Five days a week I run a road crew for the county highway department. We patch, we mow ditches, we put in culverts, and from November to March we plow. Saturday morning I get up at the same time I do for work, put a flashlight and a roll of small bills in my jacket, and go looking for things people don't want anymore that other people will pay for. I buy at garage sales, the flea market at the fairgrounds, farm auctions and estate sales, and I sell out of an 8 by 10 booth at an antique mall up the highway.

I started in 1994, when my wife Sheila dragged me to a garage sale and I came home with a box of old hand tools for $5. There was a Stanley plane in the bottom of it that a man at the flea market gave me $25 for the next week. That was the end of my Saturdays. I rented the booth in 1996.

I keep books on it because I keep books at work (the county is very interested in where its asphalt goes), and because Sheila made it a condition. Her words were, "If it's a business, it makes money. If it's a hobby, it fits on one shelf." So it's a business, and here are the books. Every buy and every sale I've made in 1999 is on The Ledger, and the ones I'd like back are on Mistakes I've Made.

1. Buy what you know. I know cast iron, Pyrex, old tools and old toys. I don't know furniture very well, glassware past Pyrex and Fiesta, or jewelry at all. When I wander out of my lane it goes on the Mistakes page.
2. Three times or walk. If I can't sell it for at least three times what I pay, I don't buy it. The booth rent and the mall's cut eat the first third, the gas eats some, and what's left is mine. The ones I brag about are the dollar things that sell for twelve, but the rule is three.
3. Get there early, with small bills. The good stuff at a garage sale is gone in the first half hour. Nobody wants to break a fifty at 7 a.m. Ones and fives.
4. Bring a flashlight. For the fairgrounds before sunup, and for looking inside things. Cracks hide.
5. Check it before you pay for it. Spin cast iron on a flat table to see if it wobbles, and look for cracks in good light. Run a finger around a Pyrex rim for chips, and look at the color: if it's gone chalky and dull, it's been through the dishwasher, and that doesn't come back. Count the pieces in a toy set. Open the box.
6. Don't fall in love. If I want it for myself, I write it down that way and it doesn't go on the books. I've got exactly one shelf of keepers in the den. Sheila's rule.
7. Be square. If somebody asks me what something's worth, I tell them the truth. If it's priced, it's priced, and I pay it. I don't haggle at a kid's sale, and I don't haggle a widow at an estate sale. I've walked away from things I could have had for a quarter because of that, and I sleep fine.
8. Ninety days. If it hasn't sold in ninety days, it gets marked down. Six months, it goes to the auction or the church rummage. Shelf space in the booth costs money every day.

This is from my own booth, in central Indiana, this year. Prices are what I usually pay and what it usually sells for at the mall. Your town may be different. Mine was different last year.

For every booth that sells Pyrex there are three booths full of these. I don't buy them, and when I have, I've been sorry.

• Anything that says "limited edition" on the box. Plates, figurines, bells, thimbles. If they made it to be collectible, everybody kept it, and everybody's selling it.
• Avon bottles. See the ledger, March 27. See also August 2.
• Encyclopedias and National Geographics. Heavy, everywhere, and nobody wants them.
• Beanie Babies. Every garage sale this summer had a tub of them and every one was priced like a car payment. I don't touch them.
• Console stereos, big TVs, radios that don't play. Heavy, broken, or both. I learned this one again this June.
• Exercise bikes and bread machines. I could start a second booth with nothing but bread machines. Every garage in Indiana has one.
• Incomplete toy sets. I know this. I keep buying them anyway because they're a dollar. Then they sit in the booth looking at me.

My booth is 8 by 10 feet, with pegboard on two walls and a set of shelves I built. Rent is $85 a month, paid on the first. On top of that the mall keeps 10% of everything that sells. The mall staff run the register, so I don't have to be there, and they mail a check on the 10th of the next month with a printout of every tag that sold. Instead of a fee for working there, the dealers each take a Sunday shift now and then. Mine is usually the second Sunday.

Here's what that means in real money. Say I have a $200 month at the booth, which is about my average this year:

So the mall gets more than half of a $200 month before I've paid for a single thing I sold. That's why rule number two is three times or walk. On a good month (August was $440) the rent hardly shows. On a slow month (July was $135) it hurts. Summer is slow at the mall, because everybody who'd be shopping there is out at the garage sales with me.

Is it worth it? I've thought about doing just the flea market, with a table, and keeping the $85. But a table means standing there all Saturday, and Saturday morning is when I buy. The booth sells while I'm out finding more for it. That's what the $85 is for.

Everything comes home to the garage first to be cleaned, checked, priced and tagged. The garage is also where Sheila parks. So there are rules, and they're hers, and she has a veto.

• Her car goes in the garage every night. Whatever is in the way moves.
• Anything that's been in the garage on the first of the month without a price tag gets a vote. Sheila's vote counts double. The Philco radio lost, 2 to 1, and it was right to.
• Nothing comes in that won't fit on the two steel shelves by Sunday night.
• No furniture, except by special permission. The oak washstand in January got permission because she liked it. It sold in April for $95, and now she says she should get a cut.

I've asked for a pole barn. That request is under review, and has been since 1996.

My nephew Fredrick sells computers at a store in Indianapolis, and he has been after me for two years to sell on the online auctions. eBay, mostly, is the one he talks about. His argument is that in my booth I'm selling to whoever walks by in central Indiana, and on the computer I'd be selling to the whole country, and some fellow in California will pay more for a carded Star Wars figure than anybody in this county. He's probably right about that. He showed me some finished auctions on his computer at Easter and I'll admit the numbers made me sit up.

I haven't tried it yet. Here's why, honestly:

• Shipping. Have you ever packed a cast iron Dutch oven to mail? Or four Pyrex bowls? Half my stock is heavy and the other half is breakable.
• Pictures. You need a picture of everything. Fredrick says he'd take them with his digital camera. Fredrick also said he'd help me put up this page, and I did the whole thing myself from a book.
• The waiting around. You list it, you wait a week, you wait for the check, you wait for the check to clear, you pack it, you take it to the post office. At the booth, I put a tag on it and go home.
• I like the people. Half of what I know I learned from the men and women I buy from and the people who stop at the booth when I'm working my Sunday. You can't ask a computer how its mother used that pan.

But I'm not saying never. Fredrick sent me a page here on GeoCities.us, Selling on the Internet: My First Year, where a hobbyist who sells collectibles through the online auctions and his own home page wrote down what worked and what didn't. I read the whole thing twice. I may try the Star Wars this winter, when it's slow. If I do, it'll go in the ledger like everything else.

• The Garage Sale Guru — how to run a garage sale that actually makes money: pricing, signs, the early birds and the leftovers. If you're holding the sale, read it. I'm one of the early birds she's talking about, and I've been shamed into waiting for the time on the sign.
• Selling on the Internet: My First Year — see above. My nephew's favorite page.