It’s inevitable.
Once you hear about the Coupeville Lions’ garage sale you can’t help but go. Once you’ve shopped the sale you’re a repeat customer. Once you’ve returned for your second year there’s no looking back — you’re addicted.
Get ready to get hooked as the Coupeville Lions’ 25th annual garage sale will be held Saturday and Sunday at Coupeville Elementary School.
Five years ago, Coupeville Lions garage sale co-chair Dennis Bullock came as a customer and ended up making a challenge to Lion Bernie Hingston.
“I told him the Lions all looked old and feeble and asked if they could use any help,” he says with a laugh.
Little did Bullock know, but it’s all those 90-somethings like Hingtston that keep the garage sale machine churning.
Bullock admits he plays but a small role in the big picture.
“I just make the coffee, get the donuts and take out the trash,” he said.
More than 80 Lions and a dozen more community members work to make the sale happen. They begin collecting items in August and work all year to catalogue and price each one.
“There are 85-year-olds who are working hard every day on this,” Bullock said. “They are the ones that make this all happen.”
Ten days before the sale the troops are on crunch time to begin moving the thousands of items from the storage facilities to Coupeville Elementary School. By the time all of the items are unloaded at the school, they will fill the multipurpose room, and cover much of the school’s blacktop.
People will be able to find camping gear, boats, bicycles, crab traps, doors, bath tubs, furniture of all kinds, coffee cups by the hundreds, lawn mowers, games, toys, tools, campers, cabinets, toilets, sinks, fishing gear, exercise equipment, dishes, decorative items, women’s golf clubs, and millions of picture frames.
Customers will line up at least an hour before the sale to claim prime real estate in a line that will get dozens deep before the signaled start at 9 a.m.
You might have to put the whole family to work, sending the kids to claim toasters while Dad grabs a boat and Mom nabs pottery.
The garage sale helps fund the Coupeville Lions’ many community projects that include support of Boy Scouts, scholarships, the food bank, parks, learn-to-swim program, Sight and Hearing Foundation, Camp Horizon and others.
In recent years the sale typically raises around $25,000 for the Coupeville Lions Foundation and its projects.
Following this weekend the Coupeville Lions will take a few weeks off. But come August the Lions begin sale planning again.
“It’s a big sale, we have to start early,” Bullock said.
