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Another successful year for Mother (of all yard Sales)
02 May 2010
Used to be yard sales and garage sales were attended by people looking to buy something for themselves. Seems nowadays a lot of the people milling about, picking over the tables, are looking for something to sell.
I got that impression from again working this year's Mother of All Yard Sales, the community-wide yard sale run by the Collingwood Optimist Club.
I've been helping out with Mother - setting up, organizing, working the floor, and cleaning up (as well as donating a lot of my 'treasures') - for more than a decade now. Strikes me that we're seeing a new kind of customer these days. Or at least a lot more of them than I've noticed in the past. That's in great part thanks to eBay which has created a new career for many people: reselling.
Mother has always been a successful event, and this year was one of our best. We brought in more than $16,000 (the final amount will be minus the costs of the dumpsters, landfill fees, the meals provided for the volunteers every day and other operating costs).
For those of you who aren't aware of it, the MOAYS was organized by the Optimists almost 20 years ago to do two things: 1. Raise money for community events and programs and 2. Redirect a lot of unwanted but usable items from the landfill site. It wasn't intended as a major community social event, although it quickly became one.
In the early 1990s, the town decided to end the annual curbside pickup of large items - fridges, stoves, luggage, etc. It was expensive for the town (both in pickup costs and additional landfill tipping fees). It was decided that the owners of the items should be responsible for paying the costs to get them to the dump and to pay the tipping fee also. That ended up with a lot more garbage being dumped in the bush areas, ditches, along rural roads and so on.
So the local Optimist Club decided to host a giant yard sale that could both raise some funds for their projects, and to help solve a growing problem with garbage. They approached the town and got permission to sue the Curling Club for a week. The result was immediately a success. People responded in droves, both in donating and in attending.
Saturday was typical of the event: hundreds of people lined up for a block to get inside for the 9 a.m. door opening. A frantic race through the building looking for those precious items - always under-priced - they could take home. For the next seven hours people streamed through the doors. Although the volume dropped around 11 a.m., there were still people coming in even as we were cleaning up, at 4 p.m. Some people came and went several times. Some came in at 9 and left at 4 (more on this behaviour, below).
It always amazes me what people give away. While the vast majority of the goods we get is in the "one person's junk is another's treasure" category, we also get items at the extreme ends of the scale. We get items that are sold in the silent auction sometimes for more than $100 (one book this year, a first-edition Lucy-Maude Montgomery, sold for $215). We get great furniture, books, dinnerware, electronics and sports equipment that gets sold at modest and very affordable prices. We also get a surprising number of new items, often still in the original packaging. And toys. Boy, do we get a lot of toys and games.
We get real collectibles - vinyl LPs, a gramophone, artwork, rare books, vintage pottery, Tibetan singing bowls, manga comics, baseball cards, salt & pepper shakers, Christmas ornaments, antique tools, crystalware, Blue Mountain pottery, and a lot more.
But we also get garbage. Not relative junk - real garbage. Empty paint cans. Bottles with old, dried brown material and dead insects inside. Empty egg crates from a grocery store. Toys and books covered in mold. Broken glass. Frying pans that were used and not cleaned, with old food stuck on them. Worn shoes with holes in them. Dirty, well-used cutting wooden cutting boards. Used ashtrays. Tools and appliances missing necessary parts. Used, stained pillows.
One gentleman dropped off a dozen boxes of e-waste - broken bits of computers, non-working CD and hard drives, old circuit boards, cables and wires and various pieces of things he obviously didn't want to go to the trouble to dispose of properly. That costs the club because all of this material we have to pay to take to the dump. These were snuck in without anyone noticing - we've had to turn him away in the past, but he comes back every year trying to sneak his garbage in.
Fortunately, those who leave their garbage for others to dispose are in a very small minority. The majority give us clean, used but saleable items. And they donate generously. We got more stuff to sell this year that I recall in the past decade. We were full almost to overflowing; enough material that we seriously considered closing the doors, Thursday night and refusing to accept any more! But we worked hard to clear the backlog and continued to accept items until late Friday night.
For the club members who help - and their spouses - it's a week of hard work. We start the Sunday before, and for the rest of the week that follows, we open the door for donations at 1 p.m. and close somewhere usually between 8 and 9 p.m. Some days when we get a lot of material, we're there until 10 trying to get it sorted, priced and on the tables. It's hectic work that involves a lot of walking back and forth, lifting, carrying, sorting and pricing. We have crews going to homes to pick up large items and big donations.
It's often dirty too - a lot of these treasures have sat in basements and garages waiting to be donated. It's grunt work.
The Optimists and their spouses who volunteer their time for that week are the real champions of this event. They often put in eight-plus hour days for a week, trying to make sure everything is ready for the moment we open the doors, Saturday morning. Then we have to clean up afterwards, a two-plus hour effort, carting the remaining items to the dumpsters, sweeping, folding and moving tables.
This year, because I no longer have my daily business, I was able to help out most of that time. It gave me a real respect and appreciation for the volunteers who put int the time. We're a small club and for an event of this scope, we need every body we can get. So kudos to all those who made the effort to come out and help when we needed it the most - set up and clean up. I wish all club members had their dedication. I particularly want to tip my hat to Brian Hamlin and Ralph Sneyd for their dedication and the hours they put in. That's not to slight any of the others who put their time in, but these two were there many more hours than most of us.
During the day of the yard sale, we have different pricing scales. Before 11 a.m., items are sold priced as is, no bargaining. They're already bargains, so few people are concerned about the price they're asked to pay, since they know all the money goes back into the community. From 11 a.m. until noon, they can bargain up to 25% of the price. After noon, everything is 50% off. At 1 p.m. it goes to $5 a box or bag, regardless of contents. At 2 p.m. it's down to $3. And after 3 p.m. anything you want is free. The goal is to move the stuff out and leave nothing to have to put into the dumpsters for the landfill (which costs the club money, of course).
Sadly, there are those who take advantage of this. They come in at 9, fill boxes with the best things they can find, then shuffle them around all day until 3 o'clock, when they walk out without having paid anything more than their $2 admission. Some of the people who do this are reselling stuff on eBay. They're making money off the items and not putting anything back into the community. That was noticed by all of the members this year and we're going to have to make some changes to prevent that sort of behaviour in the future. That's money we could use towards community programming and we have to watch for our (and the community's) interests.
We may also have to consider competing by selling things ourselves, as a club, on eBay. But that's a debate for the executive.
The MOAYS is a great, successful and very popular event. Our two main goals are being met every year. It's one of the best-attended events in town - several thousand people come to shop or browse. The people in the community contribute and help make it the fun, profitable event it is. And the money goes back to make Collingwood a better place.
So thanks to everyone who helped - by donating, by volunteering, and by buying the many treasures we offered.
I got that impression from again working this year's Mother of All Yard Sales, the community-wide yard sale run by the Collingwood Optimist Club.
I've been helping out with Mother - setting up, organizing, working the floor, and cleaning up (as well as donating a lot of my 'treasures') - for more than a decade now. Strikes me that we're seeing a new kind of customer these days. Or at least a lot more of them than I've noticed in the past. That's in great part thanks to eBay which has created a new career for many people: reselling.
Mother has always been a successful event, and this year was one of our best. We brought in more than $16,000 (the final amount will be minus the costs of the dumpsters, landfill fees, the meals provided for the volunteers every day and other operating costs).
For those of you who aren't aware of it, the MOAYS was organized by the Optimists almost 20 years ago to do two things: 1. Raise money for community events and programs and 2. Redirect a lot of unwanted but usable items from the landfill site. It wasn't intended as a major community social event, although it quickly became one.
In the early 1990s, the town decided to end the annual curbside pickup of large items - fridges, stoves, luggage, etc. It was expensive for the town (both in pickup costs and additional landfill tipping fees). It was decided that the owners of the items should be responsible for paying the costs to get them to the dump and to pay the tipping fee also. That ended up with a lot more garbage being dumped in the bush areas, ditches, along rural roads and so on.
So the local Optimist Club decided to host a giant yard sale that could both raise some funds for their projects, and to help solve a growing problem with garbage. They approached the town and got permission to sue the Curling Club for a week. The result was immediately a success. People responded in droves, both in donating and in attending.
Saturday was typical of the event: hundreds of people lined up for a block to get inside for the 9 a.m. door opening. A frantic race through the building looking for those precious items - always under-priced - they could take home. For the next seven hours people streamed through the doors. Although the volume dropped around 11 a.m., there were still people coming in even as we were cleaning up, at 4 p.m. Some people came and went several times. Some came in at 9 and left at 4 (more on this behaviour, below).
It always amazes me what people give away. While the vast majority of the goods we get is in the "one person's junk is another's treasure" category, we also get items at the extreme ends of the scale. We get items that are sold in the silent auction sometimes for more than $100 (one book this year, a first-edition Lucy-Maude Montgomery, sold for $215). We get great furniture, books, dinnerware, electronics and sports equipment that gets sold at modest and very affordable prices. We also get a surprising number of new items, often still in the original packaging. And toys. Boy, do we get a lot of toys and games.
We get real collectibles - vinyl LPs, a gramophone, artwork, rare books, vintage pottery, Tibetan singing bowls, manga comics, baseball cards, salt & pepper shakers, Christmas ornaments, antique tools, crystalware, Blue Mountain pottery, and a lot more.
But we also get garbage. Not relative junk - real garbage. Empty paint cans. Bottles with old, dried brown material and dead insects inside. Empty egg crates from a grocery store. Toys and books covered in mold. Broken glass. Frying pans that were used and not cleaned, with old food stuck on them. Worn shoes with holes in them. Dirty, well-used cutting wooden cutting boards. Used ashtrays. Tools and appliances missing necessary parts. Used, stained pillows.
One gentleman dropped off a dozen boxes of e-waste - broken bits of computers, non-working CD and hard drives, old circuit boards, cables and wires and various pieces of things he obviously didn't want to go to the trouble to dispose of properly. That costs the club because all of this material we have to pay to take to the dump. These were snuck in without anyone noticing - we've had to turn him away in the past, but he comes back every year trying to sneak his garbage in.
Fortunately, those who leave their garbage for others to dispose are in a very small minority. The majority give us clean, used but saleable items. And they donate generously. We got more stuff to sell this year that I recall in the past decade. We were full almost to overflowing; enough material that we seriously considered closing the doors, Thursday night and refusing to accept any more! But we worked hard to clear the backlog and continued to accept items until late Friday night.
For the club members who help - and their spouses - it's a week of hard work. We start the Sunday before, and for the rest of the week that follows, we open the door for donations at 1 p.m. and close somewhere usually between 8 and 9 p.m. Some days when we get a lot of material, we're there until 10 trying to get it sorted, priced and on the tables. It's hectic work that involves a lot of walking back and forth, lifting, carrying, sorting and pricing. We have crews going to homes to pick up large items and big donations.
It's often dirty too - a lot of these treasures have sat in basements and garages waiting to be donated. It's grunt work.
The Optimists and their spouses who volunteer their time for that week are the real champions of this event. They often put in eight-plus hour days for a week, trying to make sure everything is ready for the moment we open the doors, Saturday morning. Then we have to clean up afterwards, a two-plus hour effort, carting the remaining items to the dumpsters, sweeping, folding and moving tables.
This year, because I no longer have my daily business, I was able to help out most of that time. It gave me a real respect and appreciation for the volunteers who put int the time. We're a small club and for an event of this scope, we need every body we can get. So kudos to all those who made the effort to come out and help when we needed it the most - set up and clean up. I wish all club members had their dedication. I particularly want to tip my hat to Brian Hamlin and Ralph Sneyd for their dedication and the hours they put in. That's not to slight any of the others who put their time in, but these two were there many more hours than most of us.
During the day of the yard sale, we have different pricing scales. Before 11 a.m., items are sold priced as is, no bargaining. They're already bargains, so few people are concerned about the price they're asked to pay, since they know all the money goes back into the community. From 11 a.m. until noon, they can bargain up to 25% of the price. After noon, everything is 50% off. At 1 p.m. it goes to $5 a box or bag, regardless of contents. At 2 p.m. it's down to $3. And after 3 p.m. anything you want is free. The goal is to move the stuff out and leave nothing to have to put into the dumpsters for the landfill (which costs the club money, of course).
Sadly, there are those who take advantage of this. They come in at 9, fill boxes with the best things they can find, then shuffle them around all day until 3 o'clock, when they walk out without having paid anything more than their $2 admission. Some of the people who do this are reselling stuff on eBay. They're making money off the items and not putting anything back into the community. That was noticed by all of the members this year and we're going to have to make some changes to prevent that sort of behaviour in the future. That's money we could use towards community programming and we have to watch for our (and the community's) interests.
We may also have to consider competing by selling things ourselves, as a club, on eBay. But that's a debate for the executive.
The MOAYS is a great, successful and very popular event. Our two main goals are being met every year. It's one of the best-attended events in town - several thousand people come to shop or browse. The people in the community contribute and help make it the fun, profitable event it is. And the money goes back to make Collingwood a better place.
So thanks to everyone who helped - by donating, by volunteering, and by buying the many treasures we offered.
