Monday Rambles

Behold the wisdom of the fortune cookie!

Behold the wisdom of the trash can in the alley!

Saw that one while on a trash crawl constitutional during junk set out.

I have a feeling if everyone would take both bits of advice to heart, this world would be a better place.

Who says flea markets aren't classy?

C'mon!  We got caviar in the salvage groceries!  Top that!

I found my birthday present the other day in a showcase across from my booth.

That's the way cool 70's Batmobile, by the way.  And it has both figures with it!  Now, I just need to find someone who loves me enough to drop 50 bucks (!) on it.  Well, we do have six months to save up.

Shara did a ramble last week, so I'm doing a phone dump this week. More to come in a second.

I have never been more glad to see a month end than this one.  Barring a HUGE rush today and tomorrow, I'm going to have my lowest total for 2016, and the lowest one in a while.  Sales have just been off.  And it's not just me.  Nearly everyone I know here is seriously crying the blues, no matter what mall they're in.  Sigh.

I know that May means Derby, Mother's Day, the start of warm weather, yard work, yard sales, graduations and proms.  I know that this is just a cyclical downturn and things will pick back up when it finally gets too warm for the wimpy somewhat less than hardcore yard sale shoppers.  But, dammit, I'm overly dramatic!  I wail because it's what I do.  And right now, I'm having a good one.  Wail, that is.  Not month.

If you listen close you can probably hear me.

How slow has it been?  Well, the last two times I've gone in to straighten up, there was nothing to do!  Typically, when things are the slowest, that's when booths get the messiest.  At least mine do.  Counter-intuitive, I know, but that's been the pattern borne out by seven years of experience.  This time around, they're almost spotless.  Even the comic booth, which is always a wreck.  Sigh.

I was loading the van yesterday, when I started hearing some murmurings from the stuff I was putting in.  It seems I had promised them their moment in the blog, but had never gotten around to getting pictures.    In the interest of peace and harmony, here are a few shots of some recent purchases.

Heavy, rusted antique snow shovel.  I can see this baby in someone's porch decor this winter.

Painted bench and vintage metal kid-size folding chair.  I got three of the chairs.  If there had been more, I would have gotten more.  This came from a church sale I like a lot.  Every year, they bring out a few items from their defunct school.  Usually, it's school desks.  This year, it was these chairs.

 

 Folding wooden chair from the same sale.

Two drawers from the same sale.  I've been kicking myself for not getting more, as they had a bunch.  I love those heavy metal candle holders.  The big GI Joe ship came from a fund-raiser sale that a friend of mine puts on every year.  I was looking through all the small toys on a table when she said "Don't forget the big toys too."  And there it sat.  My friends know me so well.  I also got a huge box full of those big cardboard bricks that they use in nursery schools.  I forgot to get a pic of it.

Speaking of forgotten pics, that photobombing blue thing in the back is a handmade child's stool from the junk set out.  This apparently is the only shot I took of it.  It flips over, so it can still be used as the child grows.  It was completely filthy, but totally solid.

Speaking of the curb finds, they'll be back tomorrow.  I'll be wrapping up the bigger stuff then and moving on the the smalls by the end of the week.  The smalls are where the real awesomeness lies.

I hope everyone has nice plans for the holiday.  I was intending to go to the Big Flea today in honor of my mother.  The sixth anniversary of her death was Saturday.  Memorial weekend has a slightly different meaning for me, I guess.

However, when I was dropping stuff off at the booth, a soon-to-be-departing vendor offered me her two booths full of stuff for fifty bucks.  She's been running a sale all month to clear things out, but still had a whole lot left.  There's easily fifty bucks worth of movies alone.

On Wednesday, I'll ask the mall to add her number to my account, so I don't have to re-tag everything.  Having a separate number for the buy helps me track the sales easily as well.  They can't do it until she gets removed from the system at the end of the month, or all of her sales for May will be added to mine.  (Well, she did say I could have everything.)

So instead of the flea market, I'll be heading to the Peddlers Mall today to sort out that stuff. If anyone does want anything, I can re-tag it.  Otherwise, I'll pull it off the floor and stash it until the first.  The largest items (and there is a little bit of furniture) will go right into my spaces with new tags.  She kept her stuff fairly organized, so it won't be a hard job, but it will take most of the day.

I think Mom would understand.  I'll hit the Big Flea again in July, in honor of her birthday.  She would be 74.

The only thing I was going to be hunting at the flea market was comics, since I am running short.  However, there's already a sale for Saturday on Craigslist that advertises "thousands" of comics for 50 cents each.  And there's a con coming up at the end of June.  I think I'll be all right.

Yes, I do realize that I paid for the privilege of cleaning out someone else's spaces.  It's good karma.  The last two vendors to leave ended up just giving me tons of stuff they didn't want to haul out.

I can't play on the scale of some of the larger vendors, but I do okay for myself.  The best stuff kind of falls into your lap, it seems.

Yes, I know this is why Sorrow Mountain is a thing.  It is slowly coming down.  I need to get some pics of that progress for you all.  

Monday Rambles

Last Tuesday, I stayed up a little later than usual to work on some stuff for the booths and such.  This caused no end of consternation for Kosh and Chiquito.  Every half an hour or so, they had to come bounding over the top of me, and everything I was doing, to remind me that I was supposed to be in bed.  They alternated this with a couple of rounds of fighting to remind me that I still wasn't in bed.  We finally managed to come to an agreement, with Kosh lying at my feet while I worked and Chiquito off doing, well,  whatever it is that he does.  This lasted long enough for me to take care of things and finally get to bed.  I think it'll be a while before I try that again.  It's not worth the feline hassle.

Cats:  The True Harbingers of the Status Quo.

Junking Rule #637:  Try to Limit the Number of "Project" Pieces You Have Piled Up Waiting for Your Attention.  I've been violating this one of late, which is not a good thing.  The more something sits and waits for your attention, the less money it makes for you.  I've got to admit that I am pretty pathetic about this, because the scope of my "projects" are so pathetic.

It's not like I have furniture waiting around to get painted or fixed.  That would require a level of industry (and mechanical aptitude) that I simply do not and will never possess.  No, I work on a much smaller scale.  Stacks of comics that need to be bagged, that's more my speed.  Bags of buttons and sewing stuff to be sorted and bagged (or jarred).  A few pieces of dollhouse furniture from an old buy that needed some minor touch ups and repair.  (Hey!  I do really do furniture.  It's just tiny!)  A couple of things that have needed a good cleaning before they can be sold.  Linens and fabric that needs to be priced.  A tin dollhouse that needs to be reassembled.  (Screw furniture!  I'm building houses now!)  Jesuses (Jeses?  Jesi?) that need to be put back on crucifixes.

Despite my best intentions, I've got a pile of this stuff.  I started working through a lot of it last week, because I'm going to need to move it from the place where it currently sits soon.  I'd rather take care of it and move it out to a booth than move it across the room.  I made a pretty good dent in a short amount of time, which surprised me.  A couple more afternoons and I should be able to wipe it out.

Actually, I guess you could say that my "project pile" is more of a "procratination pile."  Or, you could just call it "pathetic."

I had an interesting experience on Wednesday.  I went to cash in some change at the grocery and filled up the Coinstar machine!  Seriously.  It not only stopped taking my coins, but it started spitting some of them back out at me.  I hadn't even put in half of what I've got saved up either! I still got over a hundred bucks out of it.  I guess I'll have to try again.  Maybe I need to go to a couple of different groceries to do this?  I wish I had thought to get a picture of the "this machine is full" message on the machine while I was there, but I was so surprised by what happened that it slipped my mind.

My dad got me in the habit of tossing my loose change into a jar or can years ago.  We've paid for all of our meals on vacation trips this way in the past.  Nowadays, I keep one of the big coffee cans around for this purpose, and that sucker is full to the brim!  I forgot to turn in a timesheet a couple of weeks ago, so I didn't get paid last Friday, so the can is now my survival money until next Friday.  I have so many short term gigs starting up and ending with the same agency that I have to keep a carefully annotated schedule of when things are due to keep up with the paperwork.  Despite all this, one managed to fall through the cracks.  Oh well, the next one will be a nice check, at least.

Lord, but last week turned into a booth week!  I was at each one practically every day by the time the week was over.  That's turned out to be a good thing, since I'm going to be hard-pressed to find a time to drop in this week.  I've had some extra work tossed my way that's going to keep me hopping from one end of this town to the other over the course of the week.  I just hope that I've got everything well set at the booths.

I really do think they should be okay.  I spent two days redoing the YesterNook booth--shifting things, marking a couple down, taking a couple of things out.  I did roughly the same for the Peddlers Mall booth, plus I added some furniture.  I also finally created my Halloween shelf and start-up Xmas display at the Peddlers Mall.  Both of them will grow over the coming weeks.  All in all, I think everything is in pretty good shape, unless I have a massive run on stuff.  While that would not be unwelcome, I'm not sure when I'll have time to restock before the weekend.

All of which brings me to the blog.  It's probably going to be a lighter week again, out of necessity.  I've got a couple of posts very near completion, but I'm not sure if I'll have the time to put the polish on them or not.  I'll certainly try, but don't be surprised if you don't hear from me until Friday.

Ah, but Friday!  On Friday, be sure to come back for a very special announcement!

Finally, I need to make an addendum to my Tips for Yard Sale Holders post, based on my experience this past weekend.  Make sure you have bags!  Honestly, there's no excuse for not having an adequate supply of bags for your shoppers and their purchases.  You can't go the store without acquiring three or four more (unless you use the reusable bags)!  If you're saving those bags for re-use or recycle (which you know you should be), then there's a plethora of them in your home, ready for your yard sale.

I was at a church sale where several vendors were set up and not one of them had any bags!  Not one.  I bought five or six small items and pretty much reached my limit on what I could carry without dropping something.  That's a point to remember:  People may buy more, if they can easily carry more.

Before I left, I decided to hit the bathroom.  One of the reasons church sales are great is that they allow you to combine a potty stop with one of your shopping stops.  The sink counter top was covered with water.  There's no place to put my stuff so I can pee!  If you didn't know, aim is kind of an important factor for guys and requires the use of at least one hand. Arrgh!  This all could have been avoided with a simple grocery bag!  Bags people!  They're more important than you think!

Booth Updates

I haven't posted any pics of the booths in a while, so I thought I would give you a tour.  I took these the other day in preparation for doing a new Craigslist push for my spaces.  I'm always a little leery about using booth pics, because they always look so cluttered in busy.  Yes, I do have a lot of stuff in my spaces, but it really is more organized than it seems form the pictures.  It doesn't help that it is very hard to get a shot at the Peddler's Mall that doesn't also take in parts of the booths all around me, adding to the chaos.  I try to compensate for that by also taking close up shots of smaller batches of merch to give a better feel for what's there.

First up, the Peddler's Mall.  I have four spaces there:  two single spaces side by side that I have turned into a double booth, a wall space, and a separate single booth where I sell mainly books.  I love the Peddler's Mall because it is unpretentious and a little freewheeling.  I can sell just about anything there, because the customer base is very diverse in background, interests and tastes.  I have quite a few regular customers.

This is a look through the double space from the aisle.

Just keeping it straightened and relatively tidy keeps me hopping!

Now some views of selected merchandise.

Most everything on those round tables has sold since I took this pic.  I tend to have a pretty quick turnover.  Now, if I could just sell the tables.  I bought them to use at the other site, but they ended up being awkward and in the way.  I just want them to go away.

These next pics come from my wall space, which exclusively houses religious articles.  I have the largest selection of secondhand religious merch in the city, or so I believe.  It's a specialty niche that brings customers in and creates regulars.

 Yes, indeed, Jesus lives at Eddie's Attic!

And, if He's here, can His Mother be too far behind?

And then there's my book area.  I've always wanted to be a bookseller.  I really try hard to have an interesting selection at good prices.

 I just love my vintage paperback rack!

 My comic and graphic novel selection is another thing that creates regulars for me.  I've got the largest selection of comics in our mall.

The ones on the table are the most recent arrivals.  As items sell off the shelves, I rotate things from the table up to the bottom shelf and then fill in the holes on the table with new stuff.  I also have a bookcase in the double booth that holds the titles that have been there the longest.  When stuff off it sells, I move books from the top shelf over there and then rotate bottom shelf books up to the top shelf and table books up to the bottom shelf.  It's not exact, but it does help me keep track of my inventory.  I sell a lot of books.  I don't necessarily have the lowest book prices in the mall, but I have the best, most unique selection by far.  I work really hard at that.

I am  totally in love with this smiley face banner and had to share it!

And this is my sign.  The name "Eddie's Attic" was suggested by Keith, because I have been pushing to have the attic space in our house finished since we bought the house.  One of these days, I'm going to have some professional signs made.

And now for YesterNook, my newest spot.  I only have one booth there, but would really like to expand.  My sales there have not been steady and regular enough for that to happen, unfortunately.  The store is a little different from the freewheeling vibe of the Peddler's Mall.  It's a little more distinct, with a heavy emphasis on furniture and vintage.  It's cozy, almost like a place where you want to hang out and drink coffee, while reading Agatha Christie books.

This is my booth from a side view.  Well, most of it anyway.

And some more specific pics.

 AnnaLee clown reads satirical British fantasy fiction.  I am slowly building my selection of books here.  I'm thinking that will help my sales.  I'm having to be more selective in my choices, though.   There's a booth selling nothing but books right down from me, and I don't want to duplicate his inventory.  That would be boring.

I'm also working more comics and graphic novels in, as well.  I'm trying to emphasize Silver Age classic stuff and alternative/independent titles that I think will appeal to the customer base here.

 Mary and Jesus are here as well, but in smaller amounts.

This telephone bench is one of my latest acquisitions.  I have high hopes for it!

Well, that's the tour!  Thanks for stopping by!  If you're in Louisville, consider stopping by to check things out in person.  Maybe I'll be there working.

June Sales Report

Oh, junking! Oh junking!
Why must you confound me so
with good months that turn bad
upon a whim?

And trends most unforeseeable?
With downturns disagreeable?
And futures that seem bright
but turn so dim?

 Tune in next week for more "Overwrought Junking Poetry Corner" right here on Eddie-torial Comments!

Okay, getting serious, now.  I haven't done a sales break down in a while, largely because I've been forgetting to do them, but also because there doesn't seem to be a point to do one in a month where I have to pay rent.  That statement alone seems to sum things up.

I spent some time talking with the manager at the Peddlers Mall a while back.  May and June are always slower months, due to a lot of reasons, ranging from the Kentucky Derby to warmer weather.  And that held true this year for the mall, except that I had a good May.  A real good May.  It had not occurred to me that a vendor could have a strong month, even if the rest of the mall was having a slow one, but it happens.  And it happened to me.

I thought June was turning out that way for me, too.     Typically, the first half of June is slow, but when the real heat of summer starts kicking in, folks start turning back to the indoor settings.  And, right around that time, as sales started picking up in the whole store, mine started slowing down!!!

Seriously, I had a bad run from about the 20th, where my daily sales stayed stuck under 10 bucks.  Ack!  Sometimes being opposite of the trend is a good thing, sometime it's not such a good thing.  I'm doing what I can to counteract that.  I spent some time on a couple of different visits rearranging and shaking things up.  I've got a couple more things to do, so we'll see if that has an effect or not for July.  Hope so.

On the other front, June was the first month at YesterNook where I had sales every day, except for one.  That means I am very close to meeting my goal for the space as far as daily sales go.  Now, I need to start working on getting those daily sales to the level I want them.

Having a better booth space on the second floor has helped me.  People can get into it and see what I've got for sale.  I'm also starting to emphasize the things I know best:  books, comics, pop culture stuff, and toys.  I intend to build on this.  Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to focus on getting rid of a few pieces that have been there too long.  I'm doing a Fourth of July sale to encourage that.  I'm also going to concentrate on getting more small furniture in the spot. I haven't worked that as hard as I should have recently.

It's a continual learning process.  Continual.  Every time I think I've got it down, then I find out there's something else I don't know.  Tune in next month and we'll see what else I've had to learn!

You gotta have heart!

I saw this at Goodwill and had to have it.  It's a mini model of the heart.

Everything is labeled, and there's a little card to identify the various heart-parts.

It even shows the inside.

It's some kind of promo for a pharmaceutical I've never heard of, but it's also cool as heck.  Which is why I wanted it.  When I started my booth, one of the things I wanted to do was include as many things as I could for sale that were unlike anything anyone else in the Peddlers Mall had.  One of the first items I bought to sell was a George W. Bush toilet scrubber.  (Actually, it was on a free table at a yard sale.)

For three years (next month), I've continued that quest for the odd, unique, and interesting to sell.  The "ed-clectic" if you will.   I do have a few of the standard kinds of items here and there, but what brings people back to my space over and over is the other stuff.  I know because customers tell me.  I know because staff tell me.  I know because other vendors tell me.  I do my best, and I have a blast while doing it.

And I promise that you won't find any Danielle Steel books.  Or unicorns.  Or clowns.  Definitely, no clowns.

But, you will find (soon) a heart model.

Because you gotta have heart.

Monday Rambles

That crumbling sound you'll be hearing later in the week is 2007's post record falling as I dash past it.  After that, I'm targeting the triple digit years.  Yay me!

Lord, but I am still tired from the weekend.  We yard saled until 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, since we were in one of the larger of Louisville's "suburban cities" for its city-wide sale.  It's big enough that we never get to the whole thing.  In fact, we usually end up in a different section each time, without realizing it.  The streets do not meet in straight corners and often curve and meander around for a while,and then, all of a sudden, you realize that you've circled back around on your path and have no idea how.

The shopping is always good, and I filled the car with all kinds of cool goods, including a whole box of stuff from a retired science teacher--prisms, specimen slides, magnets, etc.  It's one of the coolest buys I've ever made.  Look for some of it to show up in a post later this week, once I get the photos edited.

One thing that I find fascinating about this particular little city is the fact that within it there are several gated communities, including one that you actually have to be buzzed into.  That one was particularly creepy.  Every house was identical, right down to the American flag by the door!  We got out of that one in a hurry, before the Reagantonian Stepford clone reptile people could come and get us.

But seriously, when you consider that most of these small cities in Louisville were formed in the late 70's and early 80's as a part of white flight to the 'burbs to avoid busing and paying property taxes, it's kind of disturbing to see that there are those for whom that insular environment is not insular enough and they have to close themselves off even further!  Whatever world they're living in, I don't want to go there, no matter how many times my bike gets stolen.`

One more bit about these little cities and then I'll go on to other topics.  In the mid-90's when the effort for gay civil rights really ramped up in Louisville, hordes of right-wingers from these little cities swooped down on the city council rallying against it.  One of my favorite memories of the time is one of the public hearing where a particularly savvy Alderman slammed one of their spokespersons hard over it.

"Do you live in the city of Louisville?"
"No."
"Do you pay Louisville taxes?"
"No."
"Then why do you feel that you can come in here to tell us what we can and cannot legislate?"

Speaking of bikes by the way, Keith sent me an article about an increase in the number of bike thefts in our part of town.  One the one hand, it's kind of comforting to know we're not alone.  On the other hand, it's very disturbing to think that someone is out there hopping fences into people's yards with impunity.  That violation of our property is the most disturbing aspect of having my bike stolen.  I did, however, move both of our bikes so that they cannot be seen from the street any more.

Booth sales are holding steady right now.  I've had sales every day at both locations.  I should have rent made at the Peddlers Mall either today or tomorrow.  It'll be a couple of more days after that for YesterNook, but it's coming along nicely.  Yay!

We are in that odd time of year where weekday sales are regularly better than weekend sales.  Yard sale season is in full swing and folks are abandoning the indoor venues to try and beat the dealers to the bargains.  Fortunately, summer heat and humidity are also in full swing, so a lot of them will soon retreat back into the world of air conditioned bargains.  In  couple of weeks, I expect the vacation lull to hit, especially at YesterNook.

My project for the week is to get the Peddlers Mall booth back into shape.  It's a hot mess on a stick right now.  Part of the problem is overstocking, so I'm going to hold off on putting anything new out for a couple of weeks, and let some stuff sell down.  But, mainly, my booth time has been limited lately, and I haven't had the time to spend and really tidy the way I should.  I'm going to spend the whole day there on Thursday and see if that helps. I'm pulling everything off the shelves and starting from ground zero.  I might even rearrange a bit, who knows?

One area I will restock, though, is my books.  I've had a flurry of book sales over the past week or so--over fifty sold (for both locations)!  I've put out the stuff from the library sale and still have a huge gaping hole.  Since it looks sloppy like that, I will be bringing in more this week.  Fortunately, I  found a couple nice stashes this weekend.

If I remember to take the camera, I might document the booth redo for you all, but I've intended to do that in the past and have forgotten every time.  We'll see.

February Sales Break Down

I just realized that I hadn't done an analysis of last month's sales!  Usually, I start a draft at the beginning of the month, so I can have it done in a couple of days, but this time I totally forgot!  Which is really odd, given that February was a record-setting month for both sites!

At YesterNook, I had a big upswing in smalls and furniture, with some large things selling within a week of being set out.  It definitely caught me off guard.  Yet, in the midst of that, I still managed to have several days of less than ten dollar sales and a couple of no sale days.  That still frustrates me.  I don't like the feeling of having to pin my hopes on a large ticket item to pull a whole month together. 

I'm having to admit that this market is harder to crack than I thought it would be.  I just don't have the handle on my customer base that I want to.  I did bring in a lot more books to my booth there, and they seem to be selling well, so maybe I am on to something.  I don't want to sound like I'm upset about a good month, because I'm definitely not, but I like to think about things analytically, and this place just defies analysis.

Over at my other booth, things just exploded!  I was putting out four tubs of stuff at a time for a while.  I've had massive runs on books comics, CD's, Disney, Warner Brothers characters, you name it.  Not only has keeping the stock up been just about impossible, so has keeping the place neat!  But that's the kind of challenge I like, so I'll keep taking it on!

I almost broke the elusive four digit total sales record there, but didn't quite pull it out.  Still, it's exciting to be that close!

Sorry this one isn't as detailed as past reports have been, but I've pretty much filed away the reports and stuff, so I'm working from memory.  I'll try to remember to get right on this next month, while the info is still fresh.

Monday Rambles

Ever notice how when you ride your bike on a windy day, no matter which way you turn or which direction you go, the wind is always in your face?  How is that possible?

I've been stopping at a nearby White Castle after work to grab a cup of coffee before heading home.  I learned from my mother the value of a mid-afternoon cup, so I try to grab one whenever I can.  It's good just to sit and unwind for a few minutes.  I looked at my receipt a couple of days ago and realized they've been giving me the senior discount!

The weather is supposed to be pretty nice this week, which is good.  I'm back teaching at a site that is smack dab in between three of my regular thrifts and pap's running low on smalls!  Seriously, I am down to just two tubs of my winter stock.  While it is a good thing to be using stock, it's still a little ways until the yard sales really kick in, so I cannot run totally out just yet.

Weather last week was a bit all over the place.  Cold, windy, warm, rainy--you name it, we had it!

We made a quick run back to the old hometown on Saturday to retrieve a couple of my mother's old yearbooks and a few photos that hadn't made it our way.  We ended up coming back with a truckload of furniture and have another load to go back and grab this Saturday.  Just another story in the goofy tale of my family and my life as a junker.  Let's just say the booths are now quite full.

Sales have been out of sight for the most part this past week.  I had one of the treasured hundred dollar days at the Peddlers Mall yesterday, courtesy of a guy who knocked my comic inventory from three short boxes down to only two.  He bought out all of my manga single issues, except for the large anthology titles like Shonen Jump.   I am moving through stuff there at a very fast rate, hence the depletion of the winter stock. 

YesterNook has been pretty good as well, if not as consistently steady.  It does seem now that as soon as I get something set up and staged and holding lots of smalls, it sells.  I've done much better with furniture this week and am set for a record month there.  Not bad for someone that some of the others consider a flea market rat, huh?

Since I'm night teaching as well this week, I'm not riding the bike as much.  It's too much to get it home and put away and still catch the bus to my evening sites.  Kind of a shame, since it is so nice.  Hope it holds until the weekend.

January Sales Break Down

What a month January turned out to be!  If there was ever a month that underscored how unpredictable and erratic this business can be, it was January 2012.  I went from the highest highs to the lowest lows, from looking pretty god to looking pretty bleak back to pretty good again by the end of the month.  Honestly, at one point, I was looking at one of the potentially worst months ever, and in a few days, everything was completely reversed.  While it didn't turn into the best month ever, the situation did right itself and I came out pretty well in the end.

Let's break it down a bit:

PEDDLERS MALL

I really defied conventional wisdom here.  While my booth was looking its worst and I was really neglecting it due to my illness, my sales were strong.  I sold a bunch of stuff that had been just sitting there for ages.  I even sold one of my display shelves that I had grown to HATE.  I was even still selling Christmas stuff.

Then, when I got better and got the place whipped into shape--seriously, it was looking really good--everything died. I had a week where I didn't break 10 bucks once.  Not. One. Single. Day.  I never had a goose egg, but came pretty damn close.  And, then, just when I was at the point of despair, sales came roaring back in with a vengance:  fifty dollar days, forty dollar days, a nearly hundred dollar day.  And the month got pulled back from the brink of hopelessness.

So, I ended up pretty well off.  It still could have been better, though.  The sucky week meant that I came in between 100-150 lower than I should have. 

I also remembered, when reviewing the monthly print out from the store, that I had bought three shelves for the booth one night when I didn't have any cash on me.  They were nice shelves, and a good buy, and I needed them, and I'll be able to sell one (maybe two) of them at YesterNook later and make more than my money back, but since I didn't have the cash for it, I advanced it out of my sales for them month, which means I lopped 30 bucks of my monthly total my own self.  Dumb move, that.  I try to stay away from advances at all costs. 

But considering the alternatives, I'm pretty pleased overall.  And, now that it seems like tax return season is upon us, I'm hopeful for a good February and March.

YESTERNOOK

YesterNook continues the pattern of staying all over the place, as far as sales are concerned.  I'm still having days with no sales whatsoever--there were three in January.  I'm still having too many days with single digit sales--at least 11 (!), just based on a quick scan of my sales sheet.  And then there are days that are flat out spectacular.  What I don't have is any kind of a reasonable expectation.

With the Peddler's Mall, I know, based on history, that I can reasonably expect that 75-80% of the days in any given month will be at a certain level or above.  I'll have a few below that mark, and I cannot always be certain how far above it things will go, but I can identify a baseline. 

Not so with YesterNook.  At this point, the only thing I can say with certainty is that there is nothing I can say with certainty.  Maybe I still need some more time to acquire data, but I feel like I'm missing something and I cannot put my finger on it.

There is some kind of an "X factor" that comes into play when you move up from a more flea market style of environment to a store like YesterNook, and I'll be damned if I can identify it, at this point anyway.

And, despite all of the above, I had the best month ever there in January.  In fact, it's the first one that has come close to meeting the goals that I had set for the booth when I first started.  Looking at some of the numbers on some of the days, it should not have been possible, but somehow it happened.

Another curiosity is furniture.  This is the first month when furniture actually comprised a significant portion--almost half--of the total sales.  This is after having no significant furniture sales in December at all.  And, yet, December managed to come close to equaling November's sales, when there was some furniture sold.  So, based on the previously demonstrated strength of my smalls, it seems like a strong furniture month would really boost the final tally. Instead, my smalls sales actually decreased in January.

One of the things I've learned about sales is that your best days aren't made up solely of sales of your big ticket items.  Typically, the best days have a lot of sales of your smallest and cheapest items, combined with a lesser number of your mid-priced smalls, and a few of your higher-priced smalls, finished off with one (maybe two) truly large, truly big ticket item.  The YesterNook patterns are nowhere near this.

So, basically, what it boils down to is that YesterNook remains a curious beast that requires further study before I'll truly have a handle on it.  As long as I can keep having months like I had in January, I'm willing to keep on trying to solve the mystery.

Monday Rambles

It was so nice last week, I rode my bike to class every day.  Hard to believe it's just now February.

I did notice something while I was riding, though.  This class was downtown, and the street I take to get there is always really busy.  Really busy.  But, once you get downtown, a couple of the cross streets ever have traffic on them.  We're talking major cross streets in downtown and no traffic.  How does that happen?

Anyway, I'm teaching at a site further out this week, but I'm still going to ride as much as I can.  I just need to leave home earlier.

So, with this post, I have now exceeded my output for all of 2004!   Watch out 2003, you're next!  Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I should hit 700 posts sometime next week.  It's only taken almost 10 years to get there.

It was a good week for thrifting.  Found some cheap vintage Tupperware and yet more graphic novels at Goodwill.  I also found a popover pan in someone's curbside recycling on the way home from that Goodwill trip.  I was riding by on my bike, saw it, and thought "There is no way that's a metal popover pan.  It's got to be a plastic planter set or something."  So I turned the bike around and YES! it was the real deal.  A trip home and some warm soapy water later, and it's on its way to the booth.  You cannot plan these opportunities, but you have to take advantage of them when they (ahem!) pop up.

There has been an awful lot of stuff appearing on curbs of late, too.  Most of it is total crap, which is not surprising.  It is odd to see this much stuff when we're still four months away from our next curbside junk pick up period.

I just wish I knew what to do about the flood of Annalee dolls (ugly, creepy things that they are--sorry Shara!) that have hit all three branches of my favorite thrift.  I've bought everything I feel comfortable getting, but there's a lot left.  And everything I took to YesterNook has already sold out!

I'm just waaaaay out of my depth here and the prices (which may actually be quite reasonable) are more than I'm willing to pay when I'm waaaaay out of my depth.  I'm taking a "wait and see" approach, since this is a thrift that has monthly half off sales.  We'll see what happens.

Yard Sale Queen has a tutorial on removing price tags without damaging items.

Belated get well wishes and thoughts for continued recovery to Ms. Jackie of Ms. Jackie's Junque.  She had a rough time over the holidays.  I'm glad you're back on your feet and blogging and boothing again!  You should see the photos of her booths.  She can foof like nobody's business.

I'm always a little jealous of folks who can throw together these displays that look effortless.  Most of mine feel very labored and overworked.  Here's another one.  And, of course, the aforementioned Shara.

By the way, that big doll house from last week?  Gone!  Sold!  Outta there!  I was actually at the booth working when it happened, to boot.  I carried it out to the car for the woman that bought it.  My uncle was there too, and he told me later that the woman who bought it came there with the intent of buying it.  She already knew it was there and she wanted to get it.  Score another hit for Craigslist!

I also sold a set of candlestick holders that had been there so long it was giving me the blues.  It is amazing how an item can go from "Gee, this is so cool that I can't wait to put it out and see it in my booth with all the other wonderful merchandise" to "Geez, is this damn thing ever going to sell???" to "What was I thinking when I bought that?" to "I'm going to be buried with it.  I just know it!"  So, I've been doing the happy dance, needless to say.

Good, good sales at both sites lately.  I like tax season.  Of course, now that I'm selling furniture, I almost can't keep up with it!  I don't have a good place to store a couple of larger items in reserve.  I tried keeping them at one booth for the other one, but they sell when you do that.  Sometimes, my reserve sold out before the items I was reserving the reserve to replace did and then those items sold and there was no reserve!  This junk stuff is waaaaay more complicated than it looks, folks!

The weather has been so nice lately that I'm a little surprised that there haven't been any honest-to-god yard sales.  You know, the kind actually in the yard?  With cheap stuff?  Don't people know that there is a world of yard sale junkies out there going through withdrawal and jonesing for a fix who would gladly storm a yard and buy every last damn thing in it, just for the general principle of going to a sale in the dead of winter?  C'mon people!

Instead what we've been having are indoor benefit sales that promise the moon and then turn out to be really lame.  Seriously, if you're trying to raise money for a beloved cause, wouldn't you want to make sure that you had enough items for sale to actually, I don't know, raise some money?  

Pardon me.  Lack of good sales makes me grumpy.

One last boothing note, and I'll be gone.  The Peddlers Mall that I am in (and only that site) is reducing space rent to $99 monthly for an 8x10 space.  (Starting next month, existing vendors get the reduction, which is exciting to me!)  The price will be good through all of 2012, so if you've ever wanted to give this junking thing a try and you're in the Louisville area, this is a good time to do it.  Contact info at the link.  (And if you are interested, but don't know how to get started, I'll be doing several "how to" posts about selling in a vendor mall over the next few weeks.  There's never been a better time to get started.)