A geographical analysis of garage sales in Jonesboro, Arkansas

Abstract

During the past few decades several scholars have studied garage sales. Recent works focus on certain time periods and/or gender issues, while others have examined the social implications and economic dimensions of sales. This study is a unique contribution to garage sale research because it is the first to analyze garage sales geographically. The project begins by offering a number of definitions for what is a garage sale and examines their connection to material culture. It also addresses why garage sales are held and who typically attends those events. Next, following the pattern set by other scholars the Jonesboro, Arkansas data are used to calculate new estimates for the number of garage sales held annually in the United States and the amount of money that changes hands at those venues. Chronologically, the greatest number of sales in Jonesboro occur in the late summer/early fall which coincides with the national garage sale season which peaks in early fall. Finally, the geographic distribution of garage sales in Jonesboro reveals a number of significant socioe-conomic trends—sale locations are positively correlated with income and negatively associated with race.

Keywords:

• consumption
• garage sales
• materialism

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Alyson Greiner and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript.

Notes

1. According to the US Department of Commerce (2007), a block group usually contains “between 600 and 3,000 people, with an optimum size of 1500 people.” Moreover, the “block group is the lowest-level geographic entity for which the Census Bureau tabulates sample data from the decennial census” (US Department of Commerce 2007).

2. No formal survey of the number of ‘piggy-back’ sales in Jonesboro was conducted; however, observations made over several weekends support this general trend of unadvertised sales in comparison to advertised sales. Moreover, no informal sales were recorded in low-income areas that have large minority populations. ‘Piggy-back’ sales rely on customers from nearby advertised sales, many areas of town had few, if any, sales, hence, the absence of sales altogether.

3. Herrmann and Soiffer (1984, p. 401) calculated the number of sales nationally based on data collected from Cortland, New York. They first determined the number of sales per Cortland resident (approximately one sale per 30 citizens) and then made “adjustments for rural, urban and suburban differentials” and found that nationally the number of sales per resident was 1:38. Applying those ratios (Cortland sales and national trends) to the Jonesboro data provides a more current estimate for the number of sales held in the United States. It is important to note that Herrmann and Soiffer (1984) do not fully explain how they determined the “differentials” and we accepted their calculations without full knowledge of their methods, and it is certainly possible that Jonesboro has a higher rate of garage sales than Cortland given its location and population.

4. Herrmann and Soiffer (1984) used a conservative average of $100 to $150 per sale to calculate the amount of money circulating in the informal economy associated with garage sales.

5. Williams and Williams (1994) noted that many wealthy families prefer to donate items rather than hold a garage sale. This does not appear to be the case in Jonesboro; however, a number of higher-income families interviewed did state that they would never host a sale and would rather donate unwanted items.

6. The Hispanic population total is only 733 for the study area, 1.18% of the total population (Claritas Incorporated 2002).

7. Dunleavy (2008) states that in 1984 the self-storage industry had approximately 289 million square feet and by 2007 that number had increased to 2.2 billion square feet. Furthermore, in 1995 1 in 17 American households rented storage space and by 2007 that number had increased to 1 in 10.