are not for sale...I said, just let me take out my garage sale money and I'll sell you the coat!...She left in a hurry. What a scammer!

Another sale I had when moving from Florida to Calif...I had a Whole house sale and some lady came through and wanted to buy everything in my Laundry room! I had just done my laundry and that room was "off Limits"...(Posted as such, etc)...she was mad I wouldn't sell her my personal clothes...that was too weird. The same sale, I walked some ladies out to their car, saying goodbye and one of them had several decorative fans from a fan collection I had...I knew she hadn't bought them and I just said, "Oh, I see you like my fans...I'm sure they'll look nice in your house"!....Whatever....some people will take advantage if you let them...I guess I thought, "I'm not going to let you steal from me so I'm going to give them to you and hope you feel like crap....

Most everyone's nice...its the few who make memories bad...

MinerGirl

 

[bazinga]

I guess MinerGirl was at the sale? Signs fall off very easily. I'm not saying that's what happened, but I'm half way decent about half of the time and I try to give people the benefit of doubt in situations like this. Just because you have met bad people in the past doesn't mean ALL people are bad. I've tried to buy items where I honestly did not see a NFS sign on it, nor was I looking for one. It's not until a random family member a good distance away tells me it's not for sale as I'm paying for it.

When I'm at a sale, if it's out, I just assume it's for sale. I don't go checking it for signs. Heck, I don't even see price tags on items right in front of me from time to time. When I see an item I want, I often get in a rush and want to get out of their as quickly as possible with the item. It's easy to overlook things.

And it's easy for signs to fall off. Friday morning I was at a sale and light breeze blew away all of their price stickers. It happens.

Assume that people are good. Don't go looking for the bad in all people because some have been bad in the past. I've had bad girlfriends in the past. That doesn't mean that all future women I date will be bad.

 

[MinerGirl]

bazinga is right, of course there's no way to know for sure. A couple key quotes you may have missed was "Most everyone is nice.." and "some people will take advantage if you let them"...

I've always "assumed" people wouldn't steal from me like the day I went to an Auction and was loading up several items in my car and someone walked off with 2 of the lot of 4 railroad lanterns I'd just bought...Now, if I get distracted, I'll ask whomever I'm with to keep an eye on my stuff.

One can no longer "Assume" you won't get ripped off when one has been ripped off several times. Unfortunately that would be a naive stance.

Just have to be aware of all possibilities

MinerGirl

 

[Sheldon J]

No offense... but am I the only one who sees MULTIPLE problems with this situation?

Hum lets see. ran the sale in my storage building, roped off the storage area, and trusted my kids while I worked to pay the bills, is that your issue

It is unfortuneate but you cannot trust people anymore. Granted there still honest people but you always have to be watching, I am only talking about here anyways, by the way how old are your kids?

At the time in their mid teens, Grandma lived next door 50' away in her apartment and they would stay with her on weekends, their mistake is they still trusted people and had not been abused by the B tards of the world.

There seems to be a plague of signs that have been taped to things simply falling off of stuff, yes he had to move the rope and untaped the sign to open the chest....

Bottom line is you need extra eyes, to remove anything not for sale for the area, and know exactly what is in the bottom of that box!!! I would not put it past some people to enter your house and add what they want....

 

[tcornel]

Just a variation of auction sale tactics that have been around for decades. I can remember buying a numbered lot, typically on a pallet or separated on the floor only to find that when it was time to load out the valuable items in the lot were moved to someone else's number lot. Usually the auctioneer will get it corrected but several times it was a matter of moving it back ourselves in front of the thief! Almost to blows a couple of times. Not once did the auctioneer ever call the authorities. Sometimes our money was refunded as the auctioneer did not want to get involved.

After those experiences for real valuable lots one of us would stand guard for the duration of the sale. Sometimes hours.

Tom

 

[Sheldon J]

Just a variation of auction sale tactics that have been around for decades. I can remember buying a numbered lot, typically on a pallet or separated on the floor only to find that when it was time to load out the valuable items in the lot were moved to someone else's number lot. Usually the auctioneer will get it corrected but several times it was a matter of moving it back ourselves in front of the thief! Almost to blows a couple of times. Not once did the auctioneer ever call the authorities. Sometimes our money was refunded as the auctioneer did not want to get involved.

After those experiences for real valuable lots one of us would stand guard for the duration of the sale. Sometimes hours.

Tom

It's sad that it comes to that, I'm just glad I do not have anything at a flea market, I'd bet it is brutal there!!

 

[jerseyben]

It's sad that it comes to that, I'm just glad I do not have anything at a flea market, I'd bet it is brutal there!!

Brutal in what way?

 

[Sheldon J]

Brutal in what way?

thief's, people who walk by while you are looking one way and they go another with something off your table, try and re mark prices, to name just a few....

 

[Rylflush]

A hard lesson learned. If it's not for sale, it's not going to be in my selling area. I already know how these "people" (I use that term lightly) operate around here. I am planning a blowout garage sale in the next month or so to get rid of much of my excess stuff, I will have extra sets eyes and hands to watch and help. The game is cut throat around here and these people are devious. Any funny stuff will be dealt with accordingly.

Sons of *****es, remember what goes around comes around. There's a special spot in hell for those degenerates. Hang in there brother, they will get what's coming to them, hopefully burn in hell!!

 

[goldinmypan]

I've been selling at flea markets for about 4 years now and, to the best of my knowledge, I've only been ripped off once. That was for 3 Ben Franklins out of 20 that were in a open display case. If other things went missing I didn't notice (like boxs of pickthru jewelery).

 

[PYRATE]

Junk is sometimes useful and desirable, sometimes amazing, beautiful and valuable
Junk is sometimes useless, fetid, ugly, worthless and dangerous

People are like junk