Official Start Of Garage Sale Season
behemoth
2,189 Posts
no early birds please!!!which one to go to?what are yer methods?newspaper? straight driving down roads?gonna be a nice weekend i think
Comments
I went to one last month (posted about it here too), over 500 records or so, but came home with about 20 albums.
I have the Giant Nickel, the corner store/supermarket freebie paper and I'll generally look for anything that says records and pick and choose. "A lot of records" may actually mean "lots of Reader's Digest box sets" and knowing the region here, there's not much goods. No chance of finding any Fania test pressings. Estate sales I'll sometimes check out, since it means things have been collecting dust in the warehouse. If I had more money to play with, and of course a nicer home, it would have been great to buy a jukebox I had seen last year.
I'll also take chances every now and then by driving down roads. If I have a rough idea of where I want to go (i.e. circling the ad in question), there are usually many other yard sales nearby.
There's also a "new" part of town which is bringing in a population from other regions of the state and other states, and if it's in a nice neighborhood (read "$$$"), there may be a chance of them wanting to clear out their records.
Church sales can have some good finds, especially when someone becomes born again and wishes to get rid of the filth that involves the "heavy" prog from early 70's.
That might literally be the last way I would choose to look for records. But I may be hard to please... after a lot of driving and a lot of disappointment (and a couple promising leads with addresses that didn't even seem to exist!) I gave up.
There are a lot of dead ends, but garage/yard sales are 1000x more fruitful than
thrift shops, IMO, and in some cases have been the scene of my best scores ever.
These are pretty much the only situation where there is the possibility of scoring
an entire sick collection for fifty cents each.
And of course, real headz know the magic of "got any records?" when you don't
see any out, followed by "oh I didn't think anyone cared about those - you want
to come in and go through them?" aka 1st dibbs on a unsorted collection.
One of my best scores like this literally involved a woman yelling at me from her
front door as she saw me walking away from a neighbor's yard sale with records
in my hand, inviting me in to see if wanted any of HER records. I was a little
afraid she was going to cook me for dinner, but instead I got a pile of shrinkwrapped
Folkways ethnic, a bunch of clean jazz, and rare private folk joints, etc, all
for $1 apiece. Out of nowhere!
Straight driving down roads. Also, if you "miss" a garage sale don't be afraid to knock on the front door and say you saw a sign for a garage sale. When they tell you that the sale was the previous weekend, just tell 'em you're looking to buy records. I've gotten some great stuff with that technique.
Jesus, where do you live?
Garage sales around here are
There is a Bay Area city that is so broke, yard saels go down any day of the week.
Looking forward to Summer 2009!!
Oh trust me, there have been times that have lead to a lot of frustration, but that's how it is. Thrift stores have been dry but it takes someone to throw something out and I hope to be able to make it there when it's placed on the floor.
Again, it can be frustrating but when I am hunting for records, I don't mind taking chances. I've also bought less crap in the last few years, eliminating clutter that I definitely don't need.
I'm in Raleigh
Its kinda spread out and too much of a small town at the same time - i.e. you could take forever just finding the sales but it doesn't matter because a handful of grippeurs will have already been haranguing the folks for records days before it even goes down.
Even when I was REALLY patient about record hunting I did not have the strength for that shit at all.
Now my patience is completely gone and it all just falls in my lap basically, and I still get more than I should...
Here in DC yard sales are hit or miss but when they hit they hit big. Went to one sale in my neighborhood two years ago where this lady was selling bags full of about 25 7"s for $3 each. I grabbed them all and found loads of rare funk and soul 7"s including Ricardo Marrero and more.
Turned out to be a dud, but as we walked back to the car, she started listing all the great stuff we've gotten over the years at yard sales: records, chairs, brand new food processor, and some bizarre stuff that we love that is tough to describe.
Love them thangs; CHAIR!
last year i scored a really rare psych record out of a stack of beat to shit country lp's.
yard sales rule!
peace,xavier
yard sales in the Bay or anywhere in Cali seem to be fruitful. Cali is an entertainment mecca where you can find anything. I wish it was like that around here.
In Dallas I'll dip into estate sales but rarely bother with garage sales.
Though I did go to one in some newly constructed cookie cutter suburban neighborhood and the soccer mom had the Brenda & the Tabulations LP on top & bottom and a clean upgrade copy of Maggot Brain in with her Journey and Corey Hart joints.
cosign on what SOI said. Nearly the last frontier for solid comeups. I went to a flea market today in the city that had no records--zero. I hope that's not an emerging trend.