It’s the time of year when you leave the house early to go from house to house looking to find the good finds before your neighbors do.  It is yard sale season! To make the trip even more exciting, I have made this handy yard sale scavenger hunt list that you can pull up before your trip to really make your Saturday morning off the charts!

Enjoy!

Look for These Items on your next yard sale campaign: 

• Earn One Point for finding a bag (or whatever golf clubs are held in) of plastic children’s golf clubs.
  • Fun fact, all children’s, plastic golf club sets ever used have been purchased at at yard sale. The same thing is true for croquet sets. Nobody ever buys them at a store; they are only obtained at yard sales or from your grandparents when they are clearing out their basement.
• Earn One Point for finding A Child’s Art Easel.  Based on yard sale inventories, it seems that every in family America has owned one at some point or another.
  • Earn Five extra points if it is homemade. 
  • Earn Ten Points if it appears to have decades old paint or crayon on it. 
  • Earn Winner of the Day Status if  there is a barbed fishhook hanging out of the top of the easel and you  accidently touch it.  Well, truthfully, you can tell yourself you are the winner when you are nursing your hurting finger for the rest of the day.  (This happened to me at an auction I was selling hot dogs at to earn money for a Church Trip in 1995).
• Earn One Point for finding a Participation Trophy.
  • Earn 50 points if their is a date on it from 1990 or Earlier. According to the internet, people have been getting participating trophies for 100 years.
• Earn One Point for every Personal Care product you find at the yard sale where the bottle has already been opened (perfume and cologne count).
  • Earn five points for expired hairspray or medicine (does not need to be opened, in fact earn ten points if the plastic is still on).
  • Remember that perfume that came in a bottle shaped like an exclamation point? Earn 10 points for finding that bottle.
• Earn Five points for finding Corelle Ware in the same pattern as your parents.
  • Earn ten points for finding your grandparents pattern.
  • Award yourself one hundred points if you buy the dishes or matching coffee cups and use them in your kitchen.
• Earn five points for every Record found by one of these bands: Up With People, Seals & Croft, America, or Bread. I always look through boxes of records at yard sales looking for something with cool cache but mostly record boxes at yard sales have bands like these. (Sorry, Bread).
• Earn five points for finding a Remote controlled car or plane in faded box with a greasy/ dusty plastic window.
  • Earn fifty points if you buy it and it still works.
• Earn ten points for finding a Teal colored wind suit, circa early 1990’s with accents in mauve, yellow, purple, or red.
  • Earn fifty points for making the wind suit into the basis for a Halloween costume called “1992”.
• Earn seven points for finding a set of Cross-country skis with bindings where the corresponding boot is not available in stores any longer or the binding is broken. Don’t be like me and fall for this at least once.
  • Fun fact, while researching this list, I learned that manufacturers do not allow ski service people to service bindings older than 10 years, and they send a list of “serviceable” models every fall.
  • However, award yourself ten points for buying used cross-country ski polls to use as trekking poles for hiking. Money saving, outdoor gear hack!
• Earn fifteen points for baby or children’s gear that you know for a fact has been recalled.
  • For example, you could find a Fisher Price Rock n’Play Sleeper, like the one my second child napped in for the first several months of his life and was subsequently recalled a few months later.
  • Or a Power Wheels Jeep that was recalled due to thread of electrical fires. (I really thought that Power Wheels Jeeps would have been recalled because of the roll-bar, but no-it is because of electrical fires)

Bonus Item:

• Earn 100 points for every Potentially Possessed Toy from the 1980’s or 90’s found like a Teddy Ruxpin with a glint in its eye or a Care Heart with bloody paws. 

Happy Yard Saling!