Grandma and the Tag Sale


One year, Grandma decided to have a tag sale. We all came to her house the weekend before and cleaned, sorted and tagged the items she had picked out to sell.

It was fun.

We also dug through boxes in the attic and scoured the basement for more items to sell at her tag sale. We swept the garage, set up card tables and lugged the items out to the garage for the sale.

Tag Sale Day came and we were there early in the morning to help out. Grandma had made a large pot of coffee and cinnamon buns for our breakfast. Grandma was so keyed up – she couldn’t wait for 9 AM when the sale would start. She had an old cigar-box filled with coins and dollar bills so she’d be ready to make change if necessary.

Ready to rake in the cash, we sat in lawn chairs at the end of the driveway and waited for the first customer. Grandma’s cheeks were pink with excitement.

First customer was an older woman in a new car.

We saw Grandma’s lip wiggle. Okay what was wrong here? We knew that look.

Grandma whispered: “What’s she doing here…look at that car. She could pay full price for anything she wants.” Grandma’s brow was furrowed and we got a sense that this tag sale experience wasn’t going to be quite as much fun as we had originally thought.

The woman browsed the items on the tables and selected two glass candlesticks with a matching candy dish in an etched floral pattern. Grandma had priced these items as $2 for the candy dish and $4 for both candlesticks.

The woman placed the items down by Grandma -- who was acting as cashier -- and handed her six ones.

Grandma looked up at her with a frown. “Where’d you get these from?” she said sternly.

“On the table with the red cloth. That one,” said the woman pointing to one of the tables.

“Well, I’m sorry I can’t sell you these. Look at the price. It’s all wrong. These are antiques. My kids must have priced these because anyone would know one candlestick alone is worth five dollars or more.”

The woman looked shocked. Examined her items again, and said to Grandma. “Okay…I’ll give you ten for the pair of candlesticks and I won’t take the candy dish then…”

“Oh no..no..no…they’re a set,” said Grandma, “They have to go together. I won’t break up a set and that’s that.”

“Well what do you want for the candy dish then?” said the woman whose voice was beginning to show her utter frustration with Grandma.

“Twenty dollars. It’s worth twice that.”

The woman gave Grandma a look that would kill and walked away from the tag sale without an item.

We looked at each other wondering how the rest of the day would go and we soon found out --exactly like the previous incident.

Every time someone would attempt to buy something, Grandma would rip off the stickers saying the item was priced wrong or grab it and put it by her side saying it wasn’t meant to be sold in the first place.

We got blamed for over-pricing items, under-pricing items, and for attempting to sell family heirlooms without her permission.

“But Grandma, it was you who said you wanted a tag sale . You who picked out what you wanted to sell and you who priced the items,” we said gritting our teeth.

“Well don’t pay so much attention to the whims of an old lady,” she replied, gathering up her now very cherished tag sale items and bringing them back into the house.

That day Grandma sold a grand total of $6.75 worth of merchandise. One thing she let go was an old waffle iron which she sold for $1.50.

The man who bought it returned it within the hour saying it didn’t work.

Grandma told him, “You bought it, you own it – no returns…no refunds.”

Now picture this four-foot eleven woman, with bad arthritis, bad eyes and seven-feet worth of audacity, shouting these words at a six-foot two, two-hundred plus pound man holding a broken waffle iron.

One of us walked over to the guy, whispered to him to dump the waffle iron at his leisure and handed him two dollars for his trouble.

Once we finished cleaning up, we all met at the local neighborhood dive for pitchers of beer to unfray our nerves and we laughed till our sides hurt as we recalled Grandma’s unorthodox tag sale, where nothing was really for sale.

So that’s why in our family, when you promise something and then renege for any reason, you’ll hear, “Oh, I get it, you’re having one of Grandma’s tag sales, aren’t you?”