400 Mile Yard Sale 2013

Some of the sights around Hopkinsville, KY

Old iron tools

It's good that the 400 Mile Yard Sale is held for 4 days. This year, it rained all day Thursday and half of Friday. But Saturday was a beautiful day of sunshine. Keely and I left her house at 8:00 AM (which is early for us on a Saturday.)

First we went to some sales around Hopkinsville. Many of them were unimpressive, but we loved the sale at the Senior Center. The parking lot and auditorium was full of tables of merchandise, and many of the vendors were ready to deal. I found a 1902 health book for just $2. (I love old textbooks.) Keely bought a rock-band poster and a hat.

At the Senior Center in Hopkinsville

Bargain bling

A nice lady in a zany hat had a lot of jewelry on her table. I 'm collecting shiny things for a craft project, so I bought a bag of jewelry odds and ends and mismatches and another little set of matching earrings and brooch.

A bit of Hopkinsville history

Fun-to-see art at the Senior Center

From the Senior Center, we drove east of Hopkinsville on 68/80. There was at least one yard sale per mile between Hopkinsville and Fairview, and in some of the miles, there were several sales.  Keely was looking for baby things for her friend who is pregnant. She found a nice baby swing for just $15 -- it's the sort that can swing either sideways or back and forth.

Lots of baby items at this sale

Butler Antiques from Hopkinsville and several other antique and flea market dealers always set up their sales on a hill a few miles east of Hopkinsville. Two years ago, I bought a chest of drawers for my son there, and last year I bought a nice wooden cabinet for my utility room. This year I only bought little things, so I didn't have to go home and get the truck to haul furniture -- thank goodness!

I liked the red chest, but I didn't need it!

Loved the colorful glass in the sunshine!

The Eastview Baptist Church is usually our next stop after the sale on the hill. In past years, they've had a huge yard sale event with dozens of people selling. But this year they didn't have enough volunteers to staff it. The Kentucky New Era reported that they hope to participate again next year. We have always enjoyed their sale immensely,  and we felt a bit sad when we drove by their empty church yard.

To our surprise, an Amish lady was one of several sellers at this site. From the place where the two men are standing, the sales continued around a corner, up a little hill, and around another corner.

We weren't sure if the next sale was really a yard sale or not. The sign on the highway said, "Pool Table." But we turned off and drove up the hill, and sure enough, they were having a yard sale that included various pieces of art. I think the $2800 price tag on a sculpture was the most expensive thing we saw all day. But it was an interesting work of someone's hands, and I enjoyed seeing it. Coming back down the hill to the highway, we enjoyed the view.

Finally we arrived in Fairview. The little town was having a big day, and as always, the Jefferson Davis memorial was towering above it all. Lots of Mennonites were visiting the sales and riding through town on their bicycles and in horse-drawn vehicles. The buckboard in the photo below is essentially a one-horsepower pickup truck.

The Fairview Fire Department was selling barbecue sandwiches and cold drinks, as well as yard-sale items. The clothes on one of their trailers were 4/$1.00, so I bought some t-shirts to cut up. (I look for shirts that have no side seams so I can cut the bodies of the shirts into long continuous strips for crocheted rugs.)

Support your local volunteer fire department!

We were losing our momentum after seven straight hours of yard sales, so we decided to end this year's 400 Mile Yard adventure. We stopped at the Mennonite grocery store on our way out of Fairview, and then I took Keely back to Hopkinsville. As I drove back out to my country home, I thought about all the sellers who had started at dawn and wouldn't close until dusk. I was glad to be just a shopper, able to quit and go home anytime I wanted.

400 Mile Sale 2013

Be there or be square.

The 400 Mile Yard Sale will be June 6-9 along Highway 80 in Kentucky. See http://www.400mile.com/ for the details. Last year, a reader suggested that I should post the dates of this epic event in advance, instead of just posting photos of it afterwards. So, take heed if you're the garage-sale sort! The big one is only two months away!

Blast from the past:
A Yard Sale Extravaganza
400 Mile Sale This Weekend
400 Mile Yard Sale 2012
400 Mile Sale is Underway

400 Mile Yard Sale, 2012

Photos from the 15 miles we shopped

Keely and I spent most of Saturday visiting a small portion of Kentucky's 400 Mile Yard Sale along Highway 68/80. We got started about 8:00 a.m., and before we drove out on Highway 68/80, we went to a few yard sales around town.

I photographed these lovely hydrangeas while we were at an estate tag sale. The lady who was running the sale had marked each item slightly under its appraised price, and she was reluctant to negotiate. The house was crowded with shoppers, but everyone was leaving empty-handed.

Well, enough of that!  We decided to hit the highway!

A Yard Sale Extravaganza

400-Mile Yard Sale, 2011

This weekend, Kentucky's 400-Mile Yard Sale is taking place along Highway 68/80, a route that passes through Christian County. Keely and I drove out to some sales this afternoon, along the highway east of Hopkinsville.

The Eastview Baptist Church had been advertising on their marquis for several weeks that anyone could set up a yard sale there for free. Today, their property looked like a flea market with a church in one corner. It was full of tents and tables of merchandise! When we arrived, the parking lot was packed with cars, and between sellers and buyers, there must have been 150 people (or more) on the grounds.

When we pulled into the church driveway, a lady welcomed us, invited us to use the restrooms and to get a drink of cold water in the air-conditioned church, and handed us a bright yellow packet. Inside the packet, we found a flyer about Eastview, helpful information about the garage sale, a religious tract, and a free pen.

We heard music playing as we got out of the car, and soon we saw that a band was performing. They played a rock-n-roll version of "This Little Light of Mine" that I really enjoyed. When I looked at the information in the packet this evening, I learned that the band's name is Second Coming. Two more bands -- Mark 'N' Friends and The Glovers -- performed at other times during the day.

Keely bought an entire box of books by a favorite author, and I bought a cookbook. Then we sat in the shade, where a little breeze was stirring the air, and enjoyed the band for a few minutes. Unfortunately, the temperature was in the mid-90s, so we didn't shop or listen as long as we would have liked. It was just too hot!

As a visitor to the yard sale and as a fellow Christian, I give Eastview an A+ for this event. They did a great job of personally greeting us, placing an attractive pack of information in our hands, providing adequate parking, caring about our physical needs, organizing the marketplace, and even offering entertainment to entice us to linger.

Well done, my Baptist friends! I hope you'll do this again next year!

I took several photos of the band, but I didn't get a
single one that shows every band member!

Yard Sale, Second Edition

Once more, with gusto

Lots of customers at 8:00 a.m.

Keely and I had a yard sale today -- an encore performance of last year's event.

This time, we advertised the sale in the newspaper as well as posting lots of signs. I think the $14 ad was worth it, even though Keely has an excellent location that attracts drive-by customers. We made a little more money this year than we did last year, even with fewer "big ticket" items for sale. Quarters and one-dollar bills, in quantity, can amount to a surprising sum.

Customers began arriving at about 6:30 a.m., even though we had advertised that we'd be open at 7:00 a.m. Between that time and 11:00 a.m., we were very busy. We had a dozen shoppers at once, several times, and we almost always had at least one or two customers.

In the crowd, there were a few familiar faces. Some were friends making a planned visit to our sale, and some were friends who just happened by and were surprised to see whose sale they were attending.

The hot weather made us think about closing early, but we resisted temptation and stayed open until 3:30 p.m. During the last three hours, we made an additional $50, despite marking down many items to half-price or even cheaper. There were two benefits -- the extra sales, of course, and also, the fact that other people packed our stuff away, so we didn't have to cope with it.

When we closed, we saved out a few items and took everything else to Goodwill. It wasn't a total "clean sweep", but very close to it.

About 2:00 p.m., with much less merchandise!

How My Garage Sale Went

Logistics, tips, techniques, thoughts, experience

I took some vacation days last week and had a yard sale on Saturday. Oh, my, it was a lot of work! It was worth it, but I'm glad the kids helped. I don't think I could have done it without the muscle they provided.

Pricing and packaging

I priced everything in dollars or in multiples of 25¢ to simplify the money and the math. As much as possible, I used self-adhesive stickers. On clothing, I stuck the stickers to the tags and then stapled them to make sure they would stay. When there was no good place to put a sticker, I used a homemade tie-on tag, made of duct-tape-backed paper.

I put the clothing I was selling on hangers, because I despise piles of clothing at garage sales. I also don't like piles of sheets and curtains, so I folded the curtains and put them in plastic bags with descriptive labels, and I rolled the sheets and secured them with rubber bands.

Location, location, location!

I packed all the priced items in boxes and hauled them to my daughter Keely's house. She lives on the corner of a busy intersection in town. I thought that would be a better yard sale location than our home in the country. As Keely noted, the directions, "Turn off the paved road and...",  discourage the timid.

Because I felt the location was so good, I decided not to run a newspaper ad. Instead, I invested about $15 in ready-made garage-sale signs. I could have made them by hand, but I decided to go with convenience, durability, and neatness.

What I've described so far took from Tuesday through Friday to accomplish. After I got home from hauling boxes to Keely's on Friday night, I loaded the saw horses, tables, etc. on the truck and threw an old bicycle on top for good measure. Thank goodness for bungee cords.

Yard sale day

On Saturday, I got up at 4:30 a.m. (Ugh! For me, that's the middle of the night!) After a shower and a cup of coffee, I carefully drove the loaded truck to town.

Taurus, bless his heart, unloaded the tables and helped get everything set up. I used tablecloths so the merchandise would look more like treasures and less like trash. I also tried to put nearly everything on an elevated surface to make it easier to see and shop.

The photo above was taken about 7:00 a.m., just after we put out the signs. We put several signs along the two street-sides of the yard, and at the corner, we put a big box with a yard sale sign on each side so anyone who stopped at the intersection could see it. A large rock inside the box kept it in place.

The first customers arrived just a few minutes after the photo. I was a little dismayed when several people breezed through the sale without buying anything. I know now that the earliest shoppers are likely to be bargain hunters. They are in a hurry because they are hitting as many sales as possible, trying to skim the cream from each.

I posted several signs that said, "Please make an offer if it's priced too high," but most of the customers didn't bother to dicker. They were decisive and fairly quick. They walked through, and if they liked something they bought it. I think that means that my prices were either fair or cheap. It really doesn't matter; the fact is that they gave me money and took away something that I didn't want or need anymore.

Final clearance

About 1:00 p.m., Keely and I made a half-price table with many of the remaining items. We made a big sign, "Everything on this table 1/2 price", and hung it so it could be seen from the street.

The two highest-priced items I sold were $17.50 and $15.00. Nearly everything else was 50¢ or $1.00. When we closed the sale at about 3:00 p.m., I had taken in a little over $140. I had some expenses -- yard sale signs, a sheet of plywood -- but I won't have to buy them again for the yard sale that Keely says we're having next spring.

Some items didn't sell, and I sorted them as we packed up. I donated some things to the rummage sale that our church will be having in November, I put 2 boxes of things for next spring's yard sale in the shed. A few things came back into our house -- half a dozen books and several pieces of clothing that I decided to keep.

Lessons learned for the next sale

One thing I hope I do differently next time is to start preparations earlier. It took longer than I expected to sort out and price what I wanted to sell. I hope after the next sale that I feel like the entire house has been cleansed, not just a few rooms.

Another thing I learned is to have more $5 bills on hand. Just one roll of quarters would have been enough. I had more $1 bills than I needed. However, I had to send Keely to get a couple of $20 bills broken, late in the sale, because I ran out of $5 bills.

Hitting the Garage Sale Trail

Saturday morning entertainment

Relay for Life Yard sale at Town and Country

Real Estate in Hopkinsville, KY

Usually I enjoy sleeping late on my day off, but this morning, I got up early so I could go to some Saturday morning yard sales with Keely and my friend Lisa. I picked up Keely at 7:15 AM, and we stopped at a convenience store to get coffee and Whistlestop donuts (breakfast) on our way to pick up Lisa.

Last night, I studied yard sale ads in the newspaper, looked up the addresses I didn't know, and planned a route. We went to most of the sales that were advertised and added a few that we found along the way. Keely and I estimate that we went to about 25 sales in 4 hours.

My rewards for getting up early were a metal rooster doorstop, a set of 10 Bible storybooks (the same set that I read as a child), 3 pairs of brand-new jeans for Dennis ($2 per pair!), and a nice hexagonal mirror I'm going to hang in the bathroom. Keely bought a fiber optic lamp, a set of fairy figurines, and a mushroom-shaped cookie jar. Lisa bought a CB radio and a set of ping-pong paddles.

Most of Hopkinsville's yard sales start at 6 AM and end at noon. We saw one lady packing up her sale at 11:00 AM! I'm not sure why Hopkinsville is fond of such an early schedule. In other towns, yard sales commonly stay open until mid-afternoon.

Next weekend (Thursday through Sunday, June 4-7) is the 400 Mile Sale along Kentucky Highway 68. Dozens of sales will be held in and around Hopkinsville, and many more will be set up along 68/80 through Christian County and beyond.

I read that the Senior Center is renting 400 Mile Sale spaces for $30 each -- in their big multi-purpose room, I suppose. I think that might be a good sale to check. My theory: When people have to pack up their stuff and haul it to the sale, they leave the junk at home and only bring the good stuff.

400 Mile Sale This Weekend

Trash and treasure for sale along Highway 68

Kentucky's annual 400 Mile Sale starts tomorrow (Thursday, June 5,) and runs through the weekend. Some sellers were already setting up shop east of Hopkinsville, yesterday afternoon.

I hope to go to the sales between Hopkinsville and Elkton, sometime on Saturday. I will probably go by myself. Dennis is not much of a yard-saler. Isaac has to work, and Keely is going to a family reunion with her boyfriend. I don't mind. I'll be able to proceed at my own pace.

Why do I like yard sales? Well, I'm curious, I like bargains, and I'm always hoping to find a little treasure of some sort.

It's not an totally irrational hope. Michael Leddy at Orange Crate Art had a note today about a sensational garage sale find -- and it happened to be a Kentucky garage sale.

A lady bought an old chest. She considered throwing the contents away, then decided to have the papers and photos appraised by a rare documents dealer. They turned out to be correspondence and photographs by noted photographer and photojournalist, Weegee (Arthur Fellig, 1899-1968).

A slideshow of ten of the newly-found Weegee photos has been posted with a New York Times article about the find.

A Clutter Battle Fought and Won(?)

Cleaning out and re-accumulating

Casper The Incorrigible had a good time, early this morning before anyone was out of bed. He found the bottom door of the china cabinet open, so he explored that forbidden compartment while he had a chance.

To get in there, he had to push aside a stack of assorted foam and paper plates and plastic cups and tip over several tall flower vases. Most of this ended up on the floor in front of the china cabinet.

Somehow, picking up Casper's spill of paper plates and vases morphed into cleaning the china cabinet top to bottom. I "Windexed" the glass shelves and "Pledged" the wood. Then I rinsed the "china" and dried it.

This sounds so simple when I write it, but it took quite a while. I decided to pack away a few things I don't use much, donate a few things to our upcoming church garage sale, and reorganize the rest of it.

In the process, I decided that I don't need much more Anchor Hocking Early American Prescut (EAPC). I inherited my mother's 1960s glassware of this pattern, and I've collected it since then, thinking that I'll give each of my children a set when they set up a stable home. Thus I have two of many pieces -- or you might say, too many pieces!

I packed up the dishes and some other stuff for the church garage sale, and Isaac and I went to town to run some errands. We dropped off the garage sale items at church, and I must say, I was feeling quite virtuous about cleaning my china cabinet and getting rid of a whole box of clutter.

Then we went by the library and used the computers. When our time was up, Isaac went to look for some books. While waiting for him, I accidentally strayed into the magnetic field of the donated-books closet. I do have a terrible weakness for books, especially old books.

I only bought three, and they are in exceptionally nice condition -- well worth the $1.00 each I paid for them. They are:

• The Poems of Eugene Fields (with an ancient strip of paper marking the page with the poem, "A Valentine"
• Leaves of Grass (Carl Sandburg)
• The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

And I suppose I should confess that I bought an old book at the library on Thursday of this week, also:

• American Notes by Rudyard Kipling

That's one box out, and four books in. Am I making progress in the ongoing battle against too much stuff? Not really, but at least the china cabinet is nice and clean.

Junk In A Junker

The urge to hoard

I had to run some errands in Clarksville this morning, and I persuaded Isaac to come along for the ride. Coming home, we spotted a yard sale sign and decided to stop.

To get to the sale, we had to walk up the driveway along the house and pass through a gate to the backyard. Along the way, we walked by a weathered automobile that obviously hadn't moved from its parking place for a while. All its tires were flat.

The driver's seat was stacked high with newspapers. An old canister-style vacuum cleaner was sitting in the passenger seat. Several cardboard boxes were piled into the back seat, and they seemed to be filled with miscellaneous junk. I saw some plastic freezer containers and old Tupperware in one box.

It seemed that a yard sale was probably a step in the right direction for this household.

In an odd way, it's good to see something like that. It's a lesson about how hoarding junk can get out of hand. It's also an excuse to smugly say, "Well, at least I..." (the sentence can be finished in any number of ways.)

400 Mile Sale Is Underway

Yard-sales galore

400 Mile Sale along Highway 68/80
Near Hopkinsville, KY

Kentucky's 400 Mile Sale began Thursday and continues through Sunday along Highway 68/80. Tomorrow (Saturday) will probably be the biggest day, both in the number of sales and the number of shoppers.

Coming home from town this afternoon, I stopped along Highway 68/80 east of Hopkinsville where half a dozen vendors have set up in a pasture. They have lots of room there for their tables of merchandise and for customer parking, and also for their vehicles and trailers.

One vendor said he is from Nashville. He travels to flea markets all over the South, selling antiques and collectibles. He said he has sold quite a lot of furniture in the last two days. He closes up shop at 7 p.m., throws tarps over everything, and drives to town to a friend's house where he is staying.

Another vendor has his self-contained travel trailer pulled up behind his tables of merchandise. He said he has a generator and enough water for the duration. A Winnebago-type camper vehicle was parked behind some other tables, and I suppose someone is camping in it tonight.

Another of the vendors in the pasture runs an antique store in Hopkinsville. He's probably sleeping in his own bed at home.

Many of the people who are having sales along Highway 68/80 are just ordinary folks, not professional flea market vendors and antique merchants like this bunch was.

Tomorrow, I'm going to drive 68/80 from Elkton to Hopkinsville (around 20 miles) and go to some of the smaller sales at people's homes along the highway.

You never know what you'll find. Today, at the tables in the pasture, I bought a nice pewter decanter and set of goblets. I am hoping to get a 300% return on it when I take it to an SCA event next fall and sell it.

Tomorrow, I'll be looking for more things that SCA re-enactors like -- wooden bowls and plates, wooden handled silverware, pewter and brass items, certain types of ceramics, mugs, goblets, linen and wool fabric, fancy braids and trims, etc.

Also, Dennis has given me the titles of a couple of books he's wanting.

I'll look for those things, but what I'll actually bring home is anyone's guess.

400 Mile Sale along Highway 68/80
Near Hopkinsville, KY

A beautiful old house

Life in Christian County, Kentucky... History and Old Stuff...

Here are a few photographs from the tag sale I attended today. This nice old house in one of Hopkinsville's historic districts was once owned by Frank Bassett, a highly regarded and much beloved gentleman who served in county government for many years. He had trained as a physician, but did not practice. I heard at the tag sale that Mr. Bassett's granddaughter had inherited the house upon his death and that it has now been sold to new owners.

I don't know who actually built the home. According to a fellow at the sale who was examining the architecture of the basement, the house was probably built between 1910 and 1920. It's reasonable to guess that it was built before the Stock Market Crash of 1929. I personally think its construction date was closer to 1920 than 1910, based on my observations of the style of the home, but I'm certainly no expert.

The house has many features of a luxurious home of its time -- a butler's pantry, servant quarters off the kitchen, a library, beautiful hardwood floors, built-in cabinets in nearly every room, and a matching carriage house. The exterior walls of the full basement are cut limestone. At one end of the basement, a door opens to the outside. I suppose coal might have been brought in there to fuel a furnace. The upstairs was closed off, so I don't know how many rooms are there. In the main level, there are 4 (I think) bedrooms not counting the small servant's room.

Here is a rough sketch of the general layout of the house. This is my inaccurate impression of the house's floor plan, but you can see how the house is divided into thirds with a hallway along each side of the center rooms. Note the small room with a nice view of the back yard off the master bedroom. I didn't draw in the servant's room and pantries in the kitchen area .

This chest of drawers isn't a detail of the architecture, but it was so beautiful I had to photograph it. It had a matching piece (a dressing table, I think) which I did not photograph.

A safe is built into the wall beside one of the fireplaces.

Looking from the sunroom doors through the dining room to the front parlor and main entrance. This home has 10-foot ceilings and exposed beams in the dining room and front parlor.

An example of the built-in cabinets. This is in the dining room near the door to the kitchen area.

Both bathrooms have ceramic floors with this border and white tiled walls up to about 5 feet. Here you see more of the built in storage. One of the bathrooms has a vintage commode. I don't know what year it might be from, but it's older than me, I think. Its tank is mounted on the wall, and a pipe about a foot long runs from the bottom of the tank to the back of the bowl.



The carriage house has been converted to a residence, but you can see where the doors used to be.

I enjoyed visiting this interesting old house. My photos don't do it justice. Something about its atmosphere reminded me of the "Rock House" that Rose Wilder built for her parents, Almanzo and Laura (Ingalls) Wilder. If you've ever been there, you'll know what I mean.