Capital District Parent Pages

While many of our mothers and grandmothers dealt with outgrown clothes and toys that were no longer age-appropriate by faithfully holding a spring garage sale, even they would be quick to admit that the return on investment wasn’t all that great. Everyone loves to find a great garage sale with items going for a quarter or fifty cents, but who wants to put the effort into holding one when those are the expected prices?

Today’s parents have turned to other avenues to sell kids clothing and toys, and some have found great success selling large lots of clothing online, with websites like eBay, around since 1995, and Craigslist. But those sites have their own problems, including the time that goes into packing and shipping items, meeting strangers at your home to peruse your items and handling returns if shoppers aren’t satisfied.

Mega sales Another option that is growing exponentially in popularity in the Capital District is consigning locally with shops or taking part in the mega-sized sales held once or twice a year. You won’t see any twenty-five cent price tags there, but you will see countless high quality clothes and children’s items in excellent condition at 5 percent to 30 percent of the original cost. The biggest children’s consignment sale in Albany is the Pass It On Sale, which takes place in spring and summer, and “passing it on” by word of mouth is the primary reason this sale has grown from 50 consignors in a rented firehouse 10 years ago to 550 consignors in the Albany Academy fieldhouse now. This spring’s sale takes place March 13-17. When Pass It On founder Cathy Wood, of Averill Park, decided to start her business in 2002, the concept was relatively new to the Northeast, but it was very common in the South, from where she had just moved. The process for the Pass It On Sale is fairly simple, although specific details are a work in progress and get tweaked a little with each sale.