Extolling the virtues of craigslist

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, craigslist is maybe the best site on the Internet. Those who do know about it know I'm only slightly exaggerating.

I first heard of craigslist during the 2002 World Series, where it, not eBay, was the hottest market for buying and selling tickets. The concept is simple: in addition to discussion forums and who knows what else, you can sell stuff easily and (usually) for free. Whereas eBay is like an online auction house, craigslist is more like the want ads. Usually you need to call or e-mail the seller to buy something, and the transaction is handled the old-fashioned way: offline.

I use craigslist regularly to attempt to sell Giants tickets, and usually have fair success since a bunch of cheapskates like us out there can't turn down $15 baseball tickets. I sold my car on craigslist. But today I witnessed the awesome power of posting something in the "free" section.

I have been putting off posting a "free" ad for our old washer and dryer. Since I was at it, I offered up our old moving boxes so I could those damn things out of the kitchen. I got up a little late, so I didn't get the ads posted until 11.

Literally 5 minutes later the phone rang.

It didn't stop for more than 10 minutes at a time over the next couple hours. The first guy came and swooped up most of the moving boxes, leaving only a few. That was kind of annoying, since I had wanted him to take all or nothing. But someone called a couple minutes later and he gladly scooped up the remaining boxes.

A nice couple came and hauled away our washer and dryer. They actually wanted just the washer because our dryer was gas, but they called back twenty minutes later and decided to take both so they could get the washer. Such is the power of free.

So by 1, all our stuff was gone. Unfortunately, craigslist's posting server went down, and I couldn't edit the posts to say the stuff had been claimed. People continued to call. We went out for a couple hours and had seven messages when we got back.

So if you have crap you want to get rid of, you don't need to put it in a landfill. There is always someone out there who will haul it off for free.