I have had similar experiences with the neighborhood wide garage sales. The great news is that they tend to draw the crowd, so other garage sales that same day are often neglected.

I picked up this nice Peugeot mixte a couple of weeks ago at an Asheville garage sale, while all of the "experts" were at the Biltmore Village neighborhood wide garage sale.

I rarely find anything good at the nicer neighborhood wide sales. I haven't figured out why.