Boy, this new schedule is taking some getting used to, let me tell you. I had gotten pretty used to something semi-regular, and now it's gone. Pretty much sunk last week for me, as far as the blogging goes. I've got about two weeks worth of stuff partially written, but no real time to finish anything.
The older I get, the longer it seems to take me to adjust to life changes and switch-ups like this. I was pretty much working everyday from 12-2:30, with a couple of nights thrown in. Now, I've gotta be on the other side of town at 9 two days a week, plus four nights a week!
It's kind of frustrating, since I'm only a handful of posts away from hitting my 2005 total.
Anyway, sales are struggling to rebound from the NCAA tournament lull. Last week was really good at Peddlers. Not so much at YesterNook. It's too early to tell if the move upstairs there will help me or not. This is Spring Break week, which is traditionally slow in the re-sale biz, as lots of families head out of town. Then, at the end of the month, we get hit with the beginning of the Derby festivities. which go through the first week in May. April is a real hard month for us.
Actually, this is kind of the beginning of the slowest part of the sales year, which will last until about mid-June. People abandon the indoor re-sale venues for the yard sales until it starts getting really hot, then the A/C wins out.
I worked all day at the Peddlers Mall yesterday. It really needed it. I was getting really low on stock. Looks much better now. I took out the Easter stuff and replaced that display with my "generic all-purpose" display.
I have a table that I use for my seasonal displays. In the "in between" times, I usually just pile it up with the few tools, household goods, and office supplies that I manage to accumulate through box lot purchases and the like. Normally, I just keep this stuff under the table in a couple of bins. It's not the kind of stuff that is worth taking up major display room. I don't set out to acquire it. It just happens.
Once or twice a year, when there is no other "theme" or "season" happening, I pull the bins out and put everything on the table for a few weeks. Everything will sell down and I'll be rid of it.
There was a new family setting up a booth not far from mine yesterday. That's always nice to see. They kept going into other booths to see how other people did their price tags. I gave them a little advice on foiling shoplifters.
Yard sales were interesting Saturday. We went to an alley sale where two different people tried to charge me for a folk art stuffed chicken I'd bought at another house. Really, folks! If you had a black chicken with white polka dots all over it in your sale, don't you think you would remember it??
Then, there was the mother of all vintage paper-goods sales. Apparently, this woman had been collecting old cards, notes, stickers and the like for years. Everything was reasonably priced, too. Everything was a dollar or less, with most items being a quarter.
Except for the small handful of unpriced items I found: three packs of bridge tallies, a sticker book and a vintage Halloween card. I was informed that she "had to" charge me three bucks for that, because the card had the original envelope and I could sell the sticker book for "five dollars." I told her that I'd just pass on the handful and get the rest of the pile I had gathered. "How about two dollars? I have to get rid of this stuff. You'll make five on those stickers." I agreed to the two and paid and left. It was just bizarre, given how reasonably everything else was priced and how much I was buying.
By the way, I looked those stickers up. Not so much. I really hate it when people tell me what I'll "make" when I sell stuff. It's a desperation tactic to get you to pay their prices. Who says I'm going to sell the stickers? Maybe I'm going to paste them all over my body for bizarre naked moonlight rituals. I should have said that.
Finally, here's a message from Chiquito:
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I'm not sure what it means, but it's all he had time to type before I moved the keyboard.
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