ESTEVAN - The Estevan Mercury's first city-wide yard sale last weekend, which had 18 participants, was a success, says the paper's sales manager Christine Jones.
The event received a lot of positive feedback, creating activity around the city, helping people to move some of their belongings and also allowing some to raise funds for a worthy cause.
"It went phenomenally well. We had one lady post on one of the rant and rave sites saying, what a wonderful thing it was, and another lady replied to it saying she raised $150 [through the garage sale] for the MRI machine," Jones shared.
"And we had Estevan Diversified Services participate this year," she added, noting the organization gave some positive feedback on the idea as well.
The garage sale attracted quite a few local shoppers, as well as people from the surrounding southeast communities and even some from North Dakota.
"I think we had a really good turnout. We had 18 [vendors], but I think that was a great start," Jones said.
She noted that many other communities have garage sale days, and she felt there was no reason for Estevan not to try it. So, the Mercury sales team looked at the experiences of other papers, did the research and put their skills and knowledge into starting a community-wide yard sale tradition in Estevan.
"I researched the idea. There are a lot of other newspapers that actually run their community-wide yard sales as well, so I took information from them. That's where I found out about the interactive Google site," Jones said.
Yard sale participants' sites were featured in the paper, online, as well as on social media, and were included in an interactive Google map, which provided information about days and hours at each particular location, as well as a brief description of the main yard sale items offered. Each participant also received two signs to place in the community to help promote their sales.
While there was a cost to participate, Jones said they tried keeping it very reasonable considering all the work and the level of promotion they've put into it.
"I went with $25. I thought that was more than reasonable, considering you got the paper advertisement, we put it all over social media, as well as on SaskToday.ca, and you got two signs that you could put up," Jones said.
She hopes the event becomes an annual tradition and grows bigger every year, both in participation and attendance.
"I'd also like to see more non-profits join and have fundraising garage sales," Jones noted.
The next Estevan Mercury city-wide yard sale is slated for Aug. 23, 2025.
