You are pricing your own driveway. The tag is an ask you chose, and the goal is a Saturday that ends with less stuff, not a verdict on what the object meant to you. What you paid, what a relative paid, and what a similar thing cost new in 2004 are memories. A buyer standing on the grass can check a phone. Price the things they will check, and price the rest so the decision takes one second.
This is the seller’s side of the table. The buyer’s problem, a sticker that might be hope, is pricing a garage sale find before you haggle. Do not use that page to tag your own table. They are doing a different job.
What are you actually pricing?
Three piles, before any number.
The first pile is the object you can name. A mold number, a size on a label, a title on a cartridge, a maker on a pan. Someone may already be searching that name. If you tag it from a feeling, you will either scare off the person who knows, or hand it to them.
The second pile is useful and ordinary. Mugs, paperbacks, a blender that runs, bath towels, a lamp with a cord. These sell because someone needs them today and does not want a store. The price is a round number under what a nearby store asks for a new one that does the same job. If you do not know that store price, look at one of them, not at twenty.
The third pile is the rest. Cords you did not test, a puzzle you did not count, a vase with a chip you are tired of seeing. Price it to leave, or do not put it out. A high tag on a tired object is how it comes back into the house at 3 p.m.
Furniture stays in the third pile unless you can say the size and the flaw. A dresser is a local object. You are not shipping it from a yard sale. Say the width, the stuck drawer, and whether it comes apart. A buyer with a car is the whole market.
How do you price by category?
Write one rule per category and apply it. A table of random numbers looks like you do not know, and hagglers can smell that.
Kitchen. A single plain plate is a leftover price or you keep it. A full place setting of one pattern can be a set, and the set is the product. A casserole with a model number is not “a dish.” If the lid is missing, the tag says no lid. If the lid is there, the tag says the lid is there. Chips are in the price, not in a story you tell if they ask. Heavy glass that you would not mail is a local price. Compare it with a new baker at a store, not with a collector listing you did not read.
Tools. A hand tool that works, with the size readable, is worth more than a rusty twin. Test the drill before you claim it runs. “Worked last year” is not a test. One wrench is a bin price. A set that is actually a set, counted, can be a higher tag. The tool checks are the same ones a buyer will use on you.
Books, records, and games. A paperback is a category price. A title you can read on the spine is still usually a category price unless you looked it up and the sold listings are obviously elsewhere. Do not buy yourself a research project on a box of thrillers. Games and records follow the same split: common title, low tag; a title you identified, a tag you can explain. Untested means untested, on the tag, if you did not plug it in.
Toys. A loose figure is a loose figure. A doll with a name you can read is a different tag from a bin of plastic. Count the parts you still have and do not imply the rest. Baby gear that is a safety item, a car seat or a helmet, does not belong on the table. What not to buy used is the list. If you would not want a stranger to trust it, do not sell it.
Electronics. Price the thing that powers on, with the remote or without the remote, stated. A missing cord is a lower tag. A device you did not plug in is “untested,” which is a real word and a real discount. Do not demonstrate it with a cord you then put back in the house.
How do you price clothes at a yard sale?
Clothes are most of a lot of sales, and they are where people either make a clean morning or stand next to a sad rack until noon.
Split them before you tag. Shirts and blouses in one group. Jeans and trousers in another. Dresses and coats on their own, because a coat is not a T-shirt. Children’s clothes in sizes you can read, not in a heap. Shoes in pairs, with both shoes out where someone can see the sole. A single shoe is not a listing. A stained shirt goes in the cheapest pile or it does not go out. Hiding the stain under a fold is how you spend the afternoon in an argument.
Ordinary clothes get one price for the group. A buyer at a yard sale is not shopping a boutique. They are deciding whether a stack of shirts is easier than a store. A single number, the same on every hanger in that group, is faster for you and for them. Change the number only when the garment is actually different: a coat with a working zipper, a pair of jeans you measured, a dress with the tags still on.
The exception is the piece you can name. A readable brand label, a size, and a fault you have already found can justify a separate tag. How to read a clothing label is the check, and a pair of 501s with a waist you measured is not the same object as a jean in a pile. Look that one up. Do not look up the pile. If the sold prices are ordinary, put it back in the group price. A brand on a tag is a search term, not a reason to multiply.
Say the size you can prove. “About a medium” is how the wrong person buys it and brings it back, except at a yard sale they do not bring it back. They just do not buy the next thing. Write the marked size. If you measured the waist, write the measurement. If you did not, do not invent one.
When should you look an item up before you tag it?
Look it up when any of these is true.
You can read a maker and a model, a mold number, a cartridge title, or a clothing label that is not a mall brand from last year. The search is that exact name, plus the fault. Sold listings are the number that happened. An asking price is someone else’s hope, including yours if you copy it.
The object is complete in a way the common version is not. A lid, a box, a pair, a set of four. Completeness is the product. Price the complete thing as complete, and do not let a browser’s first pretty photo, which has the lid, set your tag if yours does not.
The object is heavy, awkward, or easy to chip, and you are curious whether anyone will carry it. If the only sales are local pickup and they are close to what a new one costs, your tag should be an easy yes or the object should stay in the kitchen. You are not running a freight company.
You are about to write a number that would upset you if someone paid it in thirty seconds. That feeling means you have not looked, or you do not want to sell it. Both are allowed. Take it off the table. A tag you will talk yourself out of is a fight you scheduled.
Skip the lookup when the category rule already fits. Mugs, tangled cables, board books, a stained towel. The hour you spend on those is an hour the table is still bare. A buyer does not pay you back for research they did not need.
If the lookup and your memory disagree, believe the lookup. You are allowed to want more. You are not allowed to pretend the wanting is a market. Tag the number you would accept in the first hour, not the number you would brag about.
How do bundles work?
A bundle is a way to move the second pile and the third pile. It is not a discount on the one thing a buyer actually wants.
Price the object they picked up as that object. If they want three extra mugs thrown in, the mugs were already the mug price. Adding them does not make the named object cheaper. It makes the leftovers leave. Say that plainly: the casserole is the casserole, the mugs can go with it for the mug price, or for nothing in the last hour if you want them gone. Do not cut the casserole in half because they also took the mugs.
Group the leftovers yourself, before anyone asks. A box labeled “all of this, one price” is a decision you made when you were calm. A box you invent while someone is talking is how the good item subsidizes the junk. Books in a row, one price for the row or a lower price for any five. Toys in a bin, one price for the bin at the end of the day, individual tags in the morning if a few of them deserved a name.
Do not bundle a safety problem into a box to make it disappear. The car seat still does not go out. A recalled or broken electrical thing still does not go out. A bundle is for ordinary leftovers, not for objects you are nervous about.
How do you handle a haggler?
Decide the floor before they speak. The tag can be a little above the floor so a reasonable offer has somewhere to land. If the tag is already the floor, say so and mean it. “That’s the price” is a complete sentence.
One reason, if you give a reason. A chip, a missing lid, the end of the day. Then stop. A speech about what you paid invites a speech about what they will pay. You will not agree about the past.
A low first offer is not information about your object. It is a habit. You can repeat your number. You can say no. You do not have to meet in the middle. The middle of a number you did not choose and a number they invented is not a market. It is a compromise with a stranger who is practicing.
Watch the hands. People ask for a discount and then add a second item, then a third. Price each add at the category price or refuse the add. The first item does not get cheaper because the conversation got longer.
Early buyers sometimes want the best thing before anyone else sees it. That is fine if their number is your number. It is not a rule that the first person sets the sale. You can wait an hour. You can also accept a clean offer on a thing you looked up, because the lookup was the point and another hour will not change the chip.
Be specific about payment. Cash is simple. If you take a payment app, know how it works before the sale, and do not hand over a small object until the payment is the kind you can keep. A screenshot is not a payment. This is a driveway, not a store with a dispute desk.
What changes in the last hour?
The last hour is when the category prices fall, not when the looked-up objects become free. Cut the shirts, the mugs, the paperbacks, the bin of toys. Say it out loud or on a sign, one line, so you are not renegotiating every hanger. “Clothes half” is a rule. “Make me an offer” on the whole yard is how the person who waited all day walks off with the one thing you had identified.
If a looked-up object is still there at the end, you priced it above the buyers who came, or the buyers who wanted it did not come. Lower it once, to the floor you already chose, or take it home and sell it somewhere with a photo. Do not slash it to nothing to punish the morning. A local listing the next week is a different market from the grass.
Pack what remains before you are tired enough to “just leave it.” Donations have their own rules about what they will take. A stained pillow and a broken lamp are often your trash, not a charity’s problem. The sale is over when the driveway is clear, not when the last person has asked for a deal on a bag you already refused.
How do you check a single item?
Point the Worth app at the thing before it goes on the table, when the thing has a mark worth reading. You get a name and a range, and a look at what stores and marketplaces are asking right now. Use that to decide whether it belongs in the looked-up pile or the category pile. The app will not count a bundle, hear that the mixer rattles, or know you want the table empty by noon. The tag is still yours.