Boosha: You stick with us and we’re going to show you a lot of the secrets of Second Market Shopping.

Tinka: We’re going to show you brand names; we’re going to tell you where is the best place to go, and what’s the best time to go. The 1st of the month is when you want to go thrift shopping, because if you go by the 15th all the things are just about gone, okay! Usually re-sale stores stock once a week. So either the Monday or the Saturday you want to go first thing in the week.  You also want to….

Boosha: Find out what day they are gonna have a bag sale, if they have a bag sale.  Could be a Tuesday or Thursday, could be on Saturdays, could be Wednesdays and Saturdays. And different stores are going to have different prices on the bag sales. Even if clothes are 50 cents or a dollar, you are still going to get a better buy by buying a bag, in quantity, everything that fits into that bag will cost you anywhere from $2-5 depending upon the store.

Tinka: That’s like Boosha said, when you go to a garage sale, you pick all the things that you know you want and take them up. Offer — don’t embarrass the woman. Offer her a decent price, and say, “can we work with this? Can I get this, you know, for this amount of money?”  If she says okay, fine. If not, then you have room to dicker about what’s going on. In other words, she will say “I want $,” and you say “You know, I am trying real hard, can I get it for $4.50?” she’ll probably give it to you, because she doesn’t want to bring it home.

Vivienne: And what’s the general rule of thumb for bargaining and dickering for people who aren’t used to that?

Tinka: If you know you would go to the store and you’d buy this item for $60, and it’s in the box at a garage sale and it looks brand new, and she wants $40 for it, offer her $25.  She will probably take $25.  Please don’t offer her $6, don’t offer $4 or $2. Because truthfully, would you like somebody to do that to you, if you had paid that kind of money for it?

Boosha: And the other thing you can always ask someone, instead of saying “well, I’ll give you $5 bucks,” say, “well would you take less?”

Tinka: Don’t ever say to someone “I will give you.” Because, one, it makes them defensive, and two, put yourself in their shoes, okay.  If you think that that item is worth a certain amount of money, you don’t want someone telling you “I’ll give you.” You want somebody to tell you, “what would you take.” or “I only have so much in my purse. You know, what’s the least amount you would take?”

Vivienne: And especially in these days, because the economic times are so bad, people are selling their treasures for a very low amount and its hurting.

Tinka: Right!

If you enjoyed this post and found it useful, please share it by hitting the “share” button below, and let us know what you think by adding a comment to this post.  To get our blog posts delivered directly to your email inbox, fill in your email address in the sign up box in the upper left hand corner; never miss a post!