I have been for nearly every weekend for the last twelve years or so, gone to as many garage sales as possible. A few times I have gone to sales that were more interesting then others. Here are the stories of two of these.
The first story is of a sale that was probably eight years ago. A lot of times people are selling stuff because they want to get rid of it, but others times its because they need the extra money. This particular sale it became apparent almost immediately that the woman selling was wanting to make enough money to score their next fix. The first thing I noticed was her body movements. She had that characteristic jerky back and forth movements that just scream tweaker. The first words out of her were "Every things for sale, I'll even sell you my clothes if you have enough money." I looked around and most of the stuff was the standard garage sale junk but she did have a box that was full of Flatware, and one messed up fork in particular caught my eye. It looked like it was sterling silver and after I picked up the mangled fork, which looked like it had lost a fight with a tiller, and sure enough it was marked "Gorham Sterling". This was back when sliver was about 15$ a Troy Ounce and the fork weighed about an Ounce and a half. I figured it was worth about 25$ in silver scrap. Next was where it started to get funny, wanting just that one fork I asked, "How are the forks and spoons?" Her eyes widened and she started talking very fast and tripping over her words "Well some are 5$, some are 2$, some are 20$ it depends on what all you want"
This dropped my hopes a little, the fork is only worth getting if I can get it cheaper then what its worth, and at this point it was not looking too good. I looked back at the fork and shuffled some of the other flatware around. To me it seemed like it was only a second or two but she must have thought I was changing my mind because she then blurted out "Or you can have the whole box for 10$" At that point I looked up and she then said "Ok 5$ for the whole box". Thats when I said sure and ended up with and entire box of flatware when all I really wanted was one fork.
On a different day my Dad, sister and I were going on a trip to see my brother we stopped at this garage sale that was in the middle of no where. This was a small garage sale and really didn't have anything. The most interesting thing was a couple of Barn Swallows that had a nest in the garage. While we were looking at the birds and talking to one of the guys having the sale, the other guy walked up near my sister and asked her "Do you like boiled pigs feet?" At this point my sister shot a very concerned look at both me and my dad. This apparently was missed by the guy as he continued, "I've had them boiling all morning they are just right." At this point my sister headed back to the car and it had reached that point in this adventure where it was "Time To Go". We quickly made our exit.
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