Yard Sale Price Guidelines

You are having a yard sale for probably one of two reasons. You need a little extra cash and have a lot of things in your house you don't need anymore, or you are cleaning up the clutter around the house and you have decided to sell it and make a few dollars rather than give it away. Either way the same pricing rules apply!

One thing to remember while determining your garage sale pricing is that the sentimental value you have on that old holiday plate means nothing to the shopper who thinks it might look nice hanging on her wall. So, when you think about what price to put on something, forget the sentimental value and think what you would pay for something like that at a yard sale.

Baby clothes will probably sell pretty well when priced right. Fifty cents to a dollar is a good price range for baby clothes. And don't be afraid of "two-for-one" or group-pricing. Two kids shirts for a dollar is that little gimmick that makes it sound more like a bargain. Adult clothing is probably a no-no. You might be better off giving your old dresses, slacks, etc. to charitable organizations or even your church for a rummage sale (you can take a deduction on your taxes).

Be sure to mark the price clearly on every item. If you are having a multi-family yard sale, use different color tags or dots for each family or put a letter code on the tag to indicate which family. When the item sells, either keep the tag or mark the price and color or code in a notebook. That will make dividing the profits easier after the sale. If no one else is participating in your sale, you can use color dots to represent certain prices. Then you can save time writing prices on tags and simply stick the appropriately colored dots on the items.

Prices should be in 25 cent increments with the lowest price at 25 cents. Also make sure you have change available before the yard sale starts with about ten dollars in quarters and some small bills. For more valuable items for sale, you should try to price them closer to what similar items are selling elsewhere. You can often search the Internet for the model name or number to see websites that may be selling a similar item. A good resource might be eBay. Find similar items there and note their prices. For wide ranges of prices for the same article, take an average.

Some yard sale shoppers love to haggle over the price and why not? It's not like you are in business to make a lot of money - that's the whole point. You have stuff that you might have tossed out that may have some value to someone else. If they offer $1 for something you marked at $2, why not let them win? They're happy and you have a dollar you didn't have before. Besides, that may just encourage them to browse more and make more offers.

Be careful of the things you put in your yard sale. Occasionally we hear in the news that someone paid $10 for a piece of art that was worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. The seller may have thought it was just an old print that grandma had in the attic. Be sure of what you are selling.

As you are approaching the end of your sale, start slashing your garage sale prices. If you don't want the left-over items, either set one price to take all or donate it to a local charity or a thrift store.

It may be a good idea to have some free items that you are just looking to get rid of. It will help in your advertising too if you can attract people to the yard sale by saying "Some free items". Then who knows, the people who come for the free items just might buy something. Just make sure you keep all your free items in a designated area so your customers dont get frustrated by confusing the free items from the paid ones.