# The Last Hour Of A Garage Sale Is The Best Hour
Every sourcing guide tells you to be early. Be at the sale at 7:00. Beat the other
resellers. Get the good stuff before it walks.
That advice is half right, and the half it leaves out is where most of the margin is.
Two Different Sales Happen In One Day
At 7:00 AM, the seller is running an optimistic business. Everything is priced at what they
believe it is worth, the tables are full, and they have all day. Their goal is to get a
good price.
By 2:00 PM, they are running a completely different business. The tables look picked over.
Half of what is left is stuff nobody wanted at full price. And there is a thought forming
that they have been avoiding since about noon: *all of this has to go back in the garage.*
Their goal is no longer a good price. It is not carrying anything back inside. That is a
fundamentally different negotiation, and it happens without you saying anything clever.
What You Actually Get At The End
You get worse selection and much better prices. Whether that trade is good depends
entirely on what you sell.
If you need one specific rare thing, mornings win — it will be gone by afternoon. But most
resellers are not hunting one item. Most resellers make money on volume and on the middle
of the market: the household goods, the media, the toys, the ordinary brands that were
priced at three dollars in the morning because the seller thought they were worth three
dollars, and are available for the whole table at the end because the seller now thinks
they are worth not-doing-another-trip.
How To Work It
Show up around the last hour, not after. Too late and they have already packed. The
window is real and it is narrow.
Buy in blocks. This is the whole technique. Do not price items; price groupings. "What
do you want for this table?" "What's your number on all the media?" You are solving their
actual problem, and they will price it accordingly.
Bring small bills. A seller who has to break a fifty at 2:00 PM is a seller who is
about to say no. Twenties, tens, fives. It closes deals that arithmetic would otherwise
kill.
Take the awkward stuff. The thing they clearly do not want to move — the furniture, the
box of cables, the full bin of loose toys. Taking it earns goodwill that gets applied to
the price of everything else you are holding.
Be pleasant and be quick. They are tired. The buyer who is easy to deal with at the end
of a long Saturday is the buyer who gets the number.
The Part After The Car Is Loaded
Here is where the end-of-sale haul goes wrong: you got a whole table for twenty dollars,
which is genuinely great, and now you have a whole table of stuff and no idea what any
individual piece cost you.
Shoot the pile before you unload it. Same spot, same light, a consistent number of shots
per item — it is the one moment when every item is out, in your hands, and in front of you
at the same time. Then track the haul as a bundle with what you paid for it, so later you
can see what came out of that twenty dollars: what got listed, what sold, where it sold,
and whether the last hour of that particular sale was worth driving to.
Do it a few weekends in a row and you will know something most resellers only have a
feeling about — which sales, which neighborhoods, and which hours actually pay.
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