Saturday, June 20, 2020

I'll Stick With The Marketplace For Now


I have mentioned many, many times that Lisa and I love to frequent yard sales and flea markets during the late Spring, Summer, and Fall seasons. We are always on the lookout for unique pieces to fix, restore, and give new life to. Some pieces we offer up for grabs. The rest, we keep. This year, it's been a little wonky because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For that reason, in April I joined a bunch of Facebook Yard Sale pages with locations in our town and surrounding towns. I wasn't looking for anything specific. I scanned the Yard Sale pages once a day with the same open mind that I do when we physically visit yard sales and flea markets.

Early one evening in May, I stumbled across a gorgeous antique armoire that a young woman had posted a few minutes prior. She was letting it go for super cheap.

I honestly thought the price was a mistake. 

I showed Lisa and moved forward.

I contacted the seller and she messaged me right away.

You can read the rest of that story here.

From that point on, I visited the yard sale sites more frequently throughout the day.

However.

Within a few short weeks, things changed.

I'm not sure if it's because more people were opting to sell items online instead of having an actual yard sale or people were in dire need of quick money.

Or, the moderators and administrators were too busy to do their job. 

But, today I left all of the yard sale groups.

If you're interested, here's why...

1. Cross Posting. I belonged to 7 yard sale groups and that included our town in addition to 6 surrounding towns within a few short miles away. I expected to see different items for each town. Nope. The same people posted the same item/s on all of the yard sale pages. It was repetitive. If you live in Brooklyn, Connecticut, post your item on that particular page. If you live in Putnam, Connecticut, post your item on that particular yard sale page.

2. Spam. People from out of state and other countries were posting videos of blackhead removal, pimple popping, digging holes in the ground and filling it with water and calling it a swimming pool, etc. There was no way to hide those posts. They had been allowed to sit there for hours. I. Just. Can't.

3. Price gouging. Within an hour of removing myself from all of the yard sale pages, there were 2 items that threw me over the edge. The first, someone posted a half gallon jug of iced tea for $1. The second, someone took 2 pieces of wood and nailed them together. They took another 2 pieces of wood and did the same thing. This person advertised the set as antique shelves from reclaimed barn wood from the late 1800s and wanted $100 for the set.

4. Too many people claimed "antique" on their listings. If something is antique, provide a year. Paperwork. Proof. You can't post a photo of something old and claim it's "antique" and charge a whopping amount.

5. The dingy sofas. If your sofa is chewed up and has stains where people sit, and you advertise that it is vintage and charge $200, it makes you look ridiculous. It's not vintage. It's dirty and disgusting.

6. Bedroom Sets. The same holds true for bedroom sets. No one wants your stained mattresses.

7. Clothing. Too many people were selling multiple items of clothing and creating separate posts for each thing. I don't want to spend half of my morning scrolling through post after post of wrinkled shorts and toddler swimsuits especially when they're cross posting.

I'm going to stick to Facebook Marketplace.

I think.


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