Featured Car Boot Sales: a guide for aliens.

You also get hard standing car boots all year round. In London and the Home Counties, pitch hire is about the ten quid mark if you're a car, up to twenty if you're a big wagon or want an early pitch. Some allow sales of new items, some don't - depends on the local authority licence, if one is needed. I'm addicted to them and have picked up some very fine things. I also like the bloke who turns up at one I go to with well in date crisps, luxury biscuits and chocolate. There's always a loo of some sort, but sometimes it's one of those Portaloo jobs. Catering can be decent - some near me now have proper espresso wagons, hot fresh doughnuts and other things. You also often get vans selling rolls with hot roast pork, stuffing and crackling.

I'm hungry, I think.

 

Alien's Guide to Mexican Stuff

In the border area where I grew up, they had Menudo Sales. Menudo is a hot Mexican soup that has various cheap meats and vegetables (hence, a little of everything at the sales... cheap... big paper flowers, taxidermy frogs, corn husks for tamales... SOMETIMES some pottery or other art). It's not considered bad manners if you see something somebody's wearing (maybe even some nice old silver or turquoise jewelry) and make them an offer. So next time you're in a rural bordertown, you can ask (in Spanish or English) where the Menudo Sales are, and you'll blend in perfectly. And, as I'm fond of saying, watch your pockets, gringos.
Gila

 

I think that photo tells it all. No self-respecting flea marketer in the US would arrive with a vehicle as small as those seen in this photo. For one thing, the rents are too high to make it worthwhile. The outdoor markets around here have a going rate of $100.00 or more to set up regardless of what one is selling. We do have one indoor market with smaller booth spaces for $65.00 but you would need to get at least two to have as much space as one gets at an outdoor market. The swap meet in Chicago does have much lower rates so it may be more similar. The only time I ever attended, it was just junk and not worth returning for.

 

And in France we have Vide-Greniers (literally, empty-attics). Also known as "Foire a Tout", Foire aux Greniers" or "Brocante" (the latter is also the name for a B&M shop selling all sorts of old stuff, they vary in quality). Same concept as in the UK - car or van, a couple of metres of space, similar prices and venues. Sometimes held in the streets of a town which is cordoned off for the day with nearby (or not very nearby!) parking. Some allow traders, others don't. If a private individual you're allowed to sell at two outside your own town per year, otherwise you must be a registered business with the correct registration for selling at markets. The outdoor ones are usually held from Easter to October, and usually on a Sunday. Each town (or commune) will have only one or two a year. There are a few regular ones as well but they tend to be at the antique end of the market.

 

The real buyers all have big carrier bags. People with their hands in their pockets will not buy anything. Chubby Indian ladies want everything for 10 pence. Children are usually disproportionately pleased if you give them something for nothing.

Here is our favourite South Wales one.



It tends to be bigger than it looks here.

https://www.facebook.com/goviloncarboot

 

We should publish this thread... as an ATLAS to the world's such markets. I can get a picture of a Menudo Sale!

 

I take huge bags and a purseful of small change, plus small notes. If you're getting round in a hurry, waiting for a seller to give change wastes time. I do like my house clearance boys: they know I won't bother haggling if I like the first price, although I do bundle sometimes.

 

If a private individual you're allowed to sell at two outside your own town per year, otherwise you must be a registered business with the correct registration for selling at markets

In France, what is not specifically allowed is forbidden. In England, what is not specifically forbidden is allowed. There are no restrictions on casual selling, as we are a nation of shopkeepers and a bit of casual selling is in the blood.

Any government that tried to introduce permits for car booters would loose the multi-million person car boot vote.

 

You sound like the ideal customer. As a seller you will get a better price from me as I know you'll be back.

I do try to take a good pile of small change and £5 notes to speed matters for buyers.

 

Has anyone done the "World's Longest Yard Sale" - the 127 Yard Sale?" Supposily it stretches 690 miles from Michigan down through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennesse, touches Georgia and ends in Gadsdens, Alabama on US route 127. It last 3 or 4 days in August every year. I haven't been mainly because accomodations along the way sell out months in advance and it is too far away to drive to, do any of it and drive home in one day. It seems the sellers range literally from "car boot" along the road, home yard/garage sales to a bit of organized stalls/tents set up in parking lots.
http://www.127yardsale.com
http://www.discoverlookoutmountain.com/yardsale.shtml
https://www.tnvacation.com/triptales/worlds-longest-yard-sale-features-tennessee-treasures/

Here in this area there are the proverbial mid-size flea markets every weekend in or at local auditoriums, etc.. They usually consist of 99.9% really cheap junk, Chinese knock-offs when the powers-to-be heads are turned, etc. If there was a true 100 year old antique in the lot, the heavens would open and Gabriel would be blowing his horn. In the fall, sometimes pretty good handcrafts turn up at some of them.

Then there is a really big outdoor flea market the weekend of the 1st Monday every month about 100 miles east of us in Ripley, MS called First Monday Trade Day. It dates back to the 1890s That place is pure entertainment. Literally everything is sold there from fresh fruits & vegetables, clothes, handcrafts, tools, junk, furniture, to goats, pigs, chickens, hound dogs for hunting, puppies, ducks, and on to cars, farm equipment, etc. Sometimes a few true antiques are thrown in. Back in the early '60s guns were sold also, but today you don't see guns stalls/setups anymore. There are separate yards/areas for dogs and livestock. On Saturdays the place is mobbed. People come from over 100 miles away.
http://www.firstmonday.ripley.ms

Probably the closest we have to the British "car booth" is someone stopped on the side of the road with their trunk open actually selling odd stuff displayed in their trunk. The "stuff" can range from home grown fruits and vegetables like watermellons and corn on the cob, cut-out wooden stuff and such, to Chinese knock offs and actual stolen loot.

--- Susan

 

You've described perfectly what it is like in "nice weather" (March into November) around here when traveling on secondary/country roads instead of those infernal interstate highways.

No intersection or spot on the shoulder of the road is off-limits for at least one "watermelon truck" or one or more "fresh corn-on-the-cob trucks". Of course other produce is also sold (cucumbers for home pickling) but . . . watermelons and fresh corn seem to be the prevalent offerings for ancient farm pickup trucks and small-time farmers to be selling by the side of the road.

All you have to do to ensure it is "locally grown" is chat for a minute or so with the driver/proprietor about the weather -- the "real" local farmer will always know the amount of rain and temperatures four days or four months or four years ago.

And nobody (except those living on the land for generations around here) has mastered the "local rural accent" enough to fool any other "local."

 

Yes! I have done the Worlds Longest Yard Sale.....a couple times. It is amazing, and I scored big both times. If you stopped at everyplace you would not go more the 25 miles in a full day. It can be exhausting. The second time.....in the Kentucky area ,Temps were in the low 100's .
It can be sporadic at best, but you can't seem to travel more the 1/2 mile without another stop to make, It can range form a field with 20-30 vendors set up......to an individual barn sale 100 yards down the road. I remember the first year......rounding a bend near a river in KY. There was a man setup just off the road on the bend. We stopped, found nothing, I looked across the street and there was a little alcove with 4 sizeable vendors setting up. We crossed over there and I was able to pick up a Heisey Cathedral vase in Moongleem for $60. I sold it for well over $700. I regret selling it now. Resign yourself to the fact that after the first day......you will find no other treasure. Too many dealers and pickers get all the best stuff early on day one. So if you see something.....BUY IT right away.

 

We have one locally that is held in a multistory municipal car park. 1.5 car spaces per car (10 feet of selling space). Held every Sunday throughout the year, pitch fee for a car is £7.

But the most I've sold in a morning is about £500 ($725) and as AF says, we are normally too busy selling to hunt out the bargains. But we've stopped selling there now, preferring to sell online and have a Sunday morning lie-in!

 

There is a once a month (good weather months) flea market near here that sets up in a parking garage in a busy area, it's just outside a major city. You rent a parking space for $20 and there are tons and tons of people wandering through. Some spaces are inside the garage so out of the rain etc. It's a civic organization fund raiser so all is good. I love doing it but this last year due to family medical things going on I didn't make it once.

I did get to a car boot sale in Ireland. It was near Cork and pretty much everyone was speaking Gaelic. Great fun but had no idea what most people were saying.

 

In Germany a troedelmarkt is for antiques, junk and second hand, new stuff isn't allowed, much better than most flohmarkte with the exception of the larger city flohmarkt.
There are only a handful of thrift stores in all of Germany, mostly diakonische werks owned, yard sales are not allowed by law.
The most fun though is sperrmülltag (extra trash day), it's a different day in each neighborhood in most cities and towns. Some of the best finds I've ever had were from sperrmüll piles.

 

Now that's one heck of a pile of "extra trash!"