by Adele Azar-Rucquoi

“Will you take a dollar fifty?”

“A dollar-fifty? How about two dollars?”

“It’s a deal!”

High finance? Sure, it’s a garage sale. More than simply the occasion for swapping goods, a garage sale, like a tiny mirror, reveals a very real slice of our hidden attitudes and values.  And that, when all is said and done, is precisely money’s gift: to reveal what’s really important or not so important about our inner life.

My friend and I set up shop that cool September day in Winter Park, Florida.  We lined the long tables with goods and a few antiques that would doubly benefit us:  reduce the stuff we’d acquired in our own homes and also put a few “shekels”  in our pockets.

In no time, they come.

I watch a teen-age daughter kibitz her father: “Dad, that shirt would look great on you.”  Handing her his wallet, he smiles, “Okay.”  She buys it. They leave arm-in-arm!

A fiftish woman rummages in the “men’s department” whispering  to herself I need a man. Oh, what a  poor me she is,  I’m thinking to myself.  I offer her my two cents: “Surely you don’t mean that. You don’t really need a man, you want a man.”

“No,”  she snaps back, surprising me. “I need a man to share bills, mow the lawn, repair what’s broken. I’ve been divorced four years. I love it! I just want to have a boyfriend to help around the house.”

So much for instant diagnoses.

What about this very sweet smile of the brave lady announcing to everyone within earshot, “I’m eighty years old today!”  That sparks loud congratulations from her fellow customers, even a chorus of Happy Birthday. At that moment, we are joined as family toasting one of our own, proud of achieving a remarkable milestone.

I love garage sales, and this time, her garage, my tables.  Her pricing, my cash register and we share clerking hours.  Georgia lives in an upscale neighborhood, which I know, attracts all kinds of clients. This one was no exception.

There’s the darling eight year old clutching her quarter, walking slowly up and down the aisles, carefully examining each table’s item. She picks up an unpriced potpourri, asking me How much? I think to myself:  How do we evaluate things?  What tag do I attach to this little person’s dreams? My profit motive dissolves before her sincerity and innocence. “It’s free to you,” I announce, not just a little happy with myself for still being this meltable.

“No!” She quickly counters. “I want to pay for it.”

Well, there it is!. Grown-up at eight! Heightened self-nurturing? Laudable pride? So much again for my reading of her situation.

  “Well, how about a quarter?” Charmed again to the melting point I reach out to  accept her wholesome attempt at total integrity, her maturity, and her quarter.

How about those who try to bargain real low? Are they testy?  Or just clever?  Actually, I have to confess, the Middle Eastern merchant in me is disappointed if someone doesn’t go for the bargain.

With some customers, however, their asking the price seems to preclude any invitation to bargain. If I counter, “What would you offer?” they seem uncomfortable. Are they embarrassed, insulted or even threatened?  I could guess a while range of emotions but given my track record so far today, I wouldn’t be close!

I’d love to dialogue with them not just about the price but about those emotions that come up for all of us. I love the process, wondering if it is simply monetary value vying for recognition or is it something deeper, say something like self-esteem that’s at issue.? Can a few dollars hit our self-identity the wrong way? You bet it can! Or maybe it’s merely an ancient habit inherited from a parent.

So many factors play in this game of money exchange.  It’s exciting and it’s extraordinarily self-revealing.

Take the example of an antique dealer who likes my lamp. It’s marked, $15.00. He walks over and offers me $12.00. I counter offer with $13.00. He pauses then agrees. He takes out his wallet and along with the four bills offers me much to think about: “What earthly difference do those two or three dollars make to you?” I stare at him, dazed. It is a wonderful challenge --though to be true to myself I could just as well have asked him the same thing. Is ego playing at us both? Was I maneuvering so as to not let him get the better of me? Or is it simply for the fun of the game as my father always said. Perhaps the true victor is the one who emerges feeling that we both won the toss.  My interlocutor turns away clutching his lamp, leaving me with that ever-present money dilemma.  

Notwithstanding, when it comes to items bequeathed me by my deceased parents I’m immovable. An unsuspecting customer makes an offer and my resentment rises to the occasion.   “I’m sorry, this price is firm!”   So there! Cherished items are not up for any haggling.

Think about this one: A woman drives up in a Jaguar. Is she entitled to bargain? My prejudice is right out there on the table with the goods where I and who-knows-who else can see it. She makes an offer on something and I get this awful urge to bargain upward. (She can afford it!)  Pretty unfair? She leaves and I must pray:  God, spare me from all my deep-seated judgments --now it’s about the wealthy! That attitude doesn’t feel good; I need to work on it.

  In all this open market shirt-sleeving there are woven delicious tales, studies in personalities, excursions into aging and youth, our values everywhere confronted, called up, revealed in the money we exchange, challenging us at every turn with sometimes painful, always quite subtle truths.

Sure, a garage sale is work -- selecting, pricing, and marking all kinds of merchandise. But I call it a singular day in the sun. Meeting a diversity of people, we are bonded in this quest to secure a good deal and take home the prize. It’s nothing short of high adventure. And in a very real sense all our nickels and dimes add up to peculiarly high kind of finance.

Adapted from Adele’s My Word column published in The Orlando Sentinel, August 9, 1991. Adele is a money peacemaker and the author of Money As Sacrament, a book for women. It's in all bookstores.  She's  available for personal money coaching at 407-323-9809.