Today's CRAZY shopping day (at least for me)

Today started out with no BIG shopping plans on my part.  I had already promised the hub's that he could go on the St. Arnold Beer tour today with a friend visiting from up North and thus I knew the kiddos were stuck with me.
Well, right off, they reminded me that their school was having a garage sale as a fundraiser for their new elementary building.  I had promised my eldest we would go (truly with NO plans of buying anything).  We got their a few hours after they had been open and I found a few deals I thought were decent.
Apparantly their goal was to have NOTHING left at the end of the day, so while we were their, they were passing out plastic shopping bags and telling everyone it would cost $1 for anything you could fit in the bag.  YIKES!  When I got to the checkout, they wanted to charge me only $1 for the LeapFrog Little Touch that came with 4 books but I insisted on paying the $5 on the sticker (the toy alone is listed for $80 TODAY on Amazon, not the mention the books)
I know the books were marked .50 a piece and to be honest I don't know how they calculated everything, but I paid just $11.50 for all you see pictured (WOW!)  We got the LeapFrog LittleTouch with 4 complete books, an Elefun game, a Playdoh conveyer belt toy, a gears toy and 10 books!

So why am I posting a garage sale find that my readers obviously cannot score on themselves?  Well, the reason for this is simple!  You NEVER know what scores you will find and the BEST garage sales to scout are Community Garage sales and types like these sponsored by a school with many families contributing.  On any given weekend in Houston, there are multiple community garage sales.  Some communities do a yearly sale and others vary it just a week or two apart from the year before.  Write down these dates and make sure to look for them in future years.  I know my sister goes to the annual garage sale that is offered by Glen Laurel in Sugar Land and she scores some really great finds!  With these community sales, basically the whole community can have a sale on the same day and this is the ONLY day the residents can hold a sale.  Some subdivisions have it in a local parking lot all together, others have it at the individual houses.  Either way, it cuts down on gas and you get a cluster of sales all together.
One man's junk is another man's treasure and you really NEVER know what you will find at these sales and the crazy cheap prices you can score.
I would love to hear some of my reader's input on what they have done to score HOT finds at garage sales.  Feel free to leave your comments.