Garage Sales - What Sells?

Thought this would be an interesting topic. Has anyone tried selling things that they’ve made at garage sales with the intent of making a buck or two (not just to clear out space) and had any luck? What kind of things sell well?

We just had a community garage sale in my neighborhood, so there was a decent amount of traffic. I thought this would be a good opportunity to try to make and sell some pens. Made about 20 of them, of varying quality, from common woods in slimline pens to more exotic woods in nice rollerball kits with a CA finish. The prices varied from $6 to $20, but I guess that didn’t much matter since I didn’t sell a single one (managed to unload a bunch of old video games and clothing though).

Some people offered a buck or two, but honestly I’m obviously not doing it for the money, so I would rather have given one of these pens away to someone who would appreciate it than to sell it for less than it’s worth – kind of felt like it would have cheapened what we do. I ended up giving a couple of them away to neighbors (I suppose payment for having to put up with the noise of my saws :) ) and it’s nice to have some extras laying around.

I had thought that there would be at least a somewhat existing “impulse purchase” market, but I guess that didn’t overlap with the garage sale crowd. One possible mistake I made was not targeting the “marketing”... I only had a sign for hand-made wooden pens, but one of the neighbors mentioned that it would have probably been a good idea to also mention something about them being a good gift for father’s day. That might have sold a pen or two.

Down but not out though. We usually do these community sales twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall. I’d like to give it another go in the fall, but not pens. I was thinking furniture, maybe side tables, things like that. I was thinking about doing some outdoor furniture this time around but didn’t have the time. Also thought about picture frames too as some pre-fab ones that I had sold pretty well and it’s possible to batch those kinds of things out.

Any ideas? Anyone have any different experiences?

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