Publication Date: Friday Oct 17, 1997

Secondhand treasures

Saying Art Adams frequents garage sales is like saying Michael Jordan shoots basketballs or Jimi Hendrix strummed the electric guitar. It's a true statement, but it's also quite a bit of an understatement. Palo Alto's resident expert on garage sales has been roaming local streets, looking for treasures, novelties and practical items each Saturday for the past 30 years. He's got extensive records that reach back 23 years detailing everything he has bought, and how much he paid, at garage sales. There's the two quarts of shampoo he spent $2 for on May 28, 1993; the $10 movie projector bought on July 6, 1985; and the musical bird, captured on July 10, 1982, for a mere $2.

When he added up all his garage sale purchases over the last 23 years, it came to a staggering $40,000.

"I had no idea that I spent that much money," Adams said.

Well, Art, get ready to open the wallet again.

The fourth annual Palo Alto City-Wide Garage Sale takes place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18. The event will feature more than 170 garage sales at residences throughout Palo Alto. That's down from 250 last year, but still plenty for local garage sale addicts.

This ultimate garage sale is sponsored by the city's Recycling Program in an attempt to get people thinking about buying secondhand goods instead of just purchasing new items to fill wants or needs. Reuse, explains Julie Weiss, Palo Alto's residential recycling coordinator, is an important tool for reducing the amount of waste generated in the city.

"The whole idea is to get across the idea that reusing is a good thing to do and that reuse is better than recycle," Weiss said.

While she points out that recycling is still a very worthwhile habit, reuse is even more kind to the Earth because it does not expend the energy or produce the waste that recycling does.

But there's more to the garage sale event than just environmental benefits, Weiss explains; it's also going to be lots of fun. She participated in last year's City-Wide Garage Sale and ended up buying a number of items.

"Last year was a really good year for me," she said.

Her take included gardening supplies as well as some compact discs.

"I think I got a Talking Heads CD," she said.

Weiss will be out there again this year, competing against professional garage sale shoppers like Adams, looking for something that eluded her in 1996.

"I need a garden shed," she said. "I had a chance (to get one) last year, and I got there too late."

There are the planned purchases, like the garden shed desired by Weiss, and then there are ones that are made more on a whim. Garage sale shoppers are prime reusers of material that might otherwise end up in the trash. One person's trash, as they say, is another person's treasure.

Adams, for one, has loads of items whose value might not be initially obvious. He's got sheet music that dates back to 1905 and includes the unforgettable song "Would You Rather be a Colonel with an Eagle on Your Shoulder or a Private with a Chicken on Your Knee?" He's also got a spy camera, a James Bond 007 toy car, a section of cable that once carried the San Francisco cable cars, Cow brand beauty soap, and a few cans left of perfumed horse manure.

Mostly, he's got fragments of the stories that come with these items. Take, for example, the industrial light meter that he bought. Underneath the meter, in its box, Adams found a folded-up receipt billed to the USS Arizona back in January 1936. Adams has a notion why this meter didn't end up in a watery grave nearly six years later.

"The chief engineer probably slipped it in his pocket, because the Arizona went down in Pearl Harbor," he reasons.

Adams is considering writing a book about garage sales, and he is full of information regarding the phenomenon and the people who frequent them.

"I think garage sales as an entity became active in the '60s," he said, adding that prior to that people mainly used flea markets to get rid of unwanted goods.

Adams says that there are a variety of people who frequent garage sales, from folks on welfare to people like Adams. There are also a lot of immigrants who shop garages, he said, hoping to inexpensively furnish their new homes.

Saturdays are the main days for garage sales, and quite a few folks actually shop them that day and then turn around and sell the goods at the flea market on Sunday. That means an old San Francisco Giants clock that you sell on Saturday for $3 might be sold again the next day, at a nice markup.

The 172 sales that will take place this Saturday mark a dramatic increase from the average on any given Saturday in Palo Alto.

"During the season there are about 30 or 40 that are advertised (each week) in The Weekly," Adams said. "That's in Palo Alto, and there's another 15 or 20 in Menlo Park."

Palo Alto resident Sterling Silver is also a garage sale fan and calls Adams an expert on the topic. He doesn't bring in the type of haul that Adams does, but still, Silver says, if he doesn't buy something from a garage sale every Saturday, he considers the week a loss. He admits that it's a nutty passion.

"I think we need psychiatrists, frankly," Silver said.

What: Palo Alto City-Wide Garage Sale

When: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18

Where: At more than 170 residences throughout Palo Alto

Information: 496-5910 

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