Yard Sale-Tag Sale-Garage Sale-Estate Sale

Spring is in the air and what a wonderful thing it is on a Saturday morning in the spring, to host or to drive around searching for the quintessentially perfect yard sale. The quest for that perfect find, unappreciated and under-priced by others, but secretly scoring just the item you need to complete your collection, is an exciting adventure that never grows old. It can be an addiction, like gambling. I grew up calling these events garage sales, (my mother always too proud to ever have or shop one), I suppose because that was where people held them back in the day, in our pretentious neighborhood. Too snooty to put it out front- signs posted in yards and on telephone poles directed you down the alley, to the back. When I moved to New York, I kept seeing signs for "tag sales" everywhere I went and had no idea what they were referring to.

Back then, I was too poor to buy anything, anyways. Nowadays, going to a yard sale is quite a fun thing to do. I don't take them seriously, but I know people who do - had one gf who survived her divorce and single-mom status for years, by augmenting her income hosting them on a regular basis. She acquired the merch from a finely tuned trash-picking hobby in her upscale neighborhood. When it was heavy trash pickup day, folk would set out by the curb the most amazing items. She'd drive around in her Volvo station wagon, her kids helping her lug the stuff home. They'd fix it up - replace a wheel that was missing, give it a new coat of paint, and sell at a profit at their weekly yard sale. Some folks would call that owning an antiquing business. Yet this was cash only and no questions asked.

I have another gf who has furnished her entire home, beautifully I might add, from just these sorts of shopping excursions. Every Friday morning during "the season", she scours the local paper for ads, often hitting the events just as the proprietors are setting up (sometimes calling in sick to work! if there is a lot of good stuff, or else arriving just barely in time for work, swinging by sales on her way in) to score the best items before anyone else gets there. I happen to live in a neighborhood that is the creme de la creme for estate states. Lots of elderly college professors, world travelers, art collectors, with excellent tastes and hobbies in music, china collecting, antiquing, books, pottery, art - often with adult children who live far away or don't appreciate their tastes. Primo mid-century modern and Victorian antiques,collectibles of all sorts. Some day, I will be one of these, too.