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Message:: [QUOTE="afantiques, post: 107759, member: 25"]To avoid the language problem, a car boot is an auto's trunk in America. Sounds pretty odd both ways, if you think about it. But let's not. The car boot sale seems to be a British thing. Since most forum members are US based, I though a sketch of the much used and abused British institution might be useful. I doubt if you can find  many Brits who have not at some time or another been to a boot sale. Usually as buyers or browsers, but hundreds of thousands, probably millions, must have attended as sellers as well.The concept is simple and the organisation is usually minimal. The favourite venue is a farmer's field, reasonably flat, and with the livestock removed. Although there can be plenty of livestock 'evidence'.Sports grounds, school playgrounds, pub car parks, any place big enough to park up the sellers and have parking for the buyers. Sizes can range from 20 or 30 cars in a school car park to a semi permanent site with spaces for hundreds of seller's vehicles and acres of general parking. Planning (use of land)  constraints usually mean sites are limited to maybe half the weekends in a year, not a real problem as no-one much goes out in the winter anyway.Even in winter some indoor sales are held in warehouses or similar for the die hard booter. With the most basic, you just turn up, pick a spot and sell. Someone usually comes round sometime and collects the payment, usually about £5. Your more typical do will have a few people on hand to marshal the arriving sellers into neat(ish) rows, and often, collect the modest fee. No facilities are provided for sellers, if you want a table you bring one, and sometimes the organisers arrange simple portable toilets called Portaloos. Sellers usually get about 15  to 20 feet, room for a car parked side on and a yard or two each end. You park up and set up. Not all that simple. A flash mob or moving crowd follows the latest arrivals, and nervous sellers can be swamped by groping hands, not after their posterior protruberences but anything coming out of the car or van. Usually they will grab and wait to pay, sometimes they grab and scarper. Old hands like us apply some discipline, newbies may simply flee. We put up a couple of paste tables (decorator's tables for wallpaper hanging, folding and ideal for the job) and then bring stuff out a box at a time, just enough to be able to monitor the buyers. Gradually all the stuff appears and by that time the more frantic pickers will have moved on. They are no loss, as the folk you want, if you are selling anything but household junk, are the more selective buyers. With these we engage in jovial banter and some mild haggling. Many are regular dealer visitors, and these are a treat, they will select a handful of stuff, pay the modest prices, and look for more. We usually find that in the first hour we take around the equivalent of $300 to $400, then maybe another $150 during the remaining 4 hours we are likely to be there. After the first rush dies down there is usually a steady stream of a real mixture of folk, some who know what they want and many who had no intention of buying a carved ebony crocodile or old Pentax camera when they left home. Most of the buyers and browsers are nice people, friendly and interesting, and good for a chat if nothing else. Familar faces often have snippets of gossip to exchange as well. Second to stuffing my pockets with handfulls of cash, I enjoy the meet and greet, even if no money changes hands. Although it is remarkable what you can persuade people they can't live without with a bit of blarney. Some minority of people are in the PITA category.  Some don't mean to be but are seriously boring, some try to haggle over really trivial sums, the equivalent of a dollar or less, and some try to snaffle stuff when you are not looking. It is almost always cash but I will take cheques from people I like the look of. A well trained Brit  can tell the social class, probable employment and education of the other random Brit in seconds, so not much risk there. Plus your usual dishonest person has no great  desire for the stuff we sell anyway. Sales usually take place at weekends, either Saturday or Sunday, though other days are used. They usually start at daybreak, and go on till about midday. The wise seller arrives early, as does the wise dealer or private buyer. By 10 AM the idle public throng the ground but do not buy much. By early afternoon the field is empty again, usually with not a lot of litter left, and peace returns till next week. Good sold vary a lot by location. Many of the larger boot sales near conurbations have a high concentration of market traders in all manner of market trading stuff, from fresh meat to cheap electronic tat. It is amusing to see many of these vanish as word quickly spreads if a few trading standards officails are spotted, looking for the huge amounts of fake stuff and knockoff DVDs that may readily be found. The type of sale I prefer is in the country more, we favour the Welsh borders, and although there are may pro sellers, there is quite a good proportion of people just out to declutter with a few pounds to take home. Sometimes the sheer tattiness of people's junk saddens me, why are they offering stuff for pence that was rubbish when it was new? I suppose these must be what are known as 'poor people'. It is pretty easy for the experienced buyer to cruise the aisles with an eye open for the type of stall or pile worth looking at. Sight of a few older bits of stuff might be a sign that a second look is worthwhile, often a load of houshold junk is a clue that these people have nothing of interest. But you never know. We are usually too busy selling to buy much. We have had a few minor things, but no great  finds. The serious early morning buyers are the ones who get the good stuff. The car boot sale is the very bottom of the food chain in the antiques world. But  it can be a lot more fun than a fancy antiques fair where we paid hundreds for the place to sell, and spend far too much time reading the paper and eating to pass the time. They have been a feature of the landscape for decades now, and will probably continue for decades more. That's just a quickish run through the basics, but any car boot stories and experiences by our British members or overseas visitors would be interesting, so chime in please.[/QUOTE]

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