1) Dollar Generals come with no intention of spending more than $1, and satisfy their recessionary consumerism with the purchase of a book or toy for $1 (60% of customers).

2) Voyeurs drive by at 1 mph and look out the window to see if it’s worth getting out of the car, then decide to keep going (15%).

3) Silent Lookers actually get of the car, look disapprovingly at merchandise, and drive off without a word (10%).

4) Extreme Bargainers offer an insulting fraction of marked prices (5%).

5) Smooth Salers actually look at merchandise, offer a compliment or two, and if they purchase something, happily pay price as marked (10%).

In my neck of the woods, we don’t have nearly as many Voyeurs. Or maybe I just sell better junk so they actually get out of the car. It could just be that what was actually visible from the car wasn’t all that interesting. (See Top 25 tips for having a great garage sale for some ideas on planning your next garage sale.) Hmmm… Or maybe there are a LOT more sales in Allison’s neighborhood so getting out of the car is saved for sales with specific merchandise. The fact that Allison had 10% silent lookers makes me think that it was, in fact, WHAT she was selling. Seriously? 1 in 10 not buying anything? Heck, I’d close up and go back to bed if my sales were that bad. 5% on extreme bargainers? Maybe it was just that her prices were high and what she thought was extremely low was really the going rate.

I couldn’t tell from the article if Allison ever goes garage sale shopping, she may not have the experience to know how to price stuff. In any case, it was a cute article and I rather enjoyed Alison’s writing style.

Having said that, I’ll admit first hand that I have no way to go through the thousands of craigslist listings that my bot gathers each week for Garage Sale Finder. Now and then a dud slips through. On the plus side, it’s only Monday night and there area almost 800 sales “scraped” for next weekend already.