Making some money is a legitimate reason for having a garage sale and naturally the question is, how much can you make with a garage sale. This question is very difficult to answer as there is not much data available for Australian garage sales. So far, I have only seen the numbers for The first Great Australian Garage Sale Trail in April 2010. There, the average take is estimated at nearly $600 per garage sale. I don't think that this high number is a good indication for what you can expect. The Great Australian Garage Sale Trail had a very high profile and it was held in rich suburb. My personal estimate is about a quarter of that amount. This more or less agrees with the numbers from the American Yard Sale Search website. This website has numbers for 3500 garage sales and their graph shows that around 50% of all sales make less than $200. Interestingly it also shows that more than 10% of all sales make more than $1000.
To get an idea about how much you can make from a garage sale, I have setup the simple, anonymous survey below. If you are interested in this matter and have held a garage sale yourself, I would appreciate if you could take a few seconds to fill-in the form below. It is completely anonymous and I am not asking for any personal information.
I finally got a semi-useful number of responses and the results are similar to the American Yard Search survey above. It is possible to make a lot as well as only a little with a garage sale. Unlike above, the median numbers are a bit higher. 50% of all sales make more than $500 and 50% of all households make more than $300. There is a noticeable trend of having combined garage sales that involve several households. That's why there is a considerable difference in sale and household numbers. For the complete list of results check out my survey results page
If you have any information or comments on this issue, please let me know. I'd appreciate any additional information and would be happy to post it on this website.