Wednesday, June 14, 2006
CAR BOOT SALES
Every Sunday morning - and sometimes on a Saturday - we are up very early to go to a car boot sale. This is more than an interest, it is an addiction!
One of the worst feelings in the world is seeing heavy rain on a Sunday morning, which thwarts our intentions.
Each week we relish the anticipation of never knowing what we will find. It could be something that might bring us a good profit or there might be something we really want for ourselves; sometimes we have to accept defeat and go home empty handed, but that very rarely happens.
There are many sites where car boot sales are held and sometimes we have hard decisions to make - where shall we go this week?
Last Sunday we chose South Park in Reigate. We like this one; it is not as big as some we go to and it has a nice atmosphere. It is peaceful and stallholders are friendly and there seem to be less aggressive dealers.
Some dealers who are out hunting behave really quite badly. Stallholders are accosted and the dealers are almost in the cars trying to look in boxes before the people can unload and set up their stalls. These dealers are so desperate to beat the one standing next to them to the prize bargain that they will grab armfuls of stuff without a care for the poor confused stallholders.
I can assure you that Bill and I are not like this - we always start our hunting by looking at the stalls already set up. Goodness knows what we miss - but it feels better like that for us.
Some car boot sales begin ridiculouly early. Stall holders are setting up by 5 o'clock in the morning - and in the winter time this is before it is light. The hunting dealers of course have to be there at the same early hour.
They prowl around with torches in their hands!
I really enjoy that time of day and I like to be out quite early, but we normally don't arrive until at least 7 o'clock and often half an hour later - for it can feel hard to climb from a warm bed on a cold morning.
The range of things for sale at a car boot sale is enormous. These sales began many years ago as an opportunity for people to clear things from their own homes and the stall money went to charity.
The biggest boot sales now are organised as a business. You can find food stalls and toilet facilities at the big sales.
And these days many of the stallholders are also professional dealers.
For Bill and me, the first priority is to find some things that we can sell on. So we carefully scan each stall to see if it might have what we want.
We pass by the ones selling baby clothes and newish plastic toys.
We glance at some and see nothing but tat and we wonder how the things on the stall had ever been bought from a shop in the first place.
We seem to ignore all stalls with a box of Friends videos or David Beckham's book - somehow we just know that people who wanted those things wouldn't have anything useful to us.
After many years of experience we seem to know which stalls to be drawn to and usually our bags soon fill up with a variety of things which will go later to the shop or might be described to go on EBay.
If we have time we go back round and look at clothes, plants, household goods and so on that we might be able to use. If we need something at home I normally expect to find it at a car boot sale within a month.
I remember the time just after we had decorated the bathroom and almost jokingly suggested that we get some matching towels; I jested because normally we don't worry too much about things matching. But that very day we found a pile of towels in the right colours for sale at 50p each.
It is a pity that maybe our biking days are over, for these seemed a bargain at £5 each.
And bargains is what it is all about!
There can be many reasons for having a stall at a car boot sale - well, money is the main reason of course.
Though when we sell at a car boot sale, which we must do later in the year, the object of the day will be mostly to clear out things we no longer want.
We might set up a stall maybe once a year.
Others do it every week and obviously boost their income this way.
The girl selling just beyond the plants in this picture was hoping to raise money for her travel funds. She is off to the far east next month and will be visiting Thailand. So soon we were sharing experiences with her and making sure she knew about our J's connections with Dive the World and about his blog.
That is something else that we enjoy - the chatting and banter between sellers and buyers.
Last Sunday, in Reigate, the weather was really sunny and hot and we enjoyed a good couple of hours.
We came home home with things to sell and plants to put in the garden.
The picture on the right is from Google Earth and shows another boot sale that we often go to in the summer - Hook Road, Epsom. You can see that there are hundreds of stalls set up - and amongst those little dots which are the customers there could be Bill and me.
The world of the car boot sale may be a closed book to you. That seems very strange to us, for so many people that we know are as addicted as we are.
Goodness me! There are folks out there who have never been to a car boot sale!
I hope this entry in my blog may have explained a little more about why we love this part of life.
One of the worst feelings in the world is seeing heavy rain on a Sunday morning, which thwarts our intentions.
Each week we relish the anticipation of never knowing what we will find. It could be something that might bring us a good profit or there might be something we really want for ourselves; sometimes we have to accept defeat and go home empty handed, but that very rarely happens.
There are many sites where car boot sales are held and sometimes we have hard decisions to make - where shall we go this week?
Last Sunday we chose South Park in Reigate. We like this one; it is not as big as some we go to and it has a nice atmosphere. It is peaceful and stallholders are friendly and there seem to be less aggressive dealers.
Some dealers who are out hunting behave really quite badly. Stallholders are accosted and the dealers are almost in the cars trying to look in boxes before the people can unload and set up their stalls. These dealers are so desperate to beat the one standing next to them to the prize bargain that they will grab armfuls of stuff without a care for the poor confused stallholders.
I can assure you that Bill and I are not like this - we always start our hunting by looking at the stalls already set up. Goodness knows what we miss - but it feels better like that for us.
Some car boot sales begin ridiculouly early. Stall holders are setting up by 5 o'clock in the morning - and in the winter time this is before it is light. The hunting dealers of course have to be there at the same early hour.
They prowl around with torches in their hands!
I really enjoy that time of day and I like to be out quite early, but we normally don't arrive until at least 7 o'clock and often half an hour later - for it can feel hard to climb from a warm bed on a cold morning.
The range of things for sale at a car boot sale is enormous. These sales began many years ago as an opportunity for people to clear things from their own homes and the stall money went to charity.
The biggest boot sales now are organised as a business. You can find food stalls and toilet facilities at the big sales.
And these days many of the stallholders are also professional dealers.
For Bill and me, the first priority is to find some things that we can sell on. So we carefully scan each stall to see if it might have what we want.
We pass by the ones selling baby clothes and newish plastic toys.
We glance at some and see nothing but tat and we wonder how the things on the stall had ever been bought from a shop in the first place.
We seem to ignore all stalls with a box of Friends videos or David Beckham's book - somehow we just know that people who wanted those things wouldn't have anything useful to us.
After many years of experience we seem to know which stalls to be drawn to and usually our bags soon fill up with a variety of things which will go later to the shop or might be described to go on EBay.
If we have time we go back round and look at clothes, plants, household goods and so on that we might be able to use. If we need something at home I normally expect to find it at a car boot sale within a month.
I remember the time just after we had decorated the bathroom and almost jokingly suggested that we get some matching towels; I jested because normally we don't worry too much about things matching. But that very day we found a pile of towels in the right colours for sale at 50p each.
It is a pity that maybe our biking days are over, for these seemed a bargain at £5 each.
And bargains is what it is all about!
There can be many reasons for having a stall at a car boot sale - well, money is the main reason of course.
Though when we sell at a car boot sale, which we must do later in the year, the object of the day will be mostly to clear out things we no longer want.
We might set up a stall maybe once a year.
Others do it every week and obviously boost their income this way.
The girl selling just beyond the plants in this picture was hoping to raise money for her travel funds. She is off to the far east next month and will be visiting Thailand. So soon we were sharing experiences with her and making sure she knew about our J's connections with Dive the World and about his blog.
That is something else that we enjoy - the chatting and banter between sellers and buyers.
Last Sunday, in Reigate, the weather was really sunny and hot and we enjoyed a good couple of hours.
We came home home with things to sell and plants to put in the garden.
The picture on the right is from Google Earth and shows another boot sale that we often go to in the summer - Hook Road, Epsom. You can see that there are hundreds of stalls set up - and amongst those little dots which are the customers there could be Bill and me.
The world of the car boot sale may be a closed book to you. That seems very strange to us, for so many people that we know are as addicted as we are.
Goodness me! There are folks out there who have never been to a car boot sale!
I hope this entry in my blog may have explained a little more about why we love this part of life.
