#87- Garage Sales

You know what they say: one person's junk is another person's afternoon of browsing in someone's front lawn for that final piece to their living room.

Well maybe that's not quite how it goes. But as far as garage sales go it sounds pretty accurate to me.

Garage sales are the product of the annual spring binge of useless, but suddenly sentimental junk that you naturally try to con other people into paying you for. So it obviously makes for grand old time of treasure hunting and haggling for the best price on a singing moose head or those Pokemon cards you know are fake because they are purple instead of blue.

Stumbling across a garage sale is like actually coming across something with a metal detector on the beach; surprised euphoria mixed with an immediate downgrading of other priorities. I can root around in a garage sale for hours, trying to find hidden gems of books or toys or posters or you name it. Where else can you find a bowling ball for sale next to a blender going for $5? Maybe half a block down the street, but nowhere else.

I would even like to believe garage sales were the cause for my early education in business. At the age of eight I came across a set of long cabin-esque building blocks at a garage sale that I really wanted. I was told by someone that you should never pay the asking price at a garage sale and successfully haggled the price on the blocks from $5 to $3. Yep, Toronto Stock Exchange here I come!

So I am grateful for garage sales. I am grateful that they bring people out to enjoy the age old practice of bartering with their neighbour. I am grateful that they signal summer and they provide me with reading material or hours of play or, if nothing else, a few minutes of amusement as I look at the treasure trove in front of me, the objects telling a story about someone's life lived and a future full of hope.