GLEN RIDGE, NJ — The Friends of the Glen Ridge Public Library held its first townwide yard sale on Saturday, Sept. 17. More than 133 homeowners were registered, and each had paid $10 to sell items their children had outgrown and they had almost forgotten. }
“I’m selling everything I bought at other garage sales,” said resident Hugh Macdonnell in his Ridgewood Avenue driveway.
Business was good, he said, with prices from 25 cents to $100.
“My most requested item was costume jewelry,” he said. “Someone wanted to speak to my wife. She didn’t believe the eyes of a man would know costume jewelry.”
Not selling for Macdonnell were the seven lights he put on display. Only one sold.
Buyers seemed to be coming from the borough, Bloomfield and surrounding communities and making a lot of stops at different driveways. The borough had a map that could be downloaded that had all the locations although one participating homeowner said he did not register.
There was a browser from Bergen County who would not give his name but said he was a dealer and thought he was seeing too many baby things. He dealt mid-century, modern furniture.
“It’s revered in Brooklyn,” he said.
He thought if someone had baby items, they should hang a pink cardboard in their driveway to alert, or warn, potential shoppers. Macdonnell thought the Salvation Army should come around at four o’clock, when the yard sales officially closed and pick up all the unwanted items. Nearby browsers thought both were good ideas.
The yard sale was also in the train station parking lot on Bloomfield Avenue, across from Christ Episcopal Church. At this location, people selling items did not have to be Glen Ridge residents; some were, and they came because they did not want a sale in their driveway.
Jan McNally-Rohal, a friend of the library, was running the parking lot sale. She said there was an online map which listed the items individual homeowners were selling although having pink cardboards for baby items was a good idea, She also said the Salvation Army, and 10 other organizations, had been contacted to make a pickup after the sale.
“No one would come,” she said. “They thought it would be garbage.”
Marnie Lamberson, a borough resident set up in the parking lot, said she had sold garden statutes, baby items and beauty items.
“They all wanted to know if we had jewelry,” she said.
Sharon Huevner, another borough resident and a retired teacher, said she was selling her old teacher supplies: educational sets and books. She said other teachers and grandparents bought these.
“Whatever teacher items don’t go, I’m donating them to a new charter school,” she said.
Most of her items cost $2.
Glen Ridge resident Ines Price and Bloomfield resident Michelle Moore had joined their fortunes and were sitting together in the parking lot. Price said she had sold some jewelry.
“It’s small and people can just carry it away,” she said. “Some are dealers with magnifying glasses.”
One Glen Ridge couple, David and Christ Palling, said they gave Pastor Diana Wilcox, of the Christ Episcopal Church, a good price on a piece of furniture and mirror.
Barbara and Chip Gleb, of Glen Ridge, sold bus rolls from a NYC bus that showed the destinations of the bus route. They were framed and were purchased for $100 each by a young couple.
“I changed the wall color,” Barbara said as to why she parted with them.
According to McNally-Rohal, the sale grossed $1,900 with a net of $1,250 after expenses. Her husband, the borough administrator, Michael Rohal, said next year the borough will coordinate the yard sale with the freecycle day and the bulk waste pickup.
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