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World’s Greatest Yard Sale

I spent about three hours today wandering around the World’s Greatest Yard Sale at the York Expo Center. I’m pretty sure it’s not even called the World’s Greatest Yard Sale any more, but since I’ve gone all but one year since I was born, I figure I can call it whatever I want.

Our family tradition in past years has been to round up tons of family members and friends and spend the whole day going through every single stand, even the junkiest ones, then heading to nearby Alexander’s for dinner. This year was a little different; we were minus extended family and plus a specific mission.

My husband, daughter, mom and I are looking for new dining room chairs. Ours got, well, eaten by a wood-chewing former dog. Being on the thrifty and slightly crafty side, we decided to look for some used ones that we could reupholster and paint. This has been a many-weekend project, but finally we found some today.

We talked the guy down from $30 for two chairs to $45 for four, not too bad. I’ll post some before and after pictures of them later. This was only hours after we got a new family-room sofa from coworker Sam. She was going to sell it at her yard sale today, but I beat her to the punch last night and her husband brought it over this morning. (Though you might not believe it based on our tendency to furnish from castoffs, we do have a nice house. Just want to put that out there.)

Anyway, we had a good time at the sale today, though it was a much smaller production than in previous years, both in terms of number of Concilio relations and in terms of number of vendors. My husband and I are book-lovers and make some extra money selling used books online, so we picked up a good selection of books both for us and to resell.

I got three necklaces for 2 bucks apiece, too. My daughter, who just finished first grade, got 10 of some fourth-grader’s castoff Pokemon cards for a dime each. Add in the obligatory Bricker’s and fried veggies, and it was a profitable afternoon, despite us being too squished in the car (four people, four chairs… hmm….) to attempt a stop at Alexander’s.

One more local observation of note: We saw more sports memorabilia than usual, including a guy selling cards from the York Revolution coaches (Bumbry, Minor, Hoiles, etc.) for a quarter apiece, saying you could take them to the games and get them autographed.

Anyone else go this year? What did you think? Any good buys?

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