Car boot sale advice - updated 2013

sarah_id1

Looking at Car boot sale in and around (preferentially East) London for Building stuff. Reading this thread someone suggested Denham near Uxbridge as the biggest one. Any suggestion as the thread appear too old.

Mary_Hartnell

Not a boot sale, but you could rive out over the M25 into Essex on the previous Sunday afternoon to take a look at this place - the real action takes place on the Monday 02 sep 13

http://www.theauctioneer.co.uk/page4.htm

One man's junk is another's auction lot.

As building stuff is heavy and relatively low cost, it makes more sense to take the people to the stuff in a yard on a farm, rather than vice versa

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=architectural+salvage+essex

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=architectural+reclaim+essex

TheJasperCo

I'm heading over to my local car boot for only the 3rd ever time tomorrow, hoping for some last-minute tips for the uninitiated. Got a selection of books, clothes, sporting and hobby equipment, DVDs and games that need taking off my hands.

jessobel

My husband and I have accumulated so many belongings over the years that it was always on our plan to do a CBS. We live in London, but having read through these forums we decided to rent a car and go out to Surrey to do the sale.

We used one weekend to do research and visited 3 Surrey car boot sales: the Apps Court Farm CBS, the Hook Arena CBS and the Nuthill Fruit Farm CBS. We chose ACF in the end - the Hook Arena CBS sale was okay and looked well-organised, but smaller than ACF. The Nuthill Fruit Farm was pretty horrible - poorly laid out, grimy, and the stuff for sale was definitely of a 'tat'ier category than the other two. ACF is huge but well-organised, and the site was quite nice (inside a farm, allegedly, but we didn't see any 'farm'-y bits while we were there!)

Tips on Apps Court Farm / car boot sales in general based on our experience:
- Get there early. We were there by 7:20 and there was already quite a big queue of sellers waiting to get in
- They let the buyers in at the same time even though their website says 8am, so be prepared for a torrent!
- The early morning was the busiest and most intense period. From 7:30 - 9am it was all go, non-stop
- You don't need a money box - money changes hands too quickly for it ever to settle so we just kept the lot in our pockets
- Some people drove a harder bargain than others, but do stand up for yourself - there were people who even at 8am were trying to practically take our stuff for free - but we had confidence in a lot of the items so we politely declined and asked them to check back later - if it was still around we'd consider doing it for cheaper (and we did for some items, but it also meant we sold at a price we were happy with for other items)
- Definitely have lots of carrier bags with you as people asked for them
- People love a rummage - I threw all my trial size cosmetics and make up bits into a little box and people loved going through it
- Things were pretty much completely slowed down by 1pm, and we left around 2pm after spending a bit of time packing up
- Having a large tarpaulin over our stall helped as it clearly demarcated our patch. In the end my husband asked the guy next to us if he wanted it - cost 6 pounds, and flogged it for 2, so basically rented it for 4 pounds for 7 hours which isn't bad!
- We barely sold books - had a huge box of them left even though we marked them at 50p at the end; clothes also weren't that popular
- Games, DVDs and Blu-rays went like hotcakes - we got the impression that some of these guys are professional buyers who buy in bulk to resell individually on eBay
- We bought a couple of stools but to be honest the whole day was so full on that we didn't need them at all! We're pretty young though so were okay to stand for the full 7 hours, but appreciate others might prefer to have them just in case
- Only hot dogs and burgers on sale, so if that's not your thing, pack your own food!
- Bring a couple of batteries if you're selling stuff that needs it - just to show that it works
- Some people will ask you to hold stuff while they find some money - you could tell them no if you're okay to do that, but a few times we told them we'd hold it until [x] time but if they weren't back by then we'd sell it
- We were very lucky with the weather so we didn't need to heed this piece of advice, but useful to buy some cheap clear plastic for when it rains / drizzles - don't want your stuff to be ruined!

In the end we made 450 pounds! Really pleased with the result. Apart from getting up at a godawful hour, it was actually quite a pleasant experience. Perhaps it was the site we chose, but by and large people were really friendly and even if you declined their offer were very nice about everything. The stuff we sold was literally stuff we would have thrown away or donated so to have come away with this amount of money really showed to us that one man's rubbish is another man's treasure!

That's all I can think of at the moment - happy to take any questions!

mrsgreenwood_2

im doing a bootsale on sunday and i havent got a clue how to set it all out so if anyone can help id be sooo greatful!.

i have ladies clothes, mostly one size-trousers, tops, jackets.
kids clothes boys and girls-different sizes.
lots of toys.

i have a decorating table, small hanging rail and ground sheets. also have some of them under bed storage boxes i could use.

any ideas whats best to put where?

ive got some kids and ladies clothes i can hang up, but not sure what to do with the trousers? just lay them on the floor?

i suppose i could put the kids clothes in the under bed storage boxes and put them under the table?

as you can see, i need some help!

jennydanny

I'm looking at starting up my own indoor carboot event - I have a warehouse which is ideal but have no idea how to start one up - does anybody have any suggestions?

Emma_Crane

has anyone tried that onlinecarbooty.com ?

lordra

I was just looking at it, but not very ideal, IMO. I have to pay for P&P and that's a lot of money, sending lots of little things out to different people. If you have expensive items then its alright I suppose...

Mary_Hartnell

jennydanny wrote: »

I'm looking at starting up my own indoor carboot event - I have a warehouse which is ideal but have no idea how to start one up - does anybody have any suggestions?

Way back on here there was someone trying to set up a web site/news sheet, he might still be contactable.
You have got four problems that I can think of immediately.
You pay business rates, farmers' fields don't.
To run a market requires planning permission BUT there is a de minimis (that is Latin for insignificant) exemption of (don't quote me I'm not a lawyer)[STRIKE] 28 [/STRIKE] 14 days a year for "antisocial" activities like running a market. But which planner is going to get out of bed at 05:00 on a Sunday?
Successful markets tend to switch between neighbouring venues.
The "Old Bill" can close you down if you are successful and start creating a queue on the highway, all be it at 06:00. There will also be visits from trading standards checking things like food regulations and counterfeit goods and public liability insurance.
There are economic concepts of "Prime Mover Advantage" and "Cumulative Causation", that translates into "Who dares wins" and "Nothing succeeds like success"; 35 years ago, when boot sales were a new concept, some early adopters build successful businesses and a lot of expertise.
But it is Location, Location, Location given the right combination of population & access there could be a successful business - we all like a bargain.

apak24

I used to do a lot of selling at boot fairs back in the day when a boot fair meant a boot fair, not like it is now where you see small businesses setting up stalls selling new items.

To me a boot fair is a place to recycle your unwanted item's not sell new stuff, if you want to buy anything that's new then you would go to a shop or market.

Whenever i go to boot fairs now i make a bee line for anyone selling used items, i don't even look at someones stall if its got new items on it. There are 2 main tips i can give to sellers,

1 don't do a boot fair alone, the reason for this is that you need eyes all over the place. Because when you first start to open your boot most of the people jump in there before you even have the table set up, and at this point you need someone to stop them from doing that.

2. always take a cash float i used to take at least £30 in change, because most people will try to pay you in notes.

And for buyers.

1. Always take lose change, as most sellers don't like people who pay with notes for small items.

2. Be prepared to haggle, most sellers don't mind haggling thats whats fun with boot fairs the haggle.


Regards and happy booting..