Spotlight: Portland Garage Sales for Buyers and Sellers

WEEKEND ON THE CHEAP:

– Free Taco Bell Limeade Sparkler drink with this coupon, please present when ordering. Valid through July 11th, 2010 or until 500,000 free Limeade Sparkler online coupons are redeemed.

– Leatherman First Annual Warehouse Sale this Friday from 12:00pm – 8:00pm and on Saturday from 10:00am – 2:00pm. Save up to 70% off on retired and obsolete items as well as drawings for giveaways.

– Free ice cream sundae at Walmart Supercenters this Saturday from 11:00am – 4:00pm, while supplies last; participating locations include Wood Village and Vancouver, WA. See web site for additional locations.

– The 20th Annual Canby Junior Festival of Jazz sounds off this Saturday from 8:30am to 5:00pm in downtown Canby at Wait Park. Free admission.

– Kenton Street Fair this Saturday from 10:00am – 6:00pm. Enjoy a car and bike show, vendors, live music, games and activities for all. Free.

– Gravity Festival: An Artistic Collision this Saturday night, 6:30pm – 9:30pm at Hoffman Hall on the campus of Portland State University. This free show features art exhibitions, DJs, hip hop dance, painting and other performances.

– Sex and the City Party at Departure’s rooftop restaurant this Saturday night, 7:00pm – 10:00pm. Read about the details here, free admission and no reservations necessary.

– Stumptown Underground “All in the Family” release party this Saturday, 6:00pm – 9:00pm at the Hawthorne Food Carts features a ping pong tournament and pie-eating contest.

– First Annual Furniture Connexion Cruise In and Car Show this Sunday from 1:00pm – 5:00pm at their store in Gresham for cars, motorcycles, food and entertainment.

– Vegan Convergence this Sunday at Colonel Summers Park in SE Portland, 1:00pm – 5:00pm. From the Facebook page: “Show up, eat some food, talk to some folks. It’s simple. You might even meet your new vegan best friend! Worst case scenario, you leave with a full belly of vegan goodies. No time for drama. No time for cliques. Just bring a “Favorite” (is that the theme?) vegan dish (along with cutlery, plates, tongs etc.) and get ready for the best afternoon of your life. Like staring into the sun, this could be epic.”

– LOST series finale this Sunday! If you are not Lostie fanatics like we are, at least check out the recap show airing from 7:00pm – 9:00pm, and if you like what you see then stick around for the finale starting at 9:00pm. Furthermore, if you want to share the experience with fellow Portlanders, McMenamins Bagdad, St. John’s and Mission theaters will all be showing it on the big screen (free, 21 and over only).

– Willamette Week’s new Cheapskate Deal Box features Bitch Media’s spring clothing swap, the second annual Gay and Grey PDX expo, a free showcase of short plays and more.

– For even more listings of totally free things to do this weekend, please check out Aroundthesunblog.

SPOTLIGHT: PORTLAND GARAGE SALES FOR BUYERS AND SELLERS

We just held a yard sale last Sunday and low and behold our fair weather forecasting folks were hours off on their forecast; instead of showers passing through in the late afternoon, we had torrential downpours between 9:30am – 11:30am and our promising sunny-filled yard sale turned into a rush to cover up all our electronics and paper items with tarps and umbrellas. At 2:00pm we put up ‘For Free’ signs and then the real bargain hunters showed up. With that experience under our belt, here’s our thoughts for Buyers and Sellers to do Garage Sales on the cheap!

BUYERS:

The best online source hands down is Craigslist, especially if you are hunting for specific items like an electric lawn mower or bicycle panniers. Although there is no map feature, we like the fact that you can search for certain items, view posted photos and all the ad listings are free.

Other online resources for finding garage sales include:

GSLAR.com Portland, free postings for garage sales, yard sales and estate sales by map. Helpful for when you just want to focus on your part of town or just want to stay in a particular geographic location. Users can also sign up for a weekly email list of estate sales.

Garagesalefinder.com, includes a map feature and users can search by zip code and choose days of the week.

The Oregonian newspaper has listings online at Oregonlive.com that contains basic information (location and dates), but the listings for what is for sale is limited to what the seller wants to pay for the ad (rates aren’t cheap!).

When it comes to maximizing your time and efforts for shopping at garage sales, we recommend looking for the following:

– Moving / must sell
– Multi-family
– Neighborhood
– Church sales / fundraisers
– School group sales
– Condo community sales
– Specialized events (like Portland’s Largest Garage Sale upcoming November 5th and 6th at the Expo Center)

For the garage sale hunters, early birds are those that come before the official opening of a sale (we had one lady show up 45 minutes before 8:00am to start browsing our things as we placed them out into the yard!); if an ad says “No early birds,” please respect it! If you are looking to pick up free items, just do a search on Craigslist and often times you’ll find sellers that will offer up all remaining items for free (like we did) at the end of the final sales day. And on a few occasions, take advantage of poor weather (i.e rain—lots of it) and you might find sellers to be more open to accepting offers. Check out this list of tips for garage sale buyers, courtesy of YardSalePortal.com.

Finally, here are some upcoming sales to mark your calendar for (just make the weekend after Father’s Day the Garage Sale Weekend!):

– Faithful Savior Rummage Sale, this Thursday – Saturday at Faithful Savior Community School.

– Tigard’s Brookside Condominiums Garage Sale (this Saturday, 9:00am – 4:00pm)

– 25th Annual Laurelhurst Garage Sale, one day only on Saturday, June 19th from 9:00am – 3:00pm.

– Concordia Neighborhood Yard Sale on Friday, Saturday and Sunday June 25th – 27th.

– Happy Valley Garage Sale, Friday – Sunday June 25th – 27th (last year over 180 homes participated).

– Irvington Neighborhood Yard Sale one day only on Saturday, June 26th from 9:00am – 4:00pm.

– 22nd annual Eastmoreland Garage Sale, “the Northwest’s largest garage sale,” with over 140 homes participating the weekend of June 26th and 27th.

SELLERS:

– Use the free online garage sale posting web sites listed above.

– Consider placing an ad in your local paper (Oregonian, Columbian, etc.); we placed an ad for $20 in our community paper and estimate that only 5% of our traffic came from the ad (so in retrospect, we probably would not have placed the ad and saved the $20 for making more signs).

– Read the following articles:

– YardSaleQueen.com’s “Having a Successful Yard Sale”
– Smatmoney.com’s “Top Five Garage Sale Strategies”
– GetRichSlowly.org’s “A Yard Sale Checklist: Ten Tips for Garage Sale Prep”
– Video from MSNBC: “Secrets to a Successful Garage Sale” by garage sale expert Bruce Littlefield.

Happy Garage, Yard, Rummage, Moving and Estate Sale-ing!