127 Yard Sale, Day 4

Okay a week late but here it is. this year's finish of the yard sale far exceeded past years. We had probably 1000 people com through between 9am and 4pm. I attribute this to the fact that for the first time the other YS venues in Ohio did not shut down on Sunday as they have in the past. So shoppers had reason to keep on shopping throughout Ohio.

Last year I believe we had around 200 people stop. It was so slow that we had earlier made the decision not to open Sunday and I gave all the vendors their space for free on Sunday this year if they wanted to stick around. I am glad we decided to stay open Sunday as that was by far our best produce sales day of the weekend. next year we will plan on doing Sunday and we will not give away the spaces that day

I was struck by how many Maryland license plates we in our lot Sunday morning. They outnumbered the Ohio (and other state plates) 2 or 3 to one for a couple of hours. I guess these were people about ready to hop on I-70 and head back home and we were about their last stop on their Yard Sale adventure. though I do not know that for sure as I did not talk to any one about why they were here Sunday morning.

All in all this year's yard sale was the best ever. But next year will be better. We plan on having T-shirts for sale (we still need to design them) We will do the map again as that was simply fascinating and from the comments we have received we are the only people doing such a thing on the 127 YS Trail. There will be a new food vendor-We have asked several chefs we know if they want to set up and all are interested. But we will see what happens over the next 11 months.

127 yard sale 2009 Day 3

Day 3 was almost as busy as day 1 but I do not think anyone sold as much-lots of lookers but probably only 1/3 actually bought anything. Still, the vendors all seemed happy with the day. We had around 2000 people come through our sale. Looks like we will have had at least 6000 people stop here by the end of Sunday. That is about twice as many as in any previous year. Part of this is the fact I did a good job of advertising on the web and part of it is because Ohio has finally come alive for this event. Unlike previous years, there were at least 500 sales, big and small, in Preble County. I heard this was also true in Darke County. I have not heard about Butler, Hamilton Counties but people said it was active from West Unity southward-Way to go Ohio!



We picked up a new seller, Vince, who had a wide array of music -CD's, Records, Tapes- and some other things to sell. He at one time had a large record/music store. He showed up around 10 am asked about a spot and set up. He said he would be back for the entire 4 days next year.




Looks like we have 8 of our 20 spots reserved for 2010 already. Everyone agrees we have one of the best places to set up in Ohio-right one the road and 3 miles south of where about 85% of the yard salers start their shopping trek. Those folks that called and said they would set up here and flaked out missed a great opportunity and it is likely they will not be able to get a spot here next year. I now can be picky as to what sells and who gets to sell it. the fees will likely be raised for 2010 as this farm is a hot commodity and why sell ourselves short. setting up and managing this event is a lot of work and we need to start being decently compensated for it. As it stands right now we can make about the same money doing one 6 hour farmers market so we need to start charging more per spot. $10 bucks ain't much
We have one guy who leaves as soon as he makes $300. He was gone at 3pm. Everyone else stuck around until 6pm. By 6pm few cars were pulling and we were all exhausted.

We had no food as Adams Rib pulled out yesterday. Next year we will get someone who can do the full 4 days. It probably won't be Adam's Rib BBQ but it will be food and likely far greater variety (The BBQ folk brought only 2 selections when they could have brought much more. They did not supply an eating area as they had last year. They did not seem to have their heart in this event which is a shame. It is time for us to move on to bigger and better things with our food vendor). I believe if we had food Saturday we would have even more people stop. I noticed we were dead at lunch time and again at dinner time (though we were all ready to close up by 6pm so not an issue)

All in all Saturday was another great day for us.