Garage Sale thieves

You had people steal from your garage sale? What did they steal?

Each year our neighborhood has a sale and it's a huge event; people come from all over, neighborhood restaurants set up booths, port-a-potties are rented, maps are distributed. We had a big pile of free stuff -- mostly things we'd taken out of the house during renovation. People couldn't believe it was free and they kept trying to pay us, or they thought something must be wrong with it, or that we were somehow trying to "con" them. We eventually put a small price on each item and when someone wanted to buy them we'd say "just take it". That seemed to solve the problem.

I try to get outrqageous bargains on old fishing lures and Rookwood pottery.
Stealing at a yard sale is really stupid and senseless. Did you see anyone drive off with your stuff?
There are hundreds of yard and moving sales around here and Ive never heard of anyone complaining re: mercantile theft.

Id cal 911 and relay the license plate and description , just to make things annoying for them. Id drop charges and I dont think the cops will be so quick to carry it forward. Its just to get the old bastards to respect others and to stop acting entitled to super discounts on everything in life.

I had a small elephant taken from a garage sale I held once. Busy sale, and I didn't notice it missing right that few minutes. It was one of the items we had saved when we went through my deceased inlaw's home, so I don't remember it all that well - but not a valuable. I was pissed that anyone would do that.

There is a garage sale on my street today. Coincidentally, Mr. P. put out a whole lot of used boxes for the garbage collector.

I looked out my window, saw a woman in a golf cart. She stopped in front of my house, and picked up all the boxes. I would bet that she was from the garage sale.

Now that's funny.

unless of course she was moving and needed boxes, or some similar reason.
Thinking, maybe she was going to more garage sales and needed containers for her haul..

When I was selling my big house, I had an estate sale. Among the things stolen were a sik tophat and some Austrian crystal jewelry. I don't know how they got out the front door with the tophat, because the sale was well-staffed. When I was regularly going to estate sales, there was one woman who would appear regularly and was notorious for stealing things. At one sale, she cut the screen in one of the bedrooms and passed goodies out to an accomplice. It doesn't surprise me at all that people would steal at a garage sale.

I was sitting on one of those fold out chairs ($2) talking to my nephew in Iraq. All of a sudden 3 carloads of people came up AND a cop who told me that I had to monitor the street parking, too, since people were parking on both sides of the street and there were complaints. (This was a city wide sale)

Just minutes after being distracted, I went to sit on the chair and it was GONE! ****, how did that happen?

Then a Russian woman brought up a Coach purse, which she changed the $10 tag to $3, handed me $1 and said "Take this." I said no, opened the purse and there were two other purses stuffed inside and a scarf. She and her husband would hand me money and tell me what to accept. I know that certain ethnics will try to barter, but they were exhausting. She had a good eye on the bargains, however. Both seniors and they got in a real expensive car.

In the 25 cent bargain box of tools there was a grease gun and two cartridges. I told the guy EACH item was 25 cents. He handed me a quarter for the grease gun and the two cartrigages. I reminded him it was EACH, and he got real mad and said "give me back my quarter." Senior citizen.

I'm exhausted - don't ask me to have a garage sale again . . .

Holy ****.
That really takes the cake.

Have you thought about selling stuff on craigslist? At least that way you communicate via email and/or a phone call and they just come by and pick up the stuff and give you the money.

Speaking of handbags....

One time I was talking to shewolf, and said "wow, that's an amazing laptop bag" You could tell it was a designer bag. She said she bought it at Goodwill for a few bucks, and that brand retails for like hundreds of dollars.

I've gone by the Goodwill in this wealthy neighborhood a few times, and bought Cole Hahn, Kate Spade, etc bags for like $5-$10 and turned around and sold them on ebay for $20-$30 plus.

I've run into quite a few thieves over the years. While they come in all shapes and sizes, most garden variety don't really seem to care about the stuff. They do it because it makes them feel superior, that they can get over on you.

I never heard of garage sale thieves before though, guess I can't see why not.