ChamberaAmbassadors hold yard sale

By BRITTANY FHOLER 
Cove Leader-Press 

The saying “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” rang true at the Copperas Cove Chamber of Commerce Ambassadors Garage Sale held Saturday in the parking lot of Cove Terrace Shopping Center. 
More than 20 vendors set up tables and booths to sell used clothing and antiques and collectible items plus some new items too. Sellers ranged from nonprofits, like the Pink Warrior Angels of Central Texas and the Lady Dawg Soccer Booster Club who used the garage sale as a fundraiser for their organization, to vendors selling Perfectly Posh or Paparazzi jewelry and individuals and families selling their own personal items. 
Sellers paid $25 to rent a space to sell their items while the Chamber of Commerce took care of obtaining the necessary permits from the city, according to Laura Jordan, chairperson of the Chamber of Commerce Ambassadors. 
“This is actually something that they used to do on a regular basis,” Jordan said. “It’s been some years since the last one. We decided to go ahead and give it another try.”
Jordan said that there were about 14 members in the Ambassador program, which meant the group now had the “ability and manpower” to hold the community garage sale again. 
The money collected through the garage sale will go towards operating expenses as well as be set aside for scholarships for high school students looking to enter into trade schools and stay in the local community, Jordan said. 
After receiving good feedback from the sellers, Jordan said she could definitely see the Chamber of Commerce Ambassadors bringing the Garage Sale event back as an annual or bi-annual event. 
Debby Weaver’s booth was hard to miss with dozens of Star Wars memorabilia items and figurines. Weaver said that most of the items had been her son’s but that she took over collecting. 
“This collection started with my son and it is ending with me,” Weaver said. “We’ve been Star Wars fans ever since the very beginning. My son likes to tease people and say the first time that he saw Star Wars was in utero and he wasn’t kidding.”
The collecting began when her son was a teenager, and after he went off to school, Weaver said she began collecting herself. 
Weaver said that when it came to pricing the items to sell, she had a hard time finding an accurate price because some of the items were so rare.  The oldest items were from the 1980s, she said. The newest items were still over 10 years old. 
 “There’s hardly anything in here that’s past “Revenge of the Sith,” and I hardly have any of that,” Weaver said. “I’m just not one for the prequels.”
The figures, still in their original packaging, had been displayed on the walls in Weaver’s house previously. Her son went through and added up the prices on each item and found that the collection totaled between $17,000 and $20,000 worth. 
Weaver said that she previously was able to sell about $1,000 worth of Star Wars items at a different garage sale to pay for her son’s rehearsal dinner for his wedding.
As people stopped by to look through the items available, Weaver told them that buying from her table would still be cheaper than online since she didn’t charge shipping, handling or taxes. 
In addition to Star Wars items, Weaver also had comic books and trading cards available. 
Weaver said she also planned to list whatever items didn’t sell at the garage sale up on the Facebook Marketplace under Antiques and Collectibles and Toys. 
The Optimist Club made arrangements to set up an area towards the end of the Garage Sale event for vendors to drop off items that didn’t sell. The Optimist Club would offer those items for sale at the Optimist Thrift Store located at 332 Cove Terrace in the Cove Terrace Shopping Center.