Our Crap Could Be Your Crap!
We’re thinking about having a tag sale upstate over the Memorial Day weekend. Tag sales are big business in the Catskills. It’s a common sight to see signs at every intersection, as well as tag salers from all over pulled off to the side of the road and poring over someone else’s junk, hoping to find the bargain, the deal, the steal.
I haven’t decided yet how to advertise for our sale, which is to say what to put on our homemade sign scribbled on the clean side of a cardboard box panel. I looked around the internet for inspiration, and noticed that a lot of people got clever:
Hoarders Paradise Ahead!
Put Our Junk in Your Trunk!
Classy Crap This Way!
One person glued a picture of Obi-Wan Kenobi onto a sign that read:
This IS the sale you’re looking for.
This one was my favorite, though:
Tag Sale
Free Wine and Beer
Duly noted.
From a marketing standpoint I think we should call ours a “barn sale” rather than “tag sale.” The latter sounds like you’re just putting out the same old crap others will buy and add to the piles of crap that are already cluttering their own houses. Calling it a barn sale, on the other hand, elevates your crap to a new level. It evokes the possibility of finding the hidden treasure, the antique chest of drawers, sideboard, or painting that someone will be able to turn around and get appraised on Antiques Road Show for thousands of dollars.
You know, like the cabinet Lizzy once found at a barn sale near Woodstock, which looked like some old piece of junk anybody in their right mind would’ve thrown out years ago. They were asking $25 for it and I was appalled. After arguing with Lizzy for ten minutes that we should never in a million years pay twenty-five bucks for some old worm-eaten piece of wood, my wife insisted that it was worth hundreds of dollars and that she was buying it. That was that, of course, although I did talk the seller down to $20, which gave me some small comfort.
We brought the piece of junk home, I made some minor repairs, slathered it with a coat of milk paint, and Lizzy was as delighted with this so-called bargain as with a new Kate Spade purse. I could only shake my head in bewilderment.
The thing is, not long after that we were in an antique store, and sure enough there was a similar-looking vintage cabinet selling for $475.
“See,” Lizzy said and wandered off with a bit of a triumphant, it seemed to me, sashay to her hips. Again, I stood there staring at the cabinet and shaking my head in bewilderment.
So, come Memorial Day weekend, we’ll have our own sale on the front lawn. Since, technically, we don’t have a barn, I guess “tag sale” it will have to be. Perhaps more to the point, we don’t have any hidden treasures, apart from the aforementioned $475 antique cabinet, which Lizzy will never part with. All we really have is a bunch of crap that we hope someone else will buy and add to the pile of crap they already have cluttering up their own house.
Oh, and free wine and beer.
