Ever have one of those “buying and selling to make money days” where you 1) get up before the sun, ready for a huge day of yard-saleing, and 2) you’re rarin’ to go with a pocket full of buying cash, and 3) you’re FIRST at just about every yard sale you hit, and………
4) You hardly buy a single thing?
Sigh. It happens. In fact, it happened this very weekend.
On Friday, Kath & I decided to try to get away for a day or so. Neither of us have had much of any days off this summer – nature of the beast in construction. So, we knew it was going to be a gorgeous weekend, and decided to head on over to the Maine coast.
It’s only about 2, maybe 2 1/2 hours to the coast from our place here in the mountains. We figured we’d leave nice and early, and get to as many yard sales as we could while en route to the beach. This way, we could actually get a little buying work done!
So, we packed an overnight bag Friday night, packed our cooler full of water and snacks to hold us until we could have lunch at one of our favorite restaurants, and set out first thing Saturday morning.
We even had the camera and extra batteries with us so we could document some “buying and selling to make money” moments for the blog!
We got to our first yard sale early enough… no one had been there yet. This particular sale was at the end of a dirt road and about 5 miles out of our way, but we figured, “Hey, at least we’ll be first!”
Oh, we were first alright… But try as we might, we couldn’t find ANYTHING to buy that would be worth my time selling on eBay, CraigsList OR live auction. It was a young couple getting ready to move, and we felt really bad leaving without buying anything, so we finally bought a few small cast iron pans (nothing special).
No big deal. We went to another sale. Nothin’.
Another sale. Again, nothin’.
We hit one sale that had a nice little L.L.Bean Child’s Sled, and an old rotary dial, wall-mount telephone from Bell System by Western Electric. It’s not in pristine condition, but for 50-cents, what the heck. 
The rest of the day went downhill from there.
You would think that driving through rural Maine on a gorgeous Saturday morning we’d find something. Anything.
Oh, sure. We found a couple of Play Station 2 games. Not even Play Station 3.
Outside Bridgton, ME, we finally hit a sale where I found…. some copper tubing (good for scrapping out) and boxes of screen door hardware that – between those two items should pay for our lunch. The red phone might bring $10 or $20 (more, I think on eBay if it were in better condition).
But certainly not our gas to get to the coast. Nor for the hotel room (a cheap one too – OFF the beach!).
No worries. Mama said there’d be days like this!
So what about next week?
We’ll get up and do it again! 🙂
PS: We had a blast anyway! The weather was stellar, we walked barefoot on the beach, had fun watching all the people, found a beautiful nature marsh walk… Yup! Life is Good!
