I have a good friend Christine (of The Thinking Mother Blog – click here) who is moving to Texas. I knew it would help her to unload books before her move, and this thought tipped me off of inertia, inspiring me to organize Classical Kids’ first ever Used Curriculum Sale. Above is a photo of shoppers perusing the 24 boxes of books Christine was unloading, which is just a fraction of her collection. As it turned out, she wasn’t able to actually be at the sale since she was in Texas finding a house, but my husband brought her books and manned her table; see the $$ in the last photo!

The first eight shots below are what I brought and sold, recouping $315, with very low prices on stuff. That Algebra program I sold for $15 and someone else in the room did not sell the same one for $40. My sense was once I selected what was on its way out, I just wanted it to go to someone that could use it as expeditiously as possible. I had a $0.25 per item box, which I wish I had labeled as free. Would more people have taken stuff from it if it was? I am glad to have so much of this material move along. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to what sold and what didn’t; why would a whole crowd of homeschoolers not buy an unused shark sticker book for a dollar?

We covered the church’s books with sheets to have no confusion of what was for sale, and charged $5.00 a table (my friend above had three for example) to give a donation to the church for the use of the space. Buyers bought directly from each individual seller. We had 12 (mostly) veteran homeschoolers as sellers, some with half a table, others with multiple. I turned down thirty (!!!) other sellers that wanted to participate, because of lack of space. Most of them I did not know. It seemed like we could have had more buyers, but it was the most gorgeous day of the year. We held our sale from 3:00 to 6:00, and if anyone does it again, I recommend it ending at 5:00 instead, because those coming to this will aim to come early on to get the best stuff. I also wish we had a little handout with our events during the year (like Kid’s Forum, our presentation club) to share so the new folks we met could get a sense of how to come and participate with us in other activities.

Most people were happy with what they sold and the buyers were uniformly thrilled with what they bought. We had people who came from a far distance who felt like it was worth the long drive. It was nice to keep all these wonderful materials in the homeschooling community, while clearing off some shelves, and pocketing some cash to re-spend on homeschooling endeavors!

Thanks to all who came! It was great to see you!