Getting a good deal

UFO Sighting! (fog)

For those of you unfamiliar with REI and how they work, they have an incredible return policy. If you buy an item of theirs and decide, at ANY time during your ownership, you don't like, you can return it. It's awesome. The way they get rid of those returned items is through what's called their "garage sale." REI's garage sale's are notorious for finding amazing gear for an extremely discounted rate and sometimes in great condition.

On New Year's Eve, REI had their last garage sale of the year, with (potentially) lots of Christmas returns. The last time my brother and I went, we stood in line around 3:00 am and were maybe 15th in line. This time, we decided to sleep in a bit more and showed up at 5:30... only to be 25th in line or so. Not too bad.

25th in line - notice the tents

The crowd is always an interesting bit to communicate with. One man was wearing a canadian tuxedo and was interested in everything. One person started going up and down on the street on his scooter. Some of the crowd was a bit more hardcore than the rest. For example #1 in line apparently showed up at 4pm the previous day. They got a sweet spot with a hammock in front of the store. There were also two more hammocks (which I failed to take a picture of) in a set of trees in the parking lot where one hammock was slightly above the other one.




Once 9am rolled around, I had successfully played a game of finger jousting, talked about jeeps and cars, learned the game of ninja, learned about Germany a bit (one guy lived in Germany for part of his life), and was ready to find some deals.

Hammock in #1 spot

When picking a sale item, it's best to read the label description to determine why it was returned. Some are rather humorous or just interesting. Here are some samples:

"Smelled like campfire smoke" -on a jacket
"Did not fit" -shoes
"Multiple Holes - not cat-claw-proof" -on an air mattress
"Self Inflater does not self inflate" -on air mattress
There was a cast iron pan that had an entire side cracked and broken off (probably an interesting story)
"Used once - nothing wrong"