Monday, October 28, 2013

Paddle the Bad Ish

There is a dealer in my area named Ish who specializes in video games.  I’m not sure where he gets his inventory, but apparently it is quite extensive.  He routinely advertises on Craigslist, and occasionally sets up shop at local events. Unfortunately, his prices are way too high for me to take advantage of, even though he advertises volume discounts.

On Saturday, he apparently decided to try something different during a Multi-vendor/Family Yard Sale at the local Farmer's Market.  As part of his Craigslist ad, he wrote this:

Will also be trying something new.

"Paddle the Bad Ish"

$00.50 buys ONE swat with one of our Frat Paddles.
$05.00 buys Twenty Swats with one of our Frat Paddles.
OR
You can pay $5 and get a Chance to Administer Two Swats in an Attempt to "Make Ish Cry", if one of us Cries, you get a Free Game, if we don't, you Still get a free Movie for playing.


Weird, right?  Maybe a little perverted?  In any event, I decided to swing by the sale to see if anyone was taking Ish up on his unusual offer.  Unfortunately for Ish, he was all alone.  No customers at all.  In fact, he was the only seller at this “Multi-vendor/Family Yard Sale.” 

Needless to say, I didn’t stop the truck.

Otherwise, Saturday was a fairly slow day, with only one church to anchor our scenic tour of local yard/garage sales.  I can’t really complain, though, because I have such a backlog of stuff to list, plus it was the coldest morning of the year so far.  Sometimes I don’t know who’s sillier … the person who holds a sale when it’s freezing, or the person who attends a sale when it’s freezing.

I wanted to say that I countered the cold air with hot sales, but that would be misleading.  In fact, weekend sales were only lukewarm.  I am proud to say, though, that I finally sold the Jell-O Pudding.

After Christmas last year, I bought eight boxes of Gingerbread flavored Jell-O Pudding from Kmart for $.10 per box. It sold over the weekend for $19.99 plus shipping.

Bill Cosby would be proud.

I also continue to sell the thermal underwear that I bought at Kmart back in January.  Each piece was clearance priced at $.99, and I bought 50 of them.  I should have purchased them all.  Now, Kmart has the same underwear priced at $11.99.

Looking ahead to Saturday, we have to drop Duc off at the local college to take the SAT test, and then we are going to a small church book sale, plus any other sales that we can find before picking up a mentally exhausted teenager. 

Obviously, with the weather cooling off, fewer people are dragging their stuff outside to sale.  For the rest of November, I know of only one additional major sale, and then I think yard sale season is pretty much done for the year as people start concentrating on Thanksgiving and that other big holiday.

Have a productive week, and get that inventory listed!

3 comments:

  1. Wow great sale with the Jello lot! lol... I have seen some on clearance before but never thought of selling it.

    I went through your completed listings and notice you sold PS3 Backer cards, did you dumpster dive to get those? Or did you just go to a gamestop/best buy to get them?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've had good luck selling seasonal items picked up for next to nothing after Christmas. As for the backer cards, I bought those from a Blockbuster that was going out of business. Thanks for reading my blog!

      Delete
  2. That paddle guy is creepy-Ish.
    We have been sucked into getting booths at those so called "multi vendor events" only to find out that there were just a handful there. We wasted money and time on many a promise of big customer turnouts. :-(

    ReplyDelete