As I read a lot of different threads on here, a guy (I'm a professional geographer so maybe we think more about crap such as this more) sees a lot of different cultural traits or the how the size of a metro area matters around the country. The Sarasota area is certainly bigger than the SxFalls area and is filled with people that have come from other parts of the country. Maybe many of these folks just want to get rid of their stuff at a rummage and be done with it.
Up here, there are basically two groups of people that do rummages; those that want to move their stuff and price to sell (we fall into that category and always move alot of stuff at our rummages) and those people who think they are an extension of some retail place and try to sell much closer to retail than I ever would. Maybe they find people who are willing to buy at those prices but not from me. Or some folks don't have much money (or money saved up) so they price stuff higher to make every buck they can on the stuff they have. I'm mostly a very small scale "picker" and I'm interested in re-selling on
ebay. Occasionally, I'll buy for myself if there something I think I can use at a good prices or I'm adding to one of my own collections. Like I said, I usually go to 20+ rummages on a Sat. morning and maybe end up with 10 things or less in my car.
Same thing when it goes to driving around and picking stuff up. I see guys on here who constantly find truck loads of stuff. I just don't see that much stuff laying around this metro area. Don't get me wrong, I do and have scored some stuff waiting for the trash guys, usually next to apartment building dumpsters but its occasional. Now, I'm sure there are curbside scrappers in SxFalls who get enough stuff to make it worth their while. They probably have certain neighborhoods, businesses, or whatever that they know of or have made connections. But generally a guy just doesn't see a lot of scrap laying around, even by house garbage cans on the various trash days. I think culturally people around here generally tend to hang on to their stuff long after they use it regularly. A lot of folks in this metro grew up in small towns or farms and stuff is just generally kept. Stuff that I do see laying around tend to be in lower socioeconomic neighborhoods. Last winter, I scored 3-4 big TVs, a small frig, a larger water cooler/heater, and some occasional steel pieces out of 1 apt. complex in my bedroom town. I tried to expand this by checking out all of this little town's apt. complexes on Sunday afternoons during the winter and I couldn't justify my gas mileage (about a 10 miles loop or so) on what I found. I'll admit that I only was doing drive by checking and something either had to be next to or sticking out of a dumpster but I just didn't find much...
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Originally Posted by DakotaRog
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