Elvis Presley Placemats

Elvis Presley placemats in Saturday's garage sale
Elvis Presley placemats in Saturday’s garage sale

After 30 years in the city we moved to a house that didn’t have enough room for all our stuff so the stuff remained in boxes for six years. In that time we accumulated more stuff and when Peggi’s mom passed away we wound up with even more stuff. The time has come for our first Garage Sale!

We been preparing for Saturday’s Garage Sale our entire life, accumulating stuff that we liked, never thinking of it as collectable or even having any trade-in value at all and then comes the realization the stuff is in the way. Beyond giving things away and then donating stuff to charity there is the practical matter of putting a little white sticker on each and every glass bird or Elvis Presley placemat.

Our friend’s, Alice and Julio, were planning a sale this Saturday as part of a neighborhood sale in Pittsford. We plan to piggyback on their sale and make it a party. We ripped our lps and cds so our entire record and cd collection is for sale. We weeded our book shelves, our closets, the garage and the basement and came up with a truckload of stuff for the sale. If you’re out and about on Saturday stop by. I’m sort of dreading it but it could be fun. Alice is calling it “The Best Garage Sale Ever!”

Garage Sale Details

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Devaluing Value

Old rock magazines headed for garage sale on Saturday in Rochester, New York
Old rock magazines headed for garage sale on Saturday in Rochester, New York

I was going to toss these old magazines in the 50 cent box for Saturday’s yard sale but I stopped to check the eBay price of the Rock Scene with the dorky picture of Keith and I found it just sold for $26. There is so much anxiety involved with this whole garage sale thing.

I had this U2 cd single of a song called “Numb” from the Zooropa album. It was a promo sent to us when we were doing the print version of the Refrigerator and our friend, Duane, told us it was valuable so I put it right by my monitor for the day when we decided to liquidate. I guess it’s more like downsizing or miniaturizing as in mp3 files. Ironically, the precious cd” wasn’t there when I reached for it. I had to laugh. I never even ripped it either. Its probably in one of the cd boxes out in the garage.

I spot-checked the thousands of cds and vinyl records and found that vinyl was worth more than the cds so I decided to go with $3 for the vinyl and $4 for the cds and I will probably lower the price in the afternoon.

I never expected to get any money back when I finished with our books and records and Rock Scene magazines yet the value we placed in these things while we owned them gets devalued when we look them up on line. It’s all kind of weird. A lot of our stuff came from garage sales in the first place. Maybe this is what makes the world go ’round. This is our first garage sale and I hope its the last.

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