Hi all. I've been Garage buying and selling for a couple of years now. I've just found this site, so I am just getting acquainted.
What tells you it is time to leave a sale without looking at everything. For me, as soon as I see a printed page from Amazon, Ebay, or some website with the price (usually Buy it Now), it is time to move on.
Going to a High-End neighborhood, walking up their long driveway they've blocked with one of their BMW's, seeing a sparse amount of items marked just below what they paid for it....then listen to their tone-of-voice attitude about their price when you ask how much on something that has no price marked on it....
But you have to find a little humor in places like that.... On one sale I went to, the older fellow had marked a lot of items with multiple price stickers that come with a garage sale kit when placing an ad in the local newspaper.... There was a $5, $2, and $1 sticker, each placed in a straight line. I thought it was a mark down.... When I went to pay, I handed him a dollar bill. He said, "It's eight dollars, not one." I looked at him and then he said, "There wasn't an $8 dollar sticker in that bunch, so you just add up all the numbers....."
Another way to get through some "Painful" overpriced sales, especially those that run "Estate Sales and Charge Sales Tax", try "Where's Waldo".....
I make it my MISSON to go into a place like that and find one thing they've overlooked or missed a pricing target. One "Company" had a heavy wooden case for rings, jewelry, and watches... My wife found an old Bulova ladies watch with a little tag marked for $8. She had them put it aside at the check out table while I went through a bowl of Baggies with costume jewelry. The checkout lady even picked it up and looked at it as she moved it to check out another customer.... When we got home, I looked on the back to find it marked "14kt"..... Last weekend we went to another professional estate sale where they had jewelry pinned to a 3x3' felt draped piece of plywood... I was having to be polite to another lady "Dealer" who had gotten to the board by one step ahead of me.... With the checkout ladies just 2 ft. away, I asked the price for the jewelry, all the items were $1 apiece. I pulled several pieces of flower-shaped broaches and a heavy broken bracelet, all stamped Sterling for $1 each. The $18.00 for all of it, I'd found Sterling that totaled 54 grams, but it was the pair of gold and pearl earrings that "just looked" like gold that I thought I'd gamble a dollar on. If the "Three Crowns" marking is Swedish, it's .083 silver, on a silver candy dish marked .50-cents, add another 102 grams of lower quality silver.....
When I got home I used my lighted magnifying glass and saw in the inside bend of the wire clip-on part of the pearl earring, it was a 14kt mark on both... One had two pearls missing, so I loosened the rest. The empty gold casting weighed 3.5 grams..... A total of 7 grams of 14kt is just over $200.00....
So, don't leave until you think you've given it a shot to out last and out win those that think their going to get you first...
Bill