Car Boot Sales
July 28th 2007 19:22
We’ve been to a couple of car boot sales in the last few days, one small because of the threatening rain, and another, the Sheringham Carnival version, full of sellers and buyers. Some of the sellers are full-time
car-booters, and you can tell from the quality of their goods; some of them are just people who’ve cleaned out their garages. Some show their wares off to their best advantage; some seem to throw the stuff in a heap and hope for the best. For example, there was a woman selling jewellery. Not only was all the stock in cases and laid out in such a way that it wouldn’t shift easily, but they were ensconced under a kind of open marquee. On the other hand, one guy had a pile of books thrown - literally - on the trestle table. From my point of view, not only is it a bad way to treat books, even secondhand ones, but it also gives the customers an invitation to throw the books around further. This happens in The Warehouse, in New Zealand, when sale stock is just piled into bins. The customers pick things up and throw them down, until it looks like a tip. Crazy.
It took us at least three-quarters of an hour to go round the stalls, hearing jokes between customers and sellers who know each other, lots of talk about the weather, investigating the stalls with seemingly endless bric-a-brac, quantities of Dick Francis, Catherine Cookson and Mills and Boon, vast amounts of children’s clothing and toys, and stalls with strange collections of militaria, records, ancient household items and old coins.
Of course, in spite of having told ourselves we needed to hold fire on spending any more at op shops or car boot sales, we still managed to come home with children’s toys, a couple of pairs of cufflinks, a paper knife, and some books. All very reasonably priced, but still digging into our funds.
It took us at least three-quarters of an hour to go round the stalls, hearing jokes between customers and sellers who know each other, lots of talk about the weather, investigating the stalls with seemingly endless bric-a-brac, quantities of Dick Francis, Catherine Cookson and Mills and Boon, vast amounts of children’s clothing and toys, and stalls with strange collections of militaria, records, ancient household items and old coins.
Of course, in spite of having told ourselves we needed to hold fire on spending any more at op shops or car boot sales, we still managed to come home with children’s toys, a couple of pairs of cufflinks, a paper knife, and some books. All very reasonably priced, but still digging into our funds.
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