The publication was called Singles, Couples and Queens.

Richardson, a South Australian artist, and De Leo, of design studio Voice, have now teamed up with another of Voice’s bright sparks, Scott Carsake, to produce Buyers, Sellers and Dealers, a book that exposes the unique subculture of the garage sale.

“I was originally fascinated by the signage of garage sales,” De Leo says. “There were these amazing accidents of signs, visually amazing, but their makers didn’t know what they were doing.

“I went to Toby with the idea and we spent about 12 months documenting signs and interviewing the sale holders.

“The quotes from those conversations are spread through the whole book, so even though there are no photos of people, it has a real humanistic element to it.”

De Leo estimates he and Richardson visited about 400 garage sales over 12 months and admits that, like the people they spoke to, they became “garage sale tragics”.

“We originally bought one item from each sale, but we’re selling most of that back to others now. But you get to a point where you see a sign and think: Oh God, I have to go in and see what’s on offer.”

De Leo says he, Richardson and Carsake are “like-minded”, which made the collaboration easy.

“Toby was my lecturer at university so we’ve been working together for a long time. We did all the photography for the book and then Toby let me and Scott do what we do with the designing.

“A big collaboration can be difficult, certainly, but we all have trust in each other’s work and I think that’s why the publication is such a great outcome.”