The Right Thing: Is it a yard sale faux pas to re-sell items from a neighbor’s trash?
Is it OK to make a profit off items you got free or paid little for at a neighborhood yard sale?
As in many neighborhoods across the United States, every year, a neighborhood in Boston has a neighborhood yard sale right around Labor Day. It’s a chance for people to clean out their basements or attics or cupboards or desks of things they don’t want and try to lure their neighbors to take on possession at a modest price. In this particular neighborhood, the running joke is that in five or so years, whatever item you sold will make it’s way around the block after being sold house to house to house.
The setup is a communal affair with a neighbor creating maps to post on telephone poles indicating which houses are participating. Mentions of the sale go out on closed groups on social media as well. At the end of the sale, people leave boxes out with free items they couldn’t sell. A side benefit is that neighbors get out and chat with neighbors.
But occasionally a question arises over whether someone’s tactics are inappropriate.
A reader we’re calling Anthony regularly sets up a table of items in front of his house. Typically, his wares consist of clothing he no longer wears, kitchen items he’s rarely used, or the occasional piece of furniture that seemed like a good idea at the time he purchased it.
Anthony noticed that a few weeks before the yard sale, one of his neighbors put out five or six dining room chairs to be picked up by the trash. Before the trash collectors arrived to swoop them away, Anthony saw another neighbor take them two at a time to his house down the block.
On neighborhood yard sale day, Anthony saw that the neighbor was selling the chairs he had rescued from the trash for $10 a piece or $50 for six chairs. Something about his neighbor’s action struck...