Garage Sale Tips for Jerks

• Be aware that some areas have laws against the public postage of signs. In order to avoid being cited with an expensive ticket, be sure to throw off the police by putting an address other than your own on all the signs you post.

• If some clown tries the old "I gave you a twenty, not a ten" con, set an example for your other customers by punching him or her in the face. If it turns out they did actually give you a twenty, never say you’re sorry.  Apologizing is a sign of weakness.

• You can get away with charging higher prices by attaching historical value to the items you have for sale. For example, tell people your push lawnmower once belonged to Harriet Tubman, or that all your old brassieres were stretched out by J. Edgar Hoover.

• Boost turnout and sales by claiming in your newspaper ad that you're having your garage sale to raise money for your kid's cancer treatments. Then hire a child to sit in your yard and look sad.

• A negotiating tip: If a customer offers a quarter for an item you just asked 50 cents for, inquire whether they regret not finishing high school.

• Ever notice how hard a woman has to work to convince a man to stop at a garage sale? To solve this, set out an abundance of power tools and porn at the front of your driveway, or hire your teenage daughter and her friends to organize a Jell-O wrestling tournament on the lawn.

• Using little stickers to color code your items is a good idea, but it is even more helpful to organize what you have for sale into 'Black', 'Brown' and 'Yellow' sections for the convenience of your ethnic customers.

• Always be wary of any offer to help post signs around the neighborhood that comes from one of your teenaged kids as they are likely merely looking for an excuse to leave the house to smoke cigarettes, and all your signs will end up in the bottom of a dumpster.

• Before putting all your old James Patterson and Dean Koontz novels out for sale, ask yourself if the 50 cents you might get from selling them is worth the humiliation of making public the fact that you read such shitty books.

• If you plan on selling guns at your garage sale, be sure to have plenty of the right kind of ammunition on hand so your customers can try them out.

• After your garage sale is over, be sure to leave all your signs up all over town for the benefit of future time-traveling bargain hunters willing to pay ten dollars for a rusty old filing cabinet.