Concord’s Giant Indoor Yard Sale hooks customers with low prices and unique finds

Jim Douillette arrived at the Everett Arena Saturday morning to find a line coiled around the arena and snaking into the parking lot.

The doors for the day’s big event, Concord’s Giant Indoor Yard Sale, hadn’t opened yet. Douillette laughed with disbelief at the turnout: “I said, ‘I’m going back to my drive!'”

The temptation to explore the yard sale’s thousands of wares, rooting through the packed arena for whatever lawn furniture and other outdoor items he might need proved too much to ignore. Douillette waited his turn to join the multitude of customers who passed through the Everett Arena in search of spectacular deals on secondhand necessities, oddities and everything in between.

“I’m just going to go in and look around and see what catches my eye,” he said.

Antonio Gonzalez was successfully collecting quality finds as he made his way through the arena. He’d picked up a pair of snake-skin boots before taking a look at a selection of guitars.

“I’m just starting playing. I just love guitars,” said Gonzalez, a Pittsburgh, Penn., native visiting his daughter in Concord over the weekend. “I like that one. It’s a good price for me. […] I see another one. I’m gonna check it out.”

Affordability, for customers, is the market’s biggest draw.

Michael Hegarty, who braved rain to attend last year’s yard sale, returned this year to find a piggy bank with a statue of two football players tossing a ball, for a whopping $1.

“It’s like, why not? This is super interesting,” he said.

For vendors like Scott Bousquet, of Laconia, the market presented an opportunity to move inventory, and fast.

Bousquet scouts estate sales and yard sales “all over,” accumulating items he thinks will be of interest to customers. By Saturday, he was overstocked, and he was happy to part with what he’d brought.

“We got two storage units full of stuff,” he said. “People are buying.”