Are Garage and Yard Sales Dead?

The short answer: no.
The long answer: no, but there is a generational thing going on. Let’s take a look!

Built to last

To be clear, yard sales and garage sales are still alive and well, but some people might notice that sometimes they aren’t quite what they used to be. Now, we’re not wagging our fingers at young people—this isn’t that kind of blog! Instead, there are different reasons we’d like to point out for this shift, one important one being planned obsolescence.

Things aren’t built to last anymore, but we’re not talking about relationships or anything like that. Planned obsolescence is the (profitable) business practice of designing products to not last a very long time, which means you’ll have to replace them sooner and more often, and ultimately spend more money. This has been especially notable in the tech industry and in fast fashion, but you can probably find examples in just about any industry.

What does this mean for yard sales? Essentially, you’re more likely to find less durable and thus less valuable finds at yard sales these days, since a lot of items we end up wanting to get rid of weren’t built to last anyway. That being said, yard sales aren’t usually chalked full of brand-new items, which means many items at a yard sale are still durable and built-to-last finds that’ll likely be great bargains. In other words, this is certainly unfortunate, but it’s not a death sentence!

A Virtual Generation

Another reason some yard sales might not have as great of a selection as before comes from how popular certain virtual platforms have become. Especially during the pandemic, virtual yard sales have become much more popular, and for good reasons. As far as sanitary precautions go, a virtual sale is virtually the safest possible way to hold a yard sale. As far as convenience goes, virtual sales can stay up 24/7 and reach a much wider audience. The downside, of course, is that we miss out on that oh-so-special social interaction.

Hosting a yard sale doesn’t have to be binary, though. People don’t have to hold a virtual sale or an in-person sale, they can hold both! More so, especially for more valuable items, sellers are better off selling certain items online to specific communities that are willing to pay more money. While this is better for the sellers, it does mean you might find less gems at their in-person sales. Of course, however, if you don’t know what gems you’re missing out on, are you really missing out?

For these reasons and some others, it might seem to some like yard sales are on the decline, but we can assure you that they are not! Times have changed and they will always continue to change, but one thing’s for sure: people are always going to be moving in and out of communities, and spring cleaning is always going to get people to declutter. So, as long as these things stay true, we say, long live the yard sale!