When low offers don't go anywhere.

[escuintla]

Continuing with the sage or ridiculous offers, here it is, something I witnessed.

1990s, I am at this garage sale in Palo Alto CA. This guy, a cheap "I can't mention the word",  well known by many of us garage sailing people, some Ebayers, me? a collector and gathering things to send back to my country of origin (for resale).

He gets earlier than us to this beautiful garage sale, very common those days, not anymore. He grabs this glass orb, something so beautiful, even if you didn't sell it, it would be a nice ornament on your mantle or desk.

The guy, finds the seller and ask for the price, the seller says $20. He yells What!? I will give you $5!

Seller replies: No way man! This is a rarity, my grandma had it before she got married.

Guy: It's not worth $20!...….we are waiting for him to drop the thing on the table, but he knows we are around.

Seller after 10 minutes of going back and forth with the price: Hey guy! Bring that thing here, and the guy obliges and hands him the glass thing.

Seller: How much did you say you wanted to pay?

Guy: $5 for that piece of sh...…..!

Seller: Grabs it, and slams it against the ground, the thing breaks in hundreds of pieces.

Guy: Deer eyes, jaw to the ground, he can't believe it.

Seller: OK, there you are, can I have my $5 now?

[tunicaslot]

This is what I missed the most when you were gone - your stories!!! 

[wpt05]

@escuintla 

Did he claim Not As Described?  

[vikingsandpintos]

 We did that a few years ago at the salvage yard I'm still at..lol

Guy went out back, and came up with a piece of chrome trim from like a 50's Ford. 

The owner told him $10 for it, and he started complaining how that was too much. (You know, cause there are SO many 50's cars around anymore for parts!) 

The customer pulled out all the talking points...  It's just a piece of chrome, you'll never sell it to anyone else anyway, there are still tons of these cars in the yards,  it's just going to waste sitting back there, blah blah blah.

After listening to him for several minutes going on and on,  the owner took the trim, bent it in half, and threw it in the trash. Said "It's not for sale!"

The look on the guy's face was worth it

[donker55]

We were selling at a flea market in NJ and had a beautiful, old set of dishes (8 place settings including 3 trays). Buyer comes up offers the hubby $10.00, which is declined politely, continues badgering my husband who finally picks up the box and said no matter what you offer it is not for sale to YOU and put it back in the car. He eventually put it back out and a very nice lady from MN bought them at the asking price.

[audiovideotogo]

Had the  wannabe buyer gotten his low price, he would then have tried to resell them for $100, with a selling point that they were  plates retrieved  from the Titanic wreck. It's often the 'low-ballers'  themselves who  inflate item values

[castlemagicmemories]

That's a shame, the glass ball sounded so beautiful!

[luckythewinner]

---

@escuintla wrote:

Seller: How much did you say you wanted to pay?
Guy: $5 for that piece of sh...…..!
Seller: Grabs it, and slams it against the ground, the thing breaks in hundreds of pieces.
Guy: Deer eyes, jaw to the ground, he can't believe it.
Seller: OK, there you are, can I have my $5 now?

---

What a terrible negotiator the seller was! A much better story would have ended with: 

Seller: Grabs it and says "Too bad, because now my price has gone up to $35!"

[bsarafian]

If I was the seller and I didn't have the heart to destroy the item I would have given it to the next person who walked by, in front of the cheapskate.

[div_style]

I always liked the "be backs" who insisted my price was too high only to come back and find the item had sold.

Of course if we had a nickel for every "be back" that never came back we could have retired years earlier.

[bsarafian]

It's even more satisfying if they announce loudly that you must be crazy and will never sell it for that price!

[castlemagicmemories]

---

@bsarafian wrote:

It's even more satisfying if they announce loudly that you must be crazy and will never sell it for that price!

---

That could get someone a real fast trip to a BBL, IMO!

[escuintla]

Here's another one. My fault...……..

I lived in East Palo Alto, I get to be bored this Sunday. I then didn't know about flea markets in my area. So, after navigating in Palo Alto, Atherton, and then Redwood City, I decided to go to San Carlos, a few miles away. Somehow, I ended up at this garage sale, lucky me, 2-3 buyers. The lady is bored, drinking a Coca Cola, it was very hot that day. 

I got out of my car, and behind her, a big front yard is visible to my incredible eyes; 12 boxes 30" x 30" lying around. I get curious and dug into them. I would say each box had from 100 to 300 pair of socks. Among them, 49ers socks. They were so long so I didn't pay attention to them. What interested me was the other boxes with white dressing  socks. Some had 49ers logo on them. Then, 3 boxes had socks for kids, as I said about 300 pairs in them. 

Remember, no buyers, no pressure, I am kind of the only reseller. The other people were neighbors I guessed. They had a pair or two of socks in their hands. So, I asked the lady how much for each box. She replies...….$15 each...….I heard the sound of cash registers in my head. I bought the 3 boxes of socks for kids.  Then, I thought about reselling the socks. Not on Ebay, at that time I wasn't interested at all, I barely heard of it. This was before the glass thing. 

But, greed! Oh my goodness! I had to get greedy, don't we all get greedy sometimes? 

so I replied: How about $10 each? She replied: No way! I am giving these socks for free at this price. You are lucky, I quit working for the 49ers so this is your chance to own some piece of history. Then, she handed me a package of those long, very long socks. As I said, they would be that long that if I wanted to wear them, they would be touching my private parts. I am 5.3" 

I am there, pretending to be tough, you know, naïve, greedy, and dumb! So, I kept hammering her with my nonsense, "come on lady!", come on lady! $10 each! Come on, come on, come on...…….when out of nowhere this guy whom I knew, a flea market guy stops by, and without any good morning, how are you? goes and asked her for the whole thing. She says give me $15 each...…..and she didn't finished her response, the guy said "sold!" 

Thanks God I had bought 3 boxes. All the kids in my former "neighborhood" received a pair of socks for Christmas. The rest were sold. 

Learned my lesson. From that day, I never, ever tried to law ball anybody since I knew you had one, and only one chance to either make any garage or flea market seller happy or they would tell you to go to s-hell..….

[turquoisetulips]

Continuing with the sage or ridiculous offers, here it is, something I witnessed. escunita op 

Here's a funny thing I witnessed  at  a multi family garage sale  in our neighborhood  . Some of our neighbors couldn't participate in actually being there  for the sale .However we let them bring some of their stuff ahead of time   so we could sell it for them.  Sooooo ,, one of our neighbors came by and dropped off a box of books  he wanted to get rid of.  While the sale was in full swing  one of our friends dropped by and he began  looking through one of these books . He got to a certain page and then walked over to my husband and asked him if he had ever read this book  ? We all looked at the page he had open and right there was a polaroid photo  of our neighbors wife all nakie .  I guess our neighbor that brought the books over had forgotten  he put it in there . Not the sort of photo you keep in the family photo album I guess .. 🙂   Tulips  --  oh and P.S ,, no we never told them ,, we just tore up the photo  and  never said a word. 

[mikeystoyz]

My wife does all the yard sale buying around here.  I couldn't find a deal at a yard sale if it bit me in the butt twice and slapped me across the face.  She, however, can find gold in cow poop.  She very infrequently haggles and then only because she has no money left on her.  Regardless, her other rule is if you see it and you want it no haggling either.  Works every time.  We figure if the person put it out at that price that is what they would be happy with.  This has gotten us phone calls from the people we have bought from later on asking if we would like something else.  Inevitably we buy more items from the people.  Anyway, that is my 2 cents on the whole thing.  Oh, one more cent, on top of that we want the people to feel happy.  She is already going to expect me to sell the item for a max 10x from what she got it for.  She just picked up a ww2 marine 10k gold lapel pin for 10 cents.  I just cant argue with that result.