Selling at a Homeschool Curriculum Sale

Against my husband’s better judgement, and at the very last minute, I decided to sign up for a table at a nearby “Annual Homeschool Curriculum Sale”. The table was $20 to reserve with the promise of a full refund just for showing up at the scheduled day and time. The kiddos were ecstatic, because they’re always trying to earn extra money and their parents never want to have a garage sale. I didn’t have much in the way of curriculum to sell, but I did have some books, puzzles, and games we aren’t using anymore that fit in the “educational” category. After scrounging around, we found enough product to look okay on a 4-foot table.

I bought a Cash Box for $24 on Amazon, so I could justify the whole experience as educational for the kiddos, and they could learn to count back change. I thought it would get too disorganized, too quickly without a nice place to put the bills. We made a trip to the bank to get 30 ones, 10 fives, and 3 tens. Then I got the Venmo app to try and keep up with all the young whipper snappers!

Presentation is everything, so I printed some labels to advertise what was available and the kiddos helped design a pennant banner “🖤 2 Learn!” We used a quilt as our table cloth to look warm & inviting.

We used plastic hanging-file crates (from Desert Industries thrift store) to house books, games/puzzles, and craft supplies. We turned 2 on their sides to make shelves on the table. We borrowed 2 floating shelves from my younger son to store more books and math flash cards. We used sticky notes for price tags, and a small letter board sign (from Goodwill) to price most books and DVDs. Everything was priced at more than 50% off current retail prices and all our products were in good – brand new condition. We arrived at the venue 30 minutes early to set up.

We got off to a slow start and ended up slashing prices in half to get things going. We traded with another seller, one of our games for their set of Dave Ramsey books for kids. We ended up using the Venmo app 3 times, and getting exact change for all of our other purchases so the kiddos never ended up needing to count back change, or use any of the change we got at the bank. We made $19 “profit” by deducting the price of the cash box we bought for the event. The “profit” is not counting the price we paid for any of the items in the first place. The kiddos put the $19 in their “farm fund”, they want to buy baby chicks! 🐥

🛍 Have you ever sold anything at a curriculum fair, craft fair, or farmer’s market? What tips do you have?