Daily Dose of English 165
Yard Sales
Daily Dose of English 165
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every single day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on Ben's Language Lab, uh, benslanguagelab.com, benslanguagelab.com, got it. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about yard sales. That's a fun thing, huh? And I don't know if other countries really have yard sales. I don't think I've seen them here in Mexico, but I also haven't my whole life here. But a yard sale is basically where a house or a family or even a group of like an apartment building have a sale with a bunch of stuff that they own in their yard or in their front yard or backyard or side yard or even just driveway. But the idea is that it's a family or regular people selling a bunch of their own stuff, their shit, if you will. And yard sales are very common in the U.S. They happen every single day, but mostly on the weekends. And you can find people doing them all over basically any city. And they're pretty popular too, because most people sell stuff way below what you'd buy in a store. And so you can get really well-priced stuff if you go to yard sales. And I used to enjoy going to yard sales as a kid, especially because I would look for some things, some specific things, whether it's video games or other games like magic cards, for example, or Legos or things like that that I liked that were expensive because you could sometimes find them for a very good deal. because it's regular people putting the prices on things. And so if it's like somebody's grandma or somebody who doesn't really understand what something is, they might just see, oh, this is my kid's old game, it's 10 bucks. When in reality, if you wanted to buy that thing online, it would be like $100 or something like that. So you can find really good deals. And they're also sort of just fun to go see what's there It's one of those things where you like can find some cool things for very cheap and have an interesting afternoon just browsing stuff that people are selling and You also get a little bit of a window into to what they like or what they buy which is always a little bit interesting and I also want to mention that there's another name for these called garage sale, which are, which is, it's really the same thing. It's more about where it's happening, right? If it's in somebody's garage, then you might call it a garage sale, but if it's anywhere else, you might call it a yard sale, but they're really the same thing. It's more of the idea of selling your stuff rather than going to a shop or something. And the actual location is much less important. And so if somebody's having a yard sale, they might not even have a yard, right? They would just call it a yard sale because that's what you call it and that's what people understand. Something interesting about yard sales is that they often are posted in local newspapers and on something like Craigslist. So Craigslist is still fairly popular in the US for posting stuff, used things, free things, yard sales, stuff like that. And I think there's a whole section for yard sales. Actually, let's look. Craigslist Portland. Oh, excuse me. Craigslist Portland, da, da, da, da, da. Discussion forms, services, community. Does it say yard sale on here? Yard, oh, okay. Well, I don't see anything exactly on here, but I know you can find them on here somewhere. Farm for sale, I don't know. There's some place where you can find stuff that you can buy. But I mean, Craigslist in a way is basically a yard sale, but online because it's still local, right? The idea is that you have to go pick it up somewhere. You have to go to someone's yard, it might be. And I actually really liked Craigslist when I lived in Portland. It's got a good amount of stuff on there. I've found some very good deals on things there. I've sold things on there. I'm just browsing right now. There's somebody selling a very big gaming custom D&D table for $1,200, which looks to be very fancy and nice, which is really kind of impressive. It has a whole TV in there. There's glass. It's a very big table, which is really interesting. Like you can find cool stuff on Craigslist. I don't know. I wish that there was more. things like this to get good used stuff at a decent price. You do gotta be careful, right? Some people will try to scam you on there, but it's generally, if you know what you're doing, you can be pretty safe. I bought many phones on Craigslist growing up because I would always try to buy used tech. And like once I found somebody who their phone plan deal was like, if you get two phones, the second one is like 50% off. It's way cheaper. Um, and so he's like, okay, I'll do that and just sell the phone. So we got two phones and sold me the other phone. He made money and I got a phone for like 60% of the original price. And it was basically brand new. I don't think you'd use it at all. Things like that totally happen. And you can get really good deals on lots of different things. I think cars and trucks, cars are a big seller on Craigslist in Portland at least. Because it's just somebody posting their car more easily and quickly than going through a retailer or whatever. But yeah, sort of an interesting side tangent on yard sales. Because I also want to talk a little bit about yard sales because my family had a couple, not too many. I remember doing one when I was fairly young and helping out. I would think I would just help put prices on things and take money and give change and stuff, so very simple. But the one that I did at one point is that I sold a bunch of my Legos because my, let's see, I think my parents were moving, so this, or when was this? Yeah, because we moved in when I was in high school, and the new house had less space. And so my parents were like, you really should sell some of these Legos. I was like, yeah, you're right. I don't use most of them. I don't play with them anymore. I'll sell them. And so, oh, is it raining? Sorry, I just heard rain, I got distracted. And so I basically set up a whole Lego yard sale. It was only Legos. And I had a bunch, because I collected a bunch of Legos growing up. So some sets, a bunch of minifigures, just random pieces. And it was mostly like, kind of just fill a bucket and I'll charge you by the bucket. and or I'll charge you by the minifigure. And I had no idea how much people wanted to buy Legos. Like we made up, I put a couple of ads out like on Craigslist or whatever. And people were coming all day and they were buying hundreds of dollars of Lego. And they even told me like, this is really cheap. Like I remember a couple of people came that was like a father son pair, at least one of them. And they were like, yeah, we're big fans of Lego. We like to build things. We buy tons of various bricks and we make our own creations. And he was like, so I buy a lot of Legos. This is a great deal. And I was like, really? It seems so expensive for you. And he's like, no, these are so cheap. And we can choose whatever we want. I'm like, yeah, go ahead. And they were so happy. It was great. It was one of those things where it's like I feel like I'm getting a good deal They feel like they're getting a good deal. So everybody's happy And so that was definitely a fun experience of selling things at a yard sale sort of thing and it is I don't know, sort of rewarding to also see your stuff go on to another home because I didn't use those anymore. They were just sitting in the closet, kind of collecting dust, and they were going to take up more space in the house. And so I made several hundred dollars, like it was not a small amount of money in a day of work and chatting with people, hanging out. And it was really cool to see that sort of stuff go on in a way that somebody else actually wanted, which was nice. Yard sales also can be a great way to find clothes. I've only done this a little bit because I don't buy clothes that often, but it's a great, if you find someone that like is your size and they're selling a bunch of their clothes, it's just, it's so perfect. Cause you're like, oh man, this is a great shirt and it fits me perfectly. How much is it? Two bucks. No way! It's so great. So, yeah. Anyways, I think that's all I have for yard sales today. They're pretty cool and if you ever go to the US, go try to find some. Open a local newspaper, wherever town you are, and see if somebody's doing a yard sale that day and just go see. Maybe chat with them and see what random stuff you can buy, which is definitely a better souvenir, which we talked about a few episodes ago, than some random keychain or shot glass. Yeah, that's all that I have for today. Thank you so very much for listening. I hope that you enjoyed and maybe learned a little something. If you did learn something, let me know down in the comments below and I will see you next time for another episode. Bye.
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