Anyone ever done a car-boot/table top sale?

[Muncher]

There're absolutely shocking. The last one I did was filled with every breed of pikey low life scum.

Some Asian woman spent about 5 minutes looking at a purse, asked how much it was and I said 20p, she asked if I would take 10p...

At that point I had enough and drove all of the stuff to the dump and chucked it. In future if it can't be ebayed it will go to charity, if charity places don't want it, it gets binned.

[zippee]

Did one last year at Huntingdon racecourse - probably the most stressful experience ever!!
As soon as we'd opened the boot to unload the car we had people swarming all over the car, rummaging about in the boot despite the fact they had no idea what was/was not for sale. Only for them to act all offended when I slammed the car shut and told em to feck off until we'd had a chance to sort ourselves out. NEVER Again!!!

[Thelemming]

Muncher said:

There're absolutely shocking. The last one I did was filled with every breed of pikey low life scum. Some Asian woman spent about 5 minutes looking at a purse, asked how much it was and I said 20p, she asked if I would take 10p... At that point I had enough and drove all of the stuff to the dump and chucked it. In future if it can't be ebayed it will go to charity, if charity places don't want it, it gets binned.

My attitude entirely.

Lets be honest, do you REALLY want to spend your sunday haggling over 10p?

[wanty1974]

I haven't done them in a while, but used to do the really pikey Talbot Green 'boot - about four times in a summer as we were moving house and wanted to get rid of stuff. I made £80 on the first one, £40 on the second, £80 on the third and a huwadge £105 on the last, becuase as the place opened, it started raining heavily and people were just going round like nutters buying everything they could.

We only sold the kind of tat you'd usually take to the tip - the pikeys love it. The nice stuff, we sold on eBay - such as my collection of 30-odd very rare (cough) Pet Shop Boys CDs; went for £250.

They only buy tat, so that's what we gave them! I did once have a blok who spent a hour (no joke) going through my entire 7" record collection and ended up paying 10p for one Alison Moyet 'hit'... He should have stopped at 'A'...

[Flat in Fifth]

zippee said:

As soon as we'd opened the boot to unload the car we had people swarming all over the car, rummaging about in the boot despite the fact they had no idea what was/was not for sale. Only for them to act all offended when I slammed the car shut and told em to feck off until we'd had a chance to sort ourselves out. NEVER Again!!!

That only happened the first time we went.

Next time all covered over with an old sheet. Parked up in spot, got out of car, went for bacon butty and a brew from tea wagon. Tye got the message and bothered the newer virgins.

Time to wander about and review the competition and market prices.

If you succumb to the ravaging hordes at kick off you only find your stuff on sale on another stall with a wicked mark up.

Know what you mean about the tat though. Not to mention the stuff that anyone can see is nicked.

[slikk]

No.

[lockstock2sb]

Haha boot sales are not for the faint hearted. I done one once and drove onto the field at 8am and i was being chased to my spot by a crowd of what must have been Car Boot fiends. There were peering in the car before i even got out (and marking my glass up with their breath, the bastids !).

Sold all my old shite for pennies but i was particularly happy with offloading a broken VCR player for £15 to this tightwad who gave me a grilling over the players entrie life story...

To be avoided i think. Ebay is much better

[silversun]

I did a car boot sale once a few years ago. People were opening the boot before I'd even finished parking and going through the boxes which really peed me off. I had to get quite forceful before they'd stop and give me a chance to put stuff out.

I made about £125 from stuff I would otherwise have given to Oxfam so pretty good as far as I was concerned, though I did get fed up towards the end and just flog everything that was left to the guy on the pitch next to mine for a fiver.

Someone even tried to buy the car!

[wedge girl]

My Mum had a Garage Sale last summer in aid of Breast Cancer Care £2500 raised in an afternoon.

Best sellers, books and plants.

[hedders]

Muncher said:

Some Asian woman spent about 5 minutes looking at a purse, asked how much it was and I said 20p, she asked if I would take 10p...

That is perfectly normal behaviour, and exactly why I will never do another car boot sale.

It does not matter a jot how much you ask for an item, the people you describe will alwys offer you half what you are asking.

I ended up asking one penny for items just to watch them try and haggle!

[Carrera2]

I couldn't do one if you paid me £1000. Just the thought of it is making me boil.

I just know that the moment someone started haggling over 10p I'd either just give it to them or I'd smash everything up and drive off, shreiking like a demon.

It's so too far detached from reality to comprehend.

[ADDYBOY1982]

If something's worth selling, I bung it on eBay - if not, it goes to the charity shop.

Thought about doing a boot sale, but I did one years ago and by the look of some of the comments below, the muppets who go there to buy haven't changed!

[Twincam16]

Only attempt a Car Boot Sale if you quite literally have a load of stuff you can't be bothered putting ads in the paper for. If it's not worth advertising to sell, then don't expect anyone to part with anything more than mere pennies for it.

Car boots are always a buyer's market. The trick is to go to boot sales in posh areas - people are inevitably chucking out things that they think have merely gone out of fashion when in fact they're just not 'new' and represent retro-cool. I don't mean clothes btw - I mean interior design bits. I picked up an extremely cool '60s table lamp up for 20p from a car boot sale that looks like a prop from 2001. I keep going in the vain hope that some clueless fashionista might be chucking out on of those white egg-shaped chairs, or a spherical TV, or one of those ankle-high glass coffee tables.

[ZR1cliff]

There's nothing as fierce as an old lady looking for a bargain,why do you think old men spend most of their time down the allotment.

[fulham911club]

If you really don't need the stuff (and won't miss it) then why not save yourself the hassle and give it to a charity shop? It might make the difference to someone.

[eccles]

i take great pleasure in going to boot sales and making the most outrageous offers on things, if they ask a fiver for something i often offer ten pence, and haggle from there, you can have a right laugh sometimes if you get a bit of banter going.
the people i hate at boot sales are the ones who think they are antiques experts, and have a table off stuff that costs a fortune.....they should at antiques fairs, not boot sales!

[Twincam16]

eccles said:

i take great pleasure in going to boot sales and making the most outrageous offers on things, if they ask a fiver for something i often offer ten pence, and haggle from there, you can have a right laugh sometimes if you get a bit of banter going. the people i hate at boot sales are the ones who think they are antiques experts, and have a table off stuff that costs a fortune.....they should at antiques fairs, not boot sales!

Or worse - the ones flogging utter tat - and they know it - and try and offload it all on you while you're looking at something else.

I think the pikiest thing I've ever seen for sale at a car boot sale was a music collection that had been recorded on recordable tapes and CDs rather than bought from record shops. The guy was trying to give the thing away free by the end and still no-one wanted it.

[bga]

Twincam16 said:

I think the pikiest thing I've ever seen for sale at a car boot sale was a music collection that had been recorded on recordable tapes and CDs rather than bought from record shops. The guy was trying to give the thing away free by the end and still no-one wanted it.

hehe seen that too. Napalm is too good for them

[MilnerR]

My parents have a farm next to a golf course and inevitably end up with hundreds and hundreds of lost golf balls. Which means that i have a ready supply to play with. What i've also found is that selling the new looking ones for 50p each at boot sales is a nice little earner. I took 500 golf balls to one (along with assorted tat) and the golf balls sold out in the first 30 mins or so.. Just make sure you keep an eye on them, as upstanding members of our OAP community are surprisingly light fingered!

[Twincam16]

bga said:

Twincam16 said: I think the pikiest thing I've ever seen for sale at a car boot sale was a music collection that had been recorded on recordable tapes and CDs rather than bought from record shops. The guy was trying to give the thing away free by the end and still no-one wanted it. hehe seen that too. Napalm is too good for them

Perhaps the trick is to play them at their own game. Sell them tapes and CDs that look like the real thing, but in fact have Satanist chantings and backwards messages recorded on them

Actually, it's quite funny sometimes looking at 'the things you always find for sale at Car Boots':

-A slow cooker
-A teasmaid
-A car phone from the early '90s that is now illegal anyway
-more methods of storing videos, tapes and CDs than you could shake a stick at
-An '80s music collection comprising some Wham and Nik Kershaw albums
-A black and white TV with dial tuning and the plug cut off
-Some freshly-stolen garden tools, still in boxes
-A stereo turntable with an attached post-it note saying 'doesn't work - radio OK'
-An obese family trying to sell a vast collection of toys given away free with McDonald's Happy Meals for £1 each as 'collector's items'.
-A bloke resembling the Comic Book Guy off the Simpsons, perplexed as to why no-one's paying the three-figure sums he's attached to his Star Wars toys
-Some rather nice 1:18-scale model cars that were given to kids to play with when new and are now shamefully knackered
-A manual lawnmower that looks like it was present at the battle of the Somme
-A 2-bar heater with the wires showing through the fraying fabric power cord
-Last year's Christmas bestseller, in hardback, for 50p
-An Amiga computer with a huge pile of games on 3 1/4-inch floppy disks
-A stall covered in mangled brass candlesticks

Any other cliches anyone care to impart?