Spill the beans...on your car boot sale tips, tricks and steals

1. Arrive early. Just as it opens if you can drag yourself from your pit on your day off!

2. Take a bag. Stall holders will not be able to provide a trustworthy bag - you don't want one breaking and an item being damaged.

3. Have plenty of change handy.

4. Haggle, then walk away. Give it 5 minutes and they may change their mind.

5. Never ignore a box. Stall holders put less desirable items together, but sometimes an item is valuable and they don't know.

6. Easily re-saleable items:

- Kitchenalia
- Old Penguins books (orange covers)
- Bakelite items
- Good quality kids toys
- 1930s mechanical clocks

Best tip: be nice! Knowone has to sell something to you. I bought some shoes for £2, lady next to me states quite loudly "you wouldn't give me them for £2!". Stall holder politely replies with "yes but she said please". Que rolling laughter from onlookers.

Second tip: walk around twice - people get more out of their cars after they clear a bit - you don't want to miss anything.

I second the be polite rule.

I HATE the people that follow you as you're pulling your car up, and then try and rummage around in the back whilst you are unpacking. Most of the time its people asking for mobile phones, computer consoles and electric guitars though and I quite politely tell them to b*gger off.

Wait until the seller is looking a bit less harassed by these vultures and generally they will be more open to bargaining.

Watch out for people offering big notes,we got a fake £20 for an item costing £4.50 and I don't think it was an accident. I think you can buy pens to check notes so if you are selling big ticket items (or even if you're not) it might be worth investing in one.

As a frequent seller at car boots I offer both advice and a warning to car boot purchasers:

Don't try to have the seller over for a profit. For example when I was selling a computer PDA in a box a would be purchaser had a program on his phone to scan the barcode and find out how much it was selling for on ebay, he told me as much then offered half on the basis he would sell it online for a profit. I put it back in the car and said "I know how to use ebay too". The seller is often there to clear space and may offer a bargain, but nobody deserves to be exploited.

Having said that, I do use ebay, and realistically the stuff for sale on my car boot sale stall is the stuff I couldn't or wouldn't sell on ebay/gumtree. Always be mindful of what your buying and the lack of a guarantee. That old computer I'm offering for £5, when I say it's old and only for parts I mean that, it's for parts. Bargains can be had though, I bought an old laser printer for £1 as parts were no longer available. I used it for 6 months until it broke then recycled it.

However I wouldn't stoop so low as the person I bought a hedgetrimmer from, only to get it home and find it didn't work. There are sellers at car boot sales are dishonest, be mindful of that with regard to what you're buying.

My personal favourite is childrens books. Shop around, a stall holder with a box of lots of books will often let them go at 20p each to encourage volume sales - 10 books for £2 is great. Stall holders with only a few "nice" books often want £1 each.