People looking at garage sales are expecting DEEP discounts, and used Christmas ornaments are just used ... you see "vintage" and have fond memories, they see "old faded ornaments".

Try selling them on etsy.com as groups of vintage with as much information as possible about date, maker and origin.

Chipped paint? Silvering faded, tarnished? Missing beads? Neck cap missing? Scratched? Any of those things render them worth close to nothing except, maybe, to a crafter who will tear them apart and reuse the parts. My guess is you are pricing too high. I agree wholeheartedly with lazygardens - you see "vintage" and garage sale lookers see "old". I have a few vintage ornaments for my kitchen Christmas tree. They are in wonderful condition and I have the original packaging. I paid $2 for the most expensive.

/tricia

They sure have......as well as the perception of vintage.. I don't want "stuff" from 1960, but things from 1920 with chipped and fading paint and charming fuzzy mohair beards on Santa are wonderful....and bring top dollar among collectors.

And if you can show me a couple of old german paper mache bellschnikles from 1890 I will be delerious.

One problem is that most garage sales are in summer when shoppers are not in the mood to look for Christmas items.

An excellent way to determine value is to check on EBAY for SOLD sales.

While Christmas is a popular item for people to collect, there is a huge different between old Christmas stuff and items that are rare and truly vintage.

If your items are just "used" ordinary Christmas decorations, there really isn't going to be much market for them. And I would imagine there is no market for any kind of electrical ornaments or lighting because the technology has improved so much since your childhood.

Any savvy shopper stocks up on Christmas decorations after Christmas when you can be the most beautiful designer stuff for pennies because it all has to be unloaded quickly.

I don't mean to sound unsympathetic as I have boxes of packed up tchotchkes that have accumulated over the years. If they are packed away and not causing you storage issues, leave them be and have your heirs donate them or you will wind up donating them when you move and realize you don't want to spend the time and/or money to move them.

I rescued some wonderful old 1910 paper and tinsel ornaments from the trash can one time.....know what you have before you trash it.

Some of my items.

Those are quite nice. If I were you, I would probably try to sell them on EBAY because you are more likely to reach a broad collector's market.

In my experience, garage sales attendees are really bottom feeders in terms of prices they are willing to pay. You might get someone who is a reseller but they would also want to pay the least possible - ie. low wholesale to maximize profit and minimize risk.

And there is so much cheap junk flooding the market in every kind of object that most people have no ability to differentiate between IKEA quality furniture and good stuff. It is one of the reasons the market has more or less completely collapsed for most "used" or "vintage" items.

Problem is that I don't ship things. I hear all the time on antique web sites about people that do then get nothing but complaints - the item was not what you described or it got broken in shipment. I don't need that!

I have other boxes of the "Shiny Brites" I remember from my childhood, so they have to be from the early 1950s.

I was made acutely aware of the shady dealings of some antique ornament sellers when Iw as at an auction bidding on boxes of ornaments....I took the boxes with the most old ones in good shape....and there was a box left of what had been good old balls but were not just broken shards and, of course the tops. A seller picket it up, scooped out the tops as it was going into the trash....and then it dawned on me....know your pieces and don't just rely on the tops....new Chinese made can have old tops put on them for the unsuspecting.

The first box has one older than the Shiney Brite I think....just because the box says doesn't mean thay all are...the one in the upper left corner..

And the second box appear to be old Polish hand painted ornaments predating WW II....what does it say on the crown?

In your first picture well above, I recognise many orniments in your first box. I finally went to e-bay and as lindac says, looked for 'completed listings' and generally found you might get a dollar or two for most of them. However, there were two small ones in second row down that look like a berry that I see may be like ones that sold for $12 each. In the second box just above, I see that they have those similarly small holders and I wonder if they might be special as well but I am not familiar with them. And I hadn't seen lindac's post on tops above. I suppose it might apply; who knew!

What do you mean by "crown"?

Here is a close-up of the one you mentioned in the upper left corner. I have close-ups in groups of three of most of them.

I understand the dilemma of holding on to this kind of stuff but honestly is it worth your time to try to get a few dollars for the ornaments.

As I posted, do some research to see if there is anything really valuable and donate the rest of the items - or price them realistically to sell at your next garage sale. I periodically check sold listings on EBAY or otherwise research and satisfy myself that I am not inadvertently giving away a lost Da Vinci or the Hope Diamond :-).

I used to sell stuff on EBAY and didn't have issues in terms of fraudulent buyers. At this point in my life, it's just not worth the effort to list and ship items that aren't particularly valuable.

The crown is the metal part on the top. The bell shaped ornament is more desirable....the others are 50's.

I suggest you look well on ebay to get an idea of what people will pay for....and consider the shipping costs in there too...sold items of course.

Some old German figurals bring $50 plus shipping.

It took a magnifying lass and a lot of squinting to see the writing on the crown of the tear-shaped ornaments, but you are correct - it does say POLAND.

The bird is missing its tail of fiber glass strands.

What can I say!!?? I'm good!! LOL!

I have an old bird with a real feather tail....a trailing red and blue tail!