Last year I noticed that the quality of the stuff available at local
garage sales declined. This year the number of garage sales is down
also. And I mean down! Whereas last year this time we would go to
10-12 events each Saturday, this year we are lucky if we see 5 or 6.


I suspect that there are two possible explanations:


1) Weather. It has been miserable and unstable. That global warming
thing has not reached us yet: We have been seeing temperatures
consistently 3 degrees C below seasonal average. Furthermore,
predicting the weather has been problematic. The scientists employed
by the Environment Canada are clearly not the same ones that
confidently predict 2.5 degrees increase in average temperatures in
the next 100 years. Ours, as reflected by the predictions on the
Weather Channel, have the greatest difficulty deciding what the
weather will be in the next 12 hours. In fact, the way the Weather
Channel deals with this locally is to show different predictions every
6 hours. Presumably one of them will eventually turn out to be right.


Thus people are reluctant to hold garage sales unless they have the
ability to go indoors in bad weather. It will be interesting if the
numbers pick up in summer although "summer" is a relative term here on
the Island.


2) Bad economy. I postulated this last year as the reason for poor
quality stuff available. People in financial difficulty buy less new
stuff and hold onto their good old stuff longer. This was also
reflected in the local auction house. However, it is not clear what
"bad economy" means here on the Island. There is some unemployment due
to mill etc. closures. OTOH those who are employed or have their own
businesses may not be as hard up as all that. For example I have tried
to get estimates for some building work which I guess would be about
$1500 worth. Of the four companies I asked two have not turned up and
the two that did have so far failed to provide the quote, in one case
for over a week. I figure that if you can turn down that sort of work
you are not suffering.


I wonder what the garage sales experience has been elsewhere...

Michael Koblic,
Campbell River, BC