I will buy bargains on the spot, but I will not put money down on a chance to buy something later. I will sign up for Rainy Day coupons at stores like K Mart if it is a really good deal, but I would not do that online, because with online deals you do not know who you are dealing with. Of course, if the item was a firearm, I don't think I would order one of those online at all. There are far too many shady characters selling guns. And I suppose ammo as well. A guy I met in a garage sale in Hialeah had four shoe boxes of ancient ammo. "Take it all for $10",he said. I was only looking at it. I have no more need of ammo than a breast pump or a truss. I have seen many of those as well.
I have only seen a couple of pistols at yard sales in the past 25 years, and a LOT of flare guns for sale by people with boats.
I never buy the extended warranty when offered, not even on refurb electronics, and it turns out that it would never have been a better deal to do so, since either the device arrives defective or it lasts far beyond any warranty. HP's online service, by the way, is far too expensive. I have had two really good printers from them (black ink only), but the last three were awful. Paper jams galore, and even the YouTube videos on how to fix them were inadequate. I now have an Epson Artisan 835 with a continuous ink attachment that always works. I bought it used on EBay from a professor with a Chinese name at UNC.
I love yard sales for bargains. Only occasionally have I bought something that does not work and never anything I paid over $10 for. No one should ever pay retail for some things. Car Wax, picture frames, baseball hats, shoes, wall clocks and costume jewelry. Here in Miami houses normally lack both attics and basements, so storage space is limited. A lot of the best yard sale finds are gifts that were rarely or never used. People don't want to donate them and hate regifting them.
Rich neighborhoods are best for yard sales, because rich people need the space. Poor people want money and will ask for more for things. Plus many times, they are selling things rescued from trash pick up day. There are a lot of Haitians that cruise yard sales who people hate to do business with because Haitians when they are buying try to lower the price by offering a pittance with a sour expression on their faces and act like the item was trash. Haitians when selling act the other way, like they are selling the crown jewels. I have spent some time watching Haitians buying and selling to other Haitians both in the US and in the Dominican Republic and concluded that it is a part of the culture. In the DR, a lot of the veggie sellers in the market are Haitians, and the most successful ones are the ones that smile and offer reasonable prices. I imagine that many of them were born in the DR. Not all Haitians behave in the same way.
The ideal place for yard sales is Coral Gables, because the streets are not numbered and the names are a hodgepodge of Spanish and Italian names with no particular system, and the only way to find an address is with a GPS or a map. Haitians who buy to resell never show up in the Gables. They are fond of large SUVs but I guess they do not know how to use the GPS. So there is less competition.
I rarely see American Black people at yard sales. There are not many Dominicans, Central Americans or Mexicans, and only a few Cubans. In Mexico and the DR people tend to buy used stuff only from Pawnshops, like the Montepio in Mexico run by the Mexican government. You can buy authentic Spanish conquistador armor and all sorts of stuff there. Once I saw a lifesize statue of Socrates that looked like marble.
There are some regular yard sale junkies. There is one guy I see all the time, asking about gold and silver coins and jewelry. I have yet to see anyone tell him they have such stuff. Poor people do not have Kugerrands and gold Rolexes and rich people know that no one brings that much money to a yard sale. But I guess he must find something, because I have been seeing him for the past six years or so.
I usually collect all the stuff and ask for a price for everything. If it seems fair, I don't make a counteroffer. If they want too much, I say that I am over budget for the week, smile and make a counteroffer, about half the time this works. When it doesn't work, I try to find what the overvalued item is and buy the rest. People who have retail stores are the hardest to deal with. They like to ask "do you know what XXX wants for that?" and I say, "yeah, but that is why I am looking for it in a yard sale." XXX is always some Mall store whose doors I darken only out of curiosity. Bargaining is best done Mexican style: joke around, hold it up to your ear and ask "¿Tiene radio?", smile and start sentences with the word seriamente. In Mexico this does not actually mean sincerity, it means ironic sincerity. Bargaining in Mexican markets can be a lot of fun. Americans tend to be either too aggressive or too inexperienced to have any fun at haggling.
When I sold Mexican guitars and velvet Elvis paintings in Albuquerque, I was in the same place for Saturday and Sunday. When people made lowball offers, on Saturday, I told them to return on Sunday at 4PM, and I would meet that offer then. Only occasionally did anyone actually return and only a couple of times did they find that I still had the item. Many times. the guy would buy the painting at my price. I never had to haggle over guitars. Guitars players would play a few riffs and either buy it or leave it. Price is a minor thing when it comes to musical instruments, I think. I bought them from a factory in Juarez and they were better than you could find on the street because I provided American made strings, that had a lot better action than the usual cheapo Mexican strings. There are a couple of factories that have really good strings in Mexico, but I did not know about them until three years later when I met my Mexican Mariachi pal, Guadalupe Grande. That was the name on his cedula, believe it or not. Grande is not a common surname in Mexico, and Guadalupe is usually a woman's name. I think his full name was Mario Guadalupe Grande Montoya or something like that. I met him in Guadalajara in a guitar shop.
