These boots are made for selling …

And that’s just what they’ll do.  It was a good weekend, not sales-wise, unfortunately, but I did find three brand new pairs of $100+ steel-toed work boots for only $10 each. 

I’ve found that boots do fairly well, and whenever I see a pair, I pick them up.  One section of my inventory room looks like a boot store, so on Sunday, Ella insisted that I get all the boots listed.  That didn’t happen, but I did make a dent in them, so to speak.

Back to Saturday, though.  It was overcast, with rain threatening, but the forecast called for the wet stuff to move in a little later in the morning, and I hoped to get in a few sales before the bottom dropped out.

There were three church sales, all in different nearby cities, on our itinerary for the morning, plus a Relay for Life sale, and several individual sales.  Our first church sale was a disorganized mess, which was supposed to start at 7 a.m.  When we arrived promptly at 7, several church members were hanging around outside, grousing about who was there, who wasn’t there, lack of pricing, etc.  They did tell me I could go on in, and I promptly claimed a box of religious audio books on cassette, including the Left Behind series.  After a few minutes of rambling, Ella found a huge box of western VHS tapes, including a large collection of Roy Rogers tapes.   Unfortunately, no congregation member wanted to claim ownership of pricing.   One member finally stepped up, and we settled on $35 for both boxes.

It was about 7:20 by that time, with the rest of the sales starting at 8 a.m.  With nothing else to do, we headed to the second sale on our list, hoping they had their stuff out early.  They did, but were waiting for someone to bring the DVDs that were promised in their Craigslist advertisement. I found my new boots at this sale, and by the time I paid for my soon to be listed footwear, the man with the DVDs showed up.

I’ve learned some interesting things at yard sales, not the least of which is that our service men and women don’t have cable TV in Iraq and Afghanistan. So, what do they do?  They buy lots of DVDs and boxed sets.   Stacks and stacks of DVDs and boxed sets were put on the table, including complete series runs (all seasons) of CSI, CSI Miami, and CSI New York.  It was like Christmas.  We left happier, but $60 poorer.

After several hit and miss individual sales, we passed by an unadvertised church yard sale.  After perusing the wares, and not buying anything but a book, we decided to skip the other individual sales in favor of the “huge” Relay for Life Sale in the next city over in case it started raining.   At this sale, I found another pair of boots for the princely sum of $1, but it started to rain, so everyone started packing up. 

And it kept raining.  Thinking individual sales were going to be washed out, we headed for our next church sale, hoping it would be inside.  It was, and we found some good items, including some books, and new in box tools.

And it was still raining when we left. Knowing that everything was washed out at that point, we headed home.  Traveling on the interstate, I noticed the traffic was slowing down to a crawl thanks to an apparent accident.  Fortunately, I was at an exit, and was able to take the back road home.

As luck would have it, the back road took us to another unadvertised church sale.  The actual yard sale was small, and I only found a few odds and ends, but in another building, they were giving away clothes. They had a multitude of tables and racks set up with mostly name-brand, good condition clothes for men, women, and children sorted by size. We filled three bags. It was like Christmas again, and we enjoyed getting the clothes, both to wear personally, and to sell.

And it was still raining. 

We had one more church sale to attend in another nearby community; however, our luck ran out, and the church had closed before we got there. 

Fortunately, the church was next door to a Chinese buffet, and, after all, it was lunchtime by then, so not a total loss.