Dear Families Who Hold Garage Sales and Include a Sentimentality Tax or Some Silly Poop in the Price of Their Wares to Justify their Expense,

Families who hold garage sales and include sentimentality tax or some silly poop in the price of their wares to justify their expense do not understand basic economics. If you have worthless junk, you sell it at a garage sale for cheapy prices. End of story.

That is how the system works for all sane Americans everywhere. How do people justify charging store prices for their used items?

No, I will not pay $15 for your prized smelly sneakers you have had since the 5^th grade. I don’t care if you won second place in the Junior Olympic race for children whose parents don’t understand economics.  They were fabricated in the 1980s and you obviously wore them through a puddle or sizable marshy moat.

This is not the “Boutique Anderson.” Remember people barely want your crap. Prices should reflect this.

I price your smelly sneakers at negative $2. That means you have to give me $2 as a fee for taking these poor excuses for footwear off your hands.

The goal is to get rid of the stuff, not exhaust every penny out of your neighbors.

Once I was at a Garage Sale run by people who mostly thought their old junk was worth a generous 2% discount off the original purchase price. All the typical worthless objects of family life were available. A pretty Jewelry box caught my eye and I asked the price.

The lady looked at me like my inquiring of the price was uncalled for and a huge inconvenience. Honestly you would think these people wanted to sell their stuff, what with the huge “Sale” signs everywhere.

Looking at me like a complete idiot must have given her some inner satisfaction because she continued to do it while she told me to, “Check the bottom.”

I turned the jewelry box over expecting to see one of those bright happy sale dots with a handwritten 3 or maybe even 5 if they were stingy. This would represent that 3 or 5 dollars respectively would be required of someone to take the jewelry box off their property without constituting a robbery.

Turning the box over revealed that I was mistaken. There in clear daylight was a ROSS label and the low, low price of $18.

Is your Garage Sale being sponsored by ROSS or do you just assume their pricing model is superior to what families typically do at yard sales? It was so obvious that this poor excuse for a lady had purchased it and did not want to exert the tremendous amount of energy it would have required to take off the price tag.

“But what if it was new and unused?” asks the precocious reader who feels entitled to root for the little guy!

May I remind you that the little guy in this case is apparently the crazy Garage Sale Lady?

I slowly opened the top to assess the level of use the box experienced in the stingy household of Mrs. Stingy McStindgeyson.

Inside the box welded around the edges was dust, a small button, the back of an earring, and a broken bracelet clasp.


Last I checked ROSS did not make it a point to include these items in their jewelry storage devices.

I thought of a fitting tirade to put her in her place. “Yes, lady! I am on to you! That box was used and abused! No, I will not pay $18; I barely wanted to buy it when I thought it could have been $5!”

Instead I just placed it back gently and walked home.

-Rebekah