What's it Worth Not to Move It

So, our garage sale is about to begin. We're hoping to sell three-quarters of our personal things and all of our business inventory. This will reduce the volume of things we will have to move in a couple of months.

I snapped some pictures of our business inventory. Well, some of it. We've got more than 700 items to sell. Virtually all of it is being sold at a tremendous loss. There's one item for which the suggested retail price was $21. I listed it for a dollar. Just to get rid of it. Not everything is going to be such a bargain. Some things are being sold at 80-90% of our cost. But for the items which never did move well I've given up and am practically giving them away.

W.C.Fields was quoted as saying: There comes a time in every man's life when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation squarely.

Regarding our business, I guess this is my time for that.

What I find most unfortunate is how "junky" everything looks in our garage. Maybe that's why I found it so difficult to even price things at cost. We don't have the nice displays that we used when we would set up at shows and private homes. Unpainted and untaped drywall makes a poor backdrop. So does a concrete floor. And it's dark. And cluttered with so many things put in such a small place.

We'll be selling food and drink, too. We purchased a grill (because we're planning on selling our stove) and will be cooking hot dogs. Then there are bags of snacks, freeze pops (until the chest freezer and refrigerator sell), soda pop, and bottled water. During part of our sale there is a city-wide garage sale going on, and a carnival, so we're hoping for a lot of traffic at that time. Spouse keeps wanting to delay the sale of certain items, but I maintain that most of our sales are going to occur during that carnival period, so we had best have everything out at that time - or we're going to be stuck moving it. (Or throwing it away.) I suppose the new items could be turned over to a local Goodwill or Salvation Army.

To satisfy possible curiosity, I am posting some of the pictures I took of our business inventory. It is varied, as we displayed different things for different shows. The dolls are not set up at this time, so I have no pictures of them. But those have been a good sell for us. Some things have done suprisingly poor. People aren't keen on buying Mother's Day items. Most of the toys have gone well, though. And incense. I've never been keen on incense, but a lot of people are.

So, here are the pictures. And please remember, the items looked a lot nicer when they were displayed in other environments with more room.

One of my favorite things to sell are the wooden trains. These are made by Maple Landmark, a Vermont company which is privately owned. They are very nice people and make an excellent product. They have Name Trains and Timber Toots. We've mostly been selling Timber Toots and track. It fits with all the mainline wooden train sets.

The Scoots are also made by Maple Landmark. The decks of cards we got through a toy distributor. We got a good deal on them. (No pun intended.) Now others are going to get a bargain as we're pricing them low. Low hand wins this time.

I fell in love with Luckyphants (little elephant figurines) from the first moment I saw them. They came from the same company which makes our musical dolls, although they didn't make the Luckyphants. For some reason, the company which actually made them stopped making them. Don't know why, but this is all we have left. Love the musical angels in the background, too. Unfortunately, I appear to be the only one with such feelings. We've had them in stock for years. I'm selling them at a 75% loss. Losing on the Luckyphants, too.

The glass crosses did not go over well, and it's taken a few years for us to reduce our inventory to five or six. We did Amia suncatchers for a time, too. The only ones which sold well were those depicting cats. I was surprised. They are all glass and hand-made. Gorgeous. Another huge loss.

Our spun glass items didn't fare well. The only pieces which sold well were the Birthstone Angels (middle shelf left). Unfortunately, they are so delicate that it was not unheard of that I should break one or two setting up during shows. Did so in the garage. Lost both of the January angels. Now what's left is a February and a July.

We also did a variety of garden and figurine items. Bird feeders did well, and we have none left in stock (unless you count the sprite at the left as a feeder). This is the last of our planters and Tiger plates. I'm normally not a plate collector, but I liked the cat plates. We bought one for ourselves, as well as a Cougar plate. Unfortunately, we entered the business just as the company was discontinuing their cat plates. Our plush did well. We're down to three Piglets. Plush Snoopy dogs did VERY well.

Here is a hodgepodge of items on our Cross Display. During shows we would drap the display with dark blue cloth which made the crosses stand out. Crosses probably did better than anything we sold, which I confess surprised me. Except for glass crosses. My favorite happens to be the Ivory Cross, which is next to the Nursery Cross at the left. I bought a mess of those and we still have two left. The Nursery Crosses did not do well at all. We wound up buying them ourselves and giving them away as presents to new mothers. Of what's left, the ones showing the life of Jesus did the best. The Birthstone Bears did excellent - until Aurora decided they wouldn't make them anymore. Now we're down to six: three for June and three for August. That's Chinese Incense hanging at the right. Big losses on all of this stuff.

Night lights did not go over well, and that was a disappointment. My favorite is the frosted glass head of Jesus. Paid a lot at wholesale for that. Too much, I guess. In order to make a profit I had to set the price high. Also, it was difficult to display properly. In the daytime it doesn't look like much. But at night. Wow! The books are The Christmas Letters. Got those from a small publishing house from South Dakota. They did okay. Well enough that I'm selling them at a profit. We paid $2.99 for each. We're selling them for $3.00.

And so there you have it. That's most of what we're selling. What's especially nice about the fact that we're selling at a loss is that we don't even get to keep all of the money. You see, since these items were purchased for our business, we did not pay sales take to get them. This means we much charge sales tax when we sell them. So if we sell and item for $1.00, we really have sold it for $0.93. The State of Minnesota gets $0.065 sales tax, which rounds up to $0.07. And we DO charge sales tax. The last thing we need is to get in trouble with the government. Our government is not exactly noted for being forgiving. And we have a Republican governor, so you can imagine how nice he can be. No. We'll pay our sales tax. Even when we charge a quarter. Then we make twenty-three cents and the state gets its tuppence.