Children’s Hospital should have donated first
This letter has not been edited.
WARNING! WARNING!
Professional journalism detected. Accuracy, interest and other long lost elements of reporting suspected.
I attended the weekend sale held at Children's Hospital old site. Glad to hear that the final results of that mess were so positive. I was amazed at the total lack of planning, coordination or courtesy. The sale required cash for all purchases but there were no signs declaring this so many ended up leaving without buying. We had five people so three of us waited while the other two went to find an ATM. Yes, portable ATM machines are available, but the planners didn't have one.
On Saturday the majority of items were unpriced. You had to have them priced at one station on the way to the cashier. We had only been there for an hour when, about 1:30 PM, people came through the building announcing that they were closing and to leave. We did so after buying an HP laser printer for 15 dollars.
On Sunday, my mother wanted us to get her a printer and when my mother hollers we jump. (How many 81 year olds do you know with Yahoo accounts and a deep internet addiction to the recipe blogs?)
We returned to the sale. Prices were posted on the walls in many areas like the kitchen where metal shelving was priced at 20 dollars per unit. (A professional grade gas oven was priced at 150 crossed out to 75.)We began looking for the printer for my mother and for anything else we thought she might like. At 1:00 PM a man came through the building telling us everything was half price. I found an office where nothing had been touched except to remove the computer and all paper files. I loaded some notebooks and toner cartridges for our printers in an office chair (the default shopping cart) and proceeded to check out upper floors where other items were stored in former patient rooms. At just before 2, another person came through telling us the sale was over and to take our items down to the cashiers, now the pricers were also the cashiers, and leave. I asked him why they were closing early and he repeated that we were to leave.
I'm just as cooperative in person as in print. I continued through the floor and found a locked door. Inside were stacked, literally, desks, files and chairs. Another customer laughed and informed me that he'd asked the day before and been told it was being held for a charity.
I found another locked room but it had a second door which was not locked. Inside it was half the contents of a good restaurant kitchen. I piled a number of large roasting pans and stockpots, utensils and a few serving trays on a chair then discovered several small sized, wheeled warmers just the right size to use for my plants in the spring.
No prices were available so I tied them together with an extension cord and headed to the cashier pulling them behind me. I explained to him where I'd found the items and asked if he could sell them to me. He said everything was for sale but was unsure what to charge for the items. We eventually negotiated it to forty dollars for the three chairs full of items and the warmers. We paid and were waiting on the curb for my husband to bring the car so we could load it when another person asked about the warmers. She had been trying to find kitchen items starting at 8 AM on Saturday and found almost nothing in the cafeteria and kitchen areas. I sold her the warmers for the forty dollars we paid for all of the items together. I told her where I'd found the items and she said she'd been told there was nothing on the upper floors. We'd heard the same. I looked for myself.
My suspicion is that the sale was not well planned, well managed nor supervised. It also seems to me that the placement of items from the kitchen on a medical floor was intentional and, if not done because of a sale or donation that was planned, meant to provide someone with items of high value without competition for them.
No need for the government to get involved. But, the next time someone wants to hold a sale to clean out a large building, call me. I'll wager I could do a better job and produce more profit than they got from this one. So could your local youth group.
Good thing the press got hold of this. Making it either all for profit or all for charity would have been better here too. At least I got my kitchen tools and a new desk chair. My mother got a new printer. My sister is ready to kill me. She says Mom has gone through half a ream of paper already. I told her to shut up or I'd give them a roasting pan and a stockpot.
Hhhmmmmm
Posted by Bill Ritter on October 28, 2007 03:05 PMmommy y, wish I could have been there with you. Sounds like half price day at a really large estate sale.
Posted by Sharon B. on October 28, 2007 06:44 PMSharon B
Day 2 was bargain day.. Day 1 was the estate sale with all the lazy relatives snatching stuff up and running off with it. Still wish I could have found a laundry bin. You can usually negotiate a full laundry bin to twenty dollars, fifteen if they are desperate. I wonder who told the media about it in the first place. I only heard about it once and no ads anywhere. Not a good way to hold a sale.
If you are really into bargains try the DAV store in Lakewood at Alameda and Pierce. Every Monday they have a sale where the oldest ticket items are one dollar each. I spent weeks buying bread machines for a dollar and testing them. Now everyone is getting a bread basket with a bread machine and several packages of home made bread machine mixes for Christmas. One for each of the school teachers and one for the teachers' lounge too. The DAV there is a bit wiser but I have two shelves of depression glass from my mother-in-law's estate and filled in a lot of missing pieces at a dollar each before I got sick. Now we're going to put it up for sale and pay off some bills. Glad I only value pots, pans and really good wisks.
I sent my 10 questions on Abortion in as a letter to the editor. Hope you like it.
I am famous (infamous really) in my family for negotiating lower prices at estate sales, thrift shops etc. Best moment came years ago when my mother's fridge died and she needed a new one. Went to Best Buy and found a mark down. Don't really remember the actual prices now but it was marked down due to dents. I pointed out a few more and a missing egg section. Took 400 off of the price and got free delivery. A man in Best Buy listened then, when the clerk went to finish the paperwork, asked me, "What country are you from?" Apparently my Scottish blood is still very strong.