Gift or commodity: what changes hands in the U.S. garage sale?

It is a testament to the power of Mauss's classic essay The Gift (1967[1925]) that it is still the starting point for most discussions of gift exchange, although his text has been subject to considerable comment and elaboration (e.g., Carrier 1990a, 1991; Durham 1995; Gregory 1980, 1982; Hyde 1983; Parry 1986; Sahlins 1972; Thomas 1991; Valeri 1994). Mauss speaks of a giver and recipient who are bound together through the objects or services given in an interdependent relationship. The Maussian gift is inalienable, in that something of the original owner always remains with it, and it establishes ties of reciprocity or interdependency between people. At least since Mauss, gift exchange has been viewed as part of a socioeconomic totality found-only in traditional preindustrial societies.

In the West, birthplace of industrial capitalism, it is commonly accepted that alienable commodities change hands in market exchange; Mauss was in part concerned to address what he saw as the historical separation of economic relations from social relations in the West. Commodities, following Marx, are usually seen as (manufactured) products intended for market exchange within the capitalist mode of production; they are marked by the alienation of their production and the impersonality of their exchange. In contrast, gifts, in the Maussian tradition, are socially engaged and a binding force in society. Gregory's frequently cited definitions provide a good basis for discussion: commodity relations occur in "the exchange of alienable objects between transactors who are in a state of reciprocal independence," while those of the gift occur in "an exchange of inalienable objects between people in a state of reciprocal dependence" (Gregory 1980:640).

As Gregory's definition demonstrates, gift and commodity have been constructed as inherently opposed to one another in much of the anthropological literature (e.g., Gregory 1980, 1982; Hyde 1983; Taussig 1980). "In this view," Appadurai observes, "gift exchange and commodity exchange are fundamentally contrastive and mutually exclusive" (1986:11). Much recent scholarly attention has focused on formulating a more nuanced view of this oppositional gift-commodity relationship. While some (Carrier 1992a; Godelier 1977; Gregory 1980, 1982) maintain the gift-commodity distinction, they do explore how the two types of exchange can coexist in differing contexts within and on the borders of the same society. Others have challenged such fundamental notions as the inalienability of the gift (Parry 1986), commodity exchange among only independent transactors (Stirrat 1989), and the social cohesion engendered

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the definitions can become blurred, and most shoppers do not like making precise distinctions as long as they can get a bargain.⁶ Terms describing garage sales vary by geographical region and personal inclination, but include yard sales, lawn sales, carport sales, porch sales, moving sales, barn sales, tag sales, and many others.

Although there is much variation in the garage sale, regular participants share a vision of a "proper" garage sale. Such a sale is held at a respectable residence and offers an array of clean (usually household) goods in reasonable condition at low prices. Ideally, at least some of the goods should be of quality brands or of collectible interest. Even better are sales in which the sellers primarily want to dispose of their things and therefore sell at especially low prices. Overall, exchange in the garage sale is expected to be more personal than that of conventional stores since, at least in "legitimate" garage sales, they feature the proprietors' cast-offs. So important is it that the goods being sold should belong to the seller that one long-time shopper phrased it explicitly:

I guess for me there's a sort of ethic about garage sales. They're [items for sale] supposed to be yours. It really should be something you had or your neighbor had. I don't like sales where people are selling stuff they specifically bought to resell. . . . Buying to resell just seems sort of slimy. It just doesn't seem fun any more. It starts feeling more like a real store. It feels too commercial. It doesn't feel social anymore on that level. Then they are always people who are outrageous about prices. They tend not to bargain. . . . They're not fun at all.

This statement of a common perception establishes that a "good" or "proper" garage sale is less commercial and more socially engaged than the marketplace, in part because sellers exchange their own used possessions. But they are also good because they do not try to extract as much money as possible for their used goods. Sales where sellers seek to maximize their revenues are not considered good, even by most other sellers.

Expectations of "good" or "proper" shoppers are less concrete than those surrounding sales, and they primarily concentrate on avoiding excesses. Aside from a homogenized view of a respectable middle- or working-class person, proper shoppers are expected not to arrive too early, not to bargain too much ("want something for nothing"), to be respectful of (and perhaps even appreciative of) the sellers' goods and property, to buy at least a token item, and to purchase goods for their own use or for those in their extended network. Dealers and others who buy in order to resell are not considered proper shoppers. They are likely to come early, before the scheduled start of the sale, thus breaching the sellers' hospitality, and they may bargain relentlessly. Shoppers who overstay or who are in some way obnoxious or offensive are also not considered proper.

Garage sale participants are primarily from middle- and stable working-class occupations.⁷ Sellers in proper sales must own enough goods to hold a sale; they tend to cluster in their thirties and forties, when children are at home and their clothes and paraphernalia need periodical clearing out. Some rural poor hold perpetual sales (Herrmann and Soiffer 1984) on trafficked roads; some urban elderly, struggling welfare recipients, as well as the unemployed, try to supplement their income through repeated selling. These participants, however, operate more on a business footing and, since they often buy to resell, do not fit the ideal of proper garage sale participation.

Although observation and the overwhelming response of sellers indicate that "all kinds" of people attend garage sales, shoppers, too, tend to cluster in the middle- and working-class strata. Shoppers in their twenties, thirties, and forties predominate, since they are establishing households and raising families. Market researchers have determined through random telephone interviewing that a half or more of the population sampled attend garage sales (O'Reilly et al. 1984; Reichen et al. 1979) and that the income of shoppers is slightly higher than that of nonshoppers (O'Reilly et al. 1984). Although most adult Americans have attended a garage sale at some time, a fluctuating group of regular shoppers attends disproportionately.⁸ Occasional upper-class shoppers may participate in sales, often for the recreational value, and they

sometimes hold sales of their own (e.g., Texas Monthly 1990). The truly needy, such as welfare recipients, do not frequent sales. They may not have access to automobiles, the necessary disposable cash, and the middle-class presentation of self that facilitate garage sale exchange. The rural poor attend sales when they have the gas money. The economic importance of sales in the lives of participants varies. Graduate students, the unemployed, the working poor, immigrants, and those establishing households may find garage sale consumption a necessary "survival strategy" (Herrmann 1990; Herrmann and Soiffer 1984). Financially established participants tend to shop for recreation or to supplement their consumption elsewhere and to hold garage sales as a means of housecleaning.

My research indicates that individuals from more religious backgrounds participate in sales. Among some groups, the thrift involved in shopping at sales can be highly valued. In Dundee, NY, for example, numerous Mennonites attend the annual town-wide sale, riding bicycles and horse-drawn carriages. In the more cosmopolitan Ithaca, NY, area, shoppers include Tibetan monks, Egyptian Muslims, and adherents of a range of Christian and Jewish groups.

While garage sale shoppers and sellers may know each other from other settings, especially in a small town, most transactions occur between strangers or partial strangers. Garage sales can provide the context for neighbors to come to know one another since neighbors are attracted by the informal open invitation to the public to stop by and look over the garage sale goods. Some neighborhood sales have even been organized as a means of luring neighbors out of their houses for interaction. There is certainly overlap between the people who hold sales and those who shop at them, but not enough to speak of a bounded garage sale community or culture. Further, the motivations for participation are varied; it would be hard to delimit a common set of beliefs and practices that characterize participants as a group distinguishable from others in American society.

Despite the heterogeneity of the garage sale participants, there are some common values that should be noted. The overarching ethos holds that people who participate in sales are "just folks." While not eliminated, markers of class are relaxed in the garage sale setting. Shoppers and sellers wear casual clothes; formal titles and language are almost never heard. It is relatively easy for shoppers to present themselves as regular, respectable, friendly people by virtue of their dress and demeanor. Sellers, however, cannot fully escape association with the prestige of their neighborhood and the type and quality of the goods they offer, although they generally attempt to come across as cordial and friendly. The garage sale ethos includes a generalized friendliness and overall egalitarianism. Other social markers, such as gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation clearly affect garage sale transactions, and social inequalities are certainly reproduced in garage sale exchanges, but such social distinctions are often muted in importance by the face-to-face egalitarian style of the exchange.⁹

A salient feature of the garage sale is that this quasicommercial activity proceeds from the home, combining features of proprietary hospitality and socializing with other features more appropriate to commerce. Sometimes this produces an uneasy tension and uncertainty about rules of behavior.¹⁰ That this admixture transpires in and around the home and that, in consequence, public commerce and private hospitality are juxtaposed are very important elements in establishing the range of social relations found in this exchange. Sellers "give" sales from their homes; their advertisements—be they signs on the road or postings in the newspaper—serve as invitations to the general public to attend their sales. Analogies with social events are clear and the style of relating in the garage sale is, like informal entertaining, friendlier and more intimate than the idiom prevailing in most conventional stores.¹¹ Public and private are brought together in an unusual synthesis in the garage sale, and women (the primary garage sale participants¹²) combine their traditional domestic concerns with those of public commerce to play a key role in creating the mixed and multilayered nature of garage sale exchange (Herrmann 1995, 1996).

On first inspection, the garage sale appears to be little more than small-scale market exchange that takes place at private residences. Goods are arranged and often displayed as they are in stores; similar items, such as books or children's clothes, are generally grouped together. Sales are usually advertised in local newspapers and by signs placed along the roads. Items are priced, with payment expected in cash or check. The overt model of the garage sale is that of a store. One mother recently told her four-year-old son that they were going to his friend Nicholas's "store" as they walked across the street to his family's garage sale. Garage sales have check-out areas, cash boxes (sometimes even cash registers), and proprietors.

Most of the items sold in the garage sale were originally purchased as conventional commodities in an advanced industrial society and used by their owners. They are the manufactured effluvia of late 20th-century American households: coffeemakers, towels, lamps, basketballs, and file cabinets. Some items, such as crafts and works of art, may not be completely commodified, insofar as they are handmade and often bear the signatures of their creators (Carrier 1991); they are thus more personal and inalienable than most commodities. Antiques and collectibles, which may have their own market values, also sometimes turn up at sales, usually as prestige objects. The overwhelming majority of the goods, however, consists of the fungible, mundane consumer goods that have at one time been purchased as new commodities.

It is the act of selling possessions, or converting them to a monetary value, that (re)commodifies them in the garage sale context. Appadurai (1986) and Kopytoff (1986) remind us that things may go in and out of commodity status, as part of what Kopytoff (1986) calls their "life histories"; goods enter a recommodified phase in the garage sale. Attaching a price to these goods allows them to (re)circulate in the contemporary market economy, where earlier face-to-face means of distributing used goods to those who could use them (e.g., clothing exchanges or extended kinship networks) have largely vanished.

The amount of money paid for goods, however small, is, ironically, the grease that enables goods to circulate. Making money is a major reason for holding a sale, but it is by no means the only one. As I have articulated elsewhere in an extended typology of sellers and shoppers (Herrmann and Soiffer 1984),¹³ hierarchies of motivations for holding a garage sale include routine housecleaning, disposing of goods before relocating, recycling, socializing, curiosity, and generating cash to pay bills or to cover household extras. In any given sale and in any exchange within that sale, the social relations can be more or less giftlike and, in the final instance, it is the seller who controls the social relations of the exchange. But even sellers with the most rationalized of motives do their best to pass on their advantages to others. A perpetual seller in Los Angeles who offers weekly garage sales to supplement the meager welfare check that supports her and her son explained to me, "People want a good deal. I give them that" (Curtiss 1992:A1).

There is a renewed interest in the idea that, instead of some invisible, impersonal hand of the marketplace, pricing goods in the formal economic system is, in essence, a social and cultural activity (e.g., Alexander 1992; Dilley 1992; Prus 1985). A similar point is made by Smith (1989) about auctions and can also be found in the literature on flea markets (e.g., Belk et al. 1988). The garage sale also provides the potential for participants to create a sense of justice (Soiffer and Herrmann 1987) by adjusting the price to the circumstances of the specific exchange, thereby constructing a "just price" (Gudeman 1992) for the objects. In the garage sale the main expectation is that items will sell for significantly less than at retail (or discount) stores—that, in short, shoppers will get a bargain. This expectation is met at almost all garage sales, but there is tremendous variation in the difference between garage sale and retail prices. The same coffee mug may be priced at 25 cents or $1 at two different sales, but still provides a large discount from its original $8 retail price. Sales contain an enormous range of items and few sellers have

a command over the retail value of all the items they are selling. It is thus understandable that uneven pricing should even occur within a single sale. Sellers who are primarily interested in maximizing their revenues tend to price higher than is the norm, while those who are primarily housecleaning will probably price at lower figures. That we can even speak of a "norm" or a modal range, however, indicates that there is something of a garage sale market¹⁴ distinct from, and with lower prices than, the retail market.

In that sellers do not need to derive a profit from the sale of their possessions, the garage sale defies the formal logic of the marketplace. This is the key point about recommodifying possessions in the garage sale: the price need not cover sellers' costs, since these are personal possessions, which have presumably already been bought, paid for, and used. The fact that sellers do require profits and indeed do not usually need to recommodify their possessions at all limits the degree of commodification of goods in the garage sale setting. This is why pricing can be so enormously elastic and subject to such a wide range of going rates. Sellers are free to charge widely divergent prices or even to give things away.

Sellers admit that pricing items is one of the hardest activities in holding a sale, especially in respect of items about which they know little. Nevertheless, comparison, whether implicit or explicit, always has the effect of pegging the price of garage sale goods to retail prices and, for those who attend garage sales, to going rates at other sales.¹⁵ It is common to hear participants comment that a particular blender cost $50 new or that blouses sell for $1 in garage sales. A full discussion of prices in the garage sale is beyond the scope of this paper, but I want to note that garage sale prices are also subject to negotiation. The garage sale is one of the few places in the United States, along with flea markets and rummage sales, where it is acceptable to bargain for inexpensive items. Insofar as the prices for garage sale goods are amenable to adjustment, they seem less commodity-like to Western shoppers, who are accustomed to fixed prices that they are unable to influence.

Lewis Hyde says of commodity exchange: "It's as if the buyer and seller were both in plastic bags; there's none of the contact of a gift exchange. There is neither motion nor emotion because the whole point is to keep the balance, to make sure the exchange itself doesn't consume anything or involve one person with another" (1983:10). In the garage sale much exchange can remain relatively anonymous, especially in larger urban and suburban settings in which sellers and buyers are most likely not to be acquainted from other contexts. In this situation, garage sale exchange may be no more socially engaged than purchasing aspirin at a local convenience store. When the buyer and seller have other ties, however, be they neighbors, friends, or relatives, it becomes unclear whether or to what extent elements of commercialism prevail. The amount of payment, if there is any at all, comes into question, and the transactors act unpredictably in this uncertain situation. Some shoppers insist on paying as if they were regular, anonymous customers, while some sellers refuse to take payment from members of their extended network. Certainly, those acquainted with the proprietors almost never initiate bargaining, because to do so might be viewed as trying to take advantage of the proprietors. Thus, the conventions of exchange in this already mixed arena become even more uncertain when previously established social ties exist.

To a large extent, garage sale trade models market exchange (Gell 1992), masking the degree to which it is socially engaged or giftlike. It would be surprising if the garage sale, embedded in a market economy, did not reflect elements of the dominant system, as do other redistributive mechanisms such as church rummage sales, the Salvation Army store, and barter networks.¹⁶ The market style of the garage sale facilitates the flow of goods in a society already characterized by a fragmented sense of community. As one seller notes about generosity in the garage sale: "It is a little bit stingier than giving. Giving you would say everything in a garage sale is for free. Come and take what you want. And actually, I don't think it would work." Her point is that, in an advanced capitalist context, some payment is needed to bring it into conformity with the

expected market model and to confer some value on the items. As Dilley (1992) observes, the metaphor of the market has become so dominant in the West that it is used to subsume a wide variety of exchanges; it has become increasingly difficult to envision any other form of exchange. Yet, as I have argued elsewhere (Soifer and Herrmann 1987), the U.S. garage sale is a site that allows transactors to play out incipient ideological structures alternative to those of the dominant market discourse: reclaiming control over one's labor, creating justice in the marketplace, beating the system, and recreating a sense of caring community. Thus, under the auspices of market exchange, more socially engaged exchange can occur.

There are several ways in which things that change hands in the garage sale more closely resemble gifts than commodities. The primary giftlike characteristic—that goods, having been used, carry something of their original owners—colors all aspects of garage sale exchange, so that even the most alienated of commercial exchanges is tempered by this element of inalienability. Because garage sale goods are possessions and as such are imbued with the identities of their owners, all garage sale exchange to some extent complicates mutually exclusive notions of gift and commodity by generating a more or less "inalienable commodity." The inalienability is enhanced when sellers transmit personal sentiments and memories along with the goods they sell. Yet other elements of garage sale exchange are also giftlike in the Maussian sense. The second giftlike element of garage sale goods I will address is their giveaway prices. The token payment, one that can be influenced by bargaining, renders many of these goods "semigifts." Finally, there is the aspect of outright giving, which occurs not only on the part of the sellers but also on that of shoppers when they give their garage sale purchases away as gifts. Sellers may also make gifts of the proceeds from their sales to various worthy causes. In all the several combinations and inflections of these aspects of garage sale exchange, the social relations are more binding among the participants than those typically generated in commodity exchange. Furthermore, in many exchanges, both the buyer and seller actively construct new meanings and sentiments about objects, rendering them inalienable at the very moment of monetary exchange, an obvious complication of oppositional gift-commodity models.

One of the key elements in Mauss's original essay is that the gift is inalienable; something of the donor is passed along with it. "To give something is to give a part of oneself. . . . In this system of ideas one gives away what is in reality a part of one's own nature and substance, while to receive something is to receive a part of someone's spiritual essence" (Mauss 1967[1925]:10). Since goods in the American garage sale have been used, they also transmit something of the original owners, whether physical signs of wear (such as nicks, stains, or scratches), emotional associations, or a sense of subtle contagion. Goods that were originally purchased as commodities, and were therefore anonymous and interchangeable, have been transformed through personal possession into unique items. Kopytkoff (1986) calls such goods "singularized"; each time they change hands, a new provenance is added to their "life histories."

For some, the fact that garage sale goods have been used and have a history (i.e., as erstwhile possessions) is one of the principal allures of shopping at garage sales. One young seller prefers garage sale purchases because items have a history: they have served. This sense of history can be general—knowing that an unspecified individual has used the item—or it can entail knowing that a particular individual has used it. Such shoppers may prefer garage sales to other outlets

for secondhand goods such as rummage sales or flea markets precisely because, in the former, they encounter the original owners of what they have bought and so can claim to be taking away something of the previous owners with their purchases.

Research demonstrates that many Americans, like people in some preindustrial societies, accept the sympathetic magical law of contagion (Rozin et al. 1989). Scientific proof to the contrary notwithstanding, they think that even casual physical contact with people with AIDS, for example, has a contaminating effect (Rozin et al. 1992). They act as though objects could be permanently affected by contact with people, whose relative success or desirability is transmitted to their possessions.¹⁷ The transfer of possessions in the garage sale is therefore far more laden with meaning than merely deriving use value from secondhand goods. Since buyers act as though they take home some essence of the sellers, the contagion¹⁸ from such purchases (particularly from those who are unattractive or from dilapidated areas) could be undesirable.¹⁹ Conversely, items purchased from successful people are attractive. Shoppers seek out affluent neighborhoods, not only because they believe the goods will be better, but also because they believe they will receive a better kind of contagion; they boast of where they purchased something as if that added to the social value of the object.²⁰ Constructions of class, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation are also important factors in the type of contagion shoppers believe they will derive from sellers.

Used items sold at garage sales also carry personal memories. As Belk (1988) notes, objects can "contain" personal contents and become part of their owners' extended sense of self. Sellers can pass on their memories and attachments when they sell things to absolute strangers in the garage sale: "Those were my favorite pair of jeans" or "That was my grandmother's rug, but I have no place for it here. Think of my grandmother when you use it." At one sale, I purchased a framed watercolor painting. The male seller insisted that I select one of the photographs of the female artist to go along with it. The artist had once followed the seller to Sarasota in hopes of forming a long-term relationship, but things had not worked out. In some way, it eased the seller's conscience to transfer the watercolor with memories intact, thereby constructing an inalienable possession at the very point of monetary exchange. If I were, in turn, to pass the painting along, I would no doubt retell the tale of the seller and the artist and point to her photograph on the back of the painting. I would then describe how perfectly the watercolor blended in color and pattern with the wood in my back room, thereby adding another chapter to the painting's "life history."

It is because garage sale goods are possessions, many still containing their owners' sentiments and memories, that many sellers operate as least as much by the motivation of placing their items in good homes as by that of earning money.²¹ The epigraph for this article, for example, illustrates how important it is for some sellers to view the transfer of their belongings as adoption by a suitable owner. A mathematician, looking forward to clearing out items from his earlier years, stated, "It will be fun to see the people who get the things and can actually use them."

Shoppers may purchase goods with the same logic in mind and may assure the sellers that their ceramic planters or aunts' dresses will be appreciated and treated with care. It is not uncommon for shoppers to tell stories of sellers who have touched their lives, in however brief and small a way. Terry Parker, a library clerk in her twenties, provides a striking example of this:

Once I got a sweater that was this beautiful hand-knit wool sweater for $1. It was a gorgeous, gorgeous sweater of Huntington wool, a plaid knit sweater. This is a real hard thing to do. It is real complicated and real gorgeous. I have had it for a long time now. I just started talking to this woman and I just liked her so much. She was such a mom. She knitted this sweater for her daughter and her daughter was like my age and hated it. She just hated this sweater; she never once wore it. That woman probably spent $20 on yarn and sold it to me for $1. One dollar! . . . I remember where this woman's house is. This sweater is starting to fall apart, but it is something like a memorial to her, you know, her motherly love. . . . Sometimes you just strike a matchup with someone or something.

Sellers, too, speak of how they transmit something of their lives in the objects they pass along. One woman who lives in a town of 400 in the Adirondacks observed that in such a small place there are constant reminders of garage sale transactions: she frequently sees individuals dressed in the clothes she has sold them. A freelance author wrote about the ties created among individuals through the transfer of items, along with their memories, at garage sales. Her recollection of the buyer's joy at inexpensively acquiring a rocking chair that had once belonged to her aunt evokes the spiritual dimension of Mauss's gift:

I felt a mysterious awareness of the unity of human experience: that as the chair passed from me to that aging woman, the two of us shared something of our lives and ourselves. I do not know where my aunt got the chair; I do know that she valued it, and spent some of the lonely nights of old age sitting in it reading mystery stories until her eyesight failed. I know that she held my mother on her lap in that chair, and me and my children. I can only imagine it in the life of its new owners. [Paterson 1981:771]

Hyde speaks of the gift as "erotic" because it establishes relationships between people. In contrast to commodity exchange, he asserts "that a gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people" (1983:56). These examples suggest that something of the original owner, analogous to Mauss's "spirit of the gift," is passed along and provides the potential to create a feeling-bond between shopper and seller. While I do not claim that the relationship that develops through the transfer of garage sale items is of the same intensity or importance as that discussed by Mauss, or by those who examine ongoing gift relationships in the West (e.g., Cheal 1988), I argue that it is often qualitatively different from that of mundane commodity exchange, particularly in that transactors construct unique meanings about the transmission of objects in sales.

The tension between the commodity- and giftlike aspects of garage sale goods is clearly apparent in pricing practices. Insofar as there are going rates or a loosely defined garage sale market, sellers who price at the high end of those levels and above operate more closely to the logic of the marketplace and their goods are largely commodified. Other sellers, who for a variety of reasons "just want to get rid of things," price their possessions low, even for garage sale rates. At one sale I attended, everything—from sweaters to jewelry—went for ten cents. We could speak of such prices as being giftlike, even though money changes hands, because of what we would indeed call their giveaway amounts. Akerlof (1984), an economist, similarly explores the notion of partial gifts in U.S. economic exchange, with the difference that he focuses exclusively on labor exchanged for specific wagers.

Low prices are one of the hallmarks of garage sale exchange. One female seller in her thirties described selling children's clothes "for just nominal amounts of money, which is practically like giving them away." Some shoppers, familiar with garage sale prices, will actually remind sellers who price high that "this is a garage sale"—a place where prices are supposed to be low. Similarly, Ruth Landman (1987) noted that, although garage sales are women's work, they are "not for the money," since the income derived is negligible when one considers the labor involved. One seller spoke of children's clothes, one of the staples of garage sale trade, in these terms:

I gave a lot of stuff away. . . . Only for someone who needed them. And I gave them a lot. . . . If somebody likes the clothes and they're going to use them, and if they've got one child and another one on the way . . . I threw in a couple extras. If they bought one or two things I might charge them full price. But if they bought a lot of them, I took about $5 off of each order. It felt good. It always feels good.

This quote captures the dual nature of charging money for possessions and thereby commodifying them, yet doing so in a flexible manner so that, in a particular transaction, they may be reconceptualized as gifts.

or higher status, the presumed equality of the transactors and the usual payment of money in the garage sale mitigates much of the inequality of the exchange. As Mauss noted for Western exchange generally, the parties are relatively equal; this is also the case in Botswana, where those of equal status, even strangers, can playfully “demand” gifts and services (Durham 1995).

Not all status differences are erased in garage sale exchange and, insofar as there is inequality in the status of the transactors, the giver, in accordance with Mauss’s model, is privileged in the transaction. Comfort levels in giving and receiving vary by individual among those of unequal status. Jeffrey Leiter (1989), reflecting on holding his own garage sale, agreed with my earlier depiction of garage sale exchange as giving (Soiffer and Herrmann 1987). Yet he felt as though the exchanges were more marketlike when blacks or the poor made purchases because they did not respond with gratitude. Some sellers find themselves most able to “give” to those of similar backgrounds, while others primarily do so to those in apparent need and thus of lower status. Some recipients save face by providing token payment. Despite inequalities in status, giving in the garage sale is more egalitarian than giving in charitable institutions because it is spontaneous, face-to-face, and not institutionalized. As with so many other aspects of garage sale practice, the lines of demarcation between giving and charity remain unclear.

Garage sales encourage gift giving, primarily because shoppers can purchase so many things inexpensively but also because they are a context for finding unique and unusual items. Many Americans are reluctant to give items purchased at garage sales as presents for such formal occasions as weddings or birthdays because garage sale items have already been used and “contaminated” by their former owners. It might also devalue the recipients of gifts to give them something purchased so inexpensively. Some people do find formal gifts at sales, but they often pick items that are still boxed and unused. A comfortably well-off middle-level manager quite frequently gives gifts such as wicker baskets or cheese keepers (still in their boxes), found at garage sales, but she has learned that her daughter-in-law does not appreciate gifts from this source. For other people gifts from garage sales can be “prestige” items that help to solidify shared, usually countercultural values such as recycling, buying secondhand, enjoyment of kitsch and bizarre styles, and a shared appreciation of garage sales.

Most gifts from garage sales are used for informal or impromptu giving. Shoppers buy for friends, families, coworkers, and for those in need; for example, a man recently purchased a ten-cent Mickey Mouse ice cube tray for a coworker who loves Disney items. These gifts are usually given unwrapped—in contrast to formal Christmas giving, in which almost all presents are subject to the “Wrapping Rule” (Caplow 1984). Frequent shoppers find that others give them “wish lists” of items—china patterns, jigsaw puzzles, circular saws, or whatever the various members of their personal networks need or want—to seek at sales. If the desired items are found, they are often given with no compensation expected, as a shopper in her twenties observes:

I get things for everybody—friends, relatives. I’ve gotten furniture, jewelry, picture frames, dishes, cups, and even a tea pot. Some people ask in advance or they’re things people collect. . . . I just get them for gifts and have never asked to be repaid. . . . Friends of mine, my sister, and my mother have also given me tons and tons of stuff from sales.

This captures the manner in which personal networks are solidified by often inexpensive garage sale gifts,²⁴ and, because shoppers can buy so many things for so little money at garage sales, they can also become small-time philanthropists for friends and relatives. Many simply set aside their garage sale purchases as future gifts, waiting for the right people to come along, while others store goods specifically for children who come to visit.

Shoppers may use garage sale purchases to equip classrooms, supply the basics for groups such as resettling Tibetans, or to help friends in need. Sellers often give such items outright, or at least reduce the prices, when they learn of their destinations. I once observed the white sellers of several pieces of furniture return the money to the African American woman who purchased

dimension. These social relations can literally vary from exchange to exchange, while never becoming as markedly commercial as those that characterize most retail trade. At the same time, the social ties created are rarely as strong as traditional forms of American gift giving such as those in the pockets of American society where more gift-based relations prevail (e.g., Dow 1977; Stack 1974).

The phenomenon of garage sale goods has many levels and exhibits much complexity; it embodies rationalized exchange and expressive interpersonal ties. Giving money as a gift (Zelizer 1994) is similarly complex. Money is the medium of market exchange and yet, as a gift, it effects a tie of more intimate social relationship; thus, the boundaries of using money as a gift must be carefully constructed. In the same vein, the boundaries of each garage sale exchange must be carefully examined to determine the degree of gift giving involved. Garage sale goods may be either gifts or commodities, readily shifting between the two poles, or may embody some features of both categories at the same time. The tremendous flexibility in attaching prices to objects in the garage sale allows for great variability in the construction of commodity-like or giftlike exchange between transactors. This malleability is further complicated by the ability of shoppers to influence prices through bargaining and through the sharing of an array of personal information and sentiments with sellers, sometimes in the place of money. In each transaction, buyer and seller actively construct meanings about the exchange that are carried by the objects, rendering them at times hybrid varieties of "inalienable commodity." This form of trade consequently serves to counter the characterization of gift and commodity as mutually exclusive. In addressing exchange theory, Valeri finds it helpful to provide "some space for the mutual determination and modification of commodity and non-commodity forms in their concrete historical entanglements" (1994:20), which the garage sale example amply provides.

In this article I have offered a contribution to understanding the complexity and differentiation of exchange and its social relations in the United States. The case of the garage sale shows that the contours and meanings of exchange are more nuanced than those permitted when the models of gift and market exchange are essentialized (see, e.g., Carrier 1992a, 1992b). It also counters the view of the West as solely a commodity system, one where autonomous actors attempt to maximize their positions with no regard to social ties or personal sentiments. While some of this behavior does occur in the garage sale, much of it is socially engaged and highly personal. The analysis also maintains the utility of the dichotomy between gift and commodity, which some—such as Appadurai (1986) and Davis (1992)—would prefer to reformulate. Parry (1986) reminds us that the distinction between gift and commodity is actually an invention of the West, one that, I argue, remains an appropriate model for American ethnography, providing an insightful paradigm for analyzing social relations. This dichotomy also underpins the discourse of garage sale participants about the meanings and value of their transactions. In other words, the gift-commodity distinction is an emic contrast, part of contemporary American culture, as well as an analytic one.

Garage sale exchange also raises a number of issues for anthropological theory. It demonstrates the need for a model that utilizes a gift-commodity distinction, albeit a chastened and flexible one, that accommodates the shifting circumstances and the concomitant social relations of exchange. There is currently no model in the literature that adequately represents the fluctuating quality of garage sale exchange, without also losing the cultural framework of gift and commodity that informs participation. There is also a need for further investigation of Western forms, such as auctions, that—following Dilley (1992) and Geil (1992)—operate in ways contrary to the neoclassical formulations of the market, even while they are assumed to be market exchanges. This touches on the distinction between the surface appearance and underlying reality of exchange forms that so troubles Davis (1992:2–6). We must find a way to address discrepancies between surface and underlying realities that does not automatically sacrifice underlying structures. Garage sale exchange also raises the problem, discussed by

Carrier (1992a), of how to define exchange when actors have differing perceptions of what they are doing, even during the same transaction. Strict reliance on actors' experiences for defining such exchange—the solution advanced by Davis (1992)—cannot alone adequately address such discrepancies.

Acknowledgments. I would like to thank James G. Carrier, Frank Hearn, Michael Herzfeld, Alexandra Jaffe, Lew Zipin, and the anonymous reviewers of American Ethnologist for their instructive comments on earlier drafts. As ever, I am grateful to Steve Soifer for his initial encouragement and inspiration. I am also very grateful for the New York State/United University Professions Professional Development and Quality of Work Life grants during portions of 1985, 1987, 1990, and 1994 that have allowed me to conduct research on and to write about garage sales in the United States.

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"devalue" their former spouses by selling their things for next to nothing at a garage sale (see McMillan 1992:94–95 for an excellent depiction of a "trash your ex" sale).

18. The idea of the contagion of goods in the garage sale is strikingly similar to children's notions of "cooties," something that will rub off from (often undesirable) individuals.

19. The felt sense of contamination deters many from shopping at garage sales and other outlets for used goods. Further, my own observations and those of O'Reilly et al. (1984) indicate that, among those who buy used items, many avoid the contamination of items that are intimately associated with another's body, such as underwear.

20. Many sellers from better neighborhoods also seem to believe that their used goods are more valuable than comparable items found in other neighborhoods; they often charge higher prices.

21. I want to thank James Carrier for highlighting this point.

22. The shopper insisted on paying the seller in this case, in order to retain a sense of dignity in the exchange. As a social worker, the seller accepted the payment, but noted to me afterwards that it was still a form of giving because she could have received a lot more money for the items.

23. If sellers in the 28 percent tax bracket, for example, donate an average sweater to charity and value it at $10.00, they would shelter $2.80 of their taxable income. The modal price range for such sweaters is between $1.00–$2.00 at garage sales and clothing often does not sell well, so they might do better financially by taking a tax write-off for many items, especially clothing.

24. Occasionally an item will be used as a social tie between garage sale acquaintances. At one sale I observed, a shopper I was interviewing purchased a brass peacock for 50 cents; she later gave it to Tony Gallato, a garage sale regular, because he had recently given her something she liked from another sale. I again saw the peacock at Tony's house, part of his collection of over 300 brass items, when I went there to interview him.

25. There is a remarkable degree of honesty in the garage sale (as opposed, for example, to the level of deception stereotypically associated with used car sales), and the discomfort caused by any dishonesty is mitigated by low prices (see Herrmann 1990:224–226).

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