So late last night I checked out one of my favorite online shopping deal sites, thingfling.com. The site sells one product at a time at a discounted rate... they buy a product, usually electronics of some sort, at closeout, and sell it until it is gone, then sell something else. Every once in a while, they sell a "mystery box"... a guaranteed $75 worth of random product for $25 shipped, for instance. Sometimes one major item is revealed, such that the deal is an "almost msytery box". Last night they were running a "mystery bag", shipped to your door for $3.77 including tax, delivery product cost, all that plus a product for $3.77.
Now I like surprises as much as the next guy, but it seems in my life, most of my surprises come in the form of "we got a call from the principal... guess what Junior did at school today?", or "guess what, the cat is pregnant again!" To have the opportunity to get a bona fide surprise delivered to my door for $3.77 is just plain irresistable.
I wonder if that concept would work at yard sales... inevitably, you get people bargaining to try to get that $85 lamp for cheaper than the $3 you asked, so maybe the mystery box concept would work? "Hey there, lady wearing the 1993 Superbowl t-shirt with the leopard print sweatpants and the fuzzy pink slippers, I offer you this mystery box! It contains an item with a retail value of $119.95, lightly used, in full working order, It is yours for the one time low low price of .... $7.00!" 
I guess the trick would be in getting all your yard sale visitors to dress up in silly costumes like the folks on Let's Make a Deal. I may incorporate that with my previous brilliant yard sale technique, the Drive-Thru Yard Sale. I live at the very end of an island cul-de-sac, so I just line my stuff up along the island and people drive on through, see what I have, and don't have to even get out of the car if they don't want to ... it saves me time, plus it appeals to both gluttony and sloth, and everyone knows that combining any two of the seven deadly sins equals yard sale success.
Sketchometer wrap up:
- $3.77 mystery bag: -2... not sketchy, and pretty awesome.
- lady wearing the 1993 Superbowl t-shirt with the leopard print sweatpants and the fuzzy pink slippers: 7.3 .... pretty sketchy since she knows where you live... probably only a 4 in regular circumstances.
- Drive-Thru Yard Sales: 5, mostly for traffic related concerns.
3 comments:
I like the mystery bag. Reminds my of the mystery cases of beer we used to get in college...a 25% guarantee of shitty beer. Wilson toodk another approach at the mystery bag when he was liquidating his stuff to go to Japan. He turned into the "Black Santa". "Here's the X-box you said you'd take and I took the liberty of throwing in this chess board that's missing 3 pieces, an over grown plant, one dirty sock, miscellaneous ski tuning tools and a broken hair dryer." Now that's a true mystery bag...
First, I appreciate you calling me a lady, but if you are going to describe me on a blog that is searchable by anyone in the world, I wish you would get your fact right.. it was a 1994 Superbowl T-shirt, and the slippers aren't pink.. they are mauve.
For goodness sake!
I must admit ...
Brian talked me into a $25 "Mystery Box" I bought in and received well about $26 work of stuff that my wife keeps moving into my office.
The Real Libby
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