Car boot sale or market tips?

jonbooth

I've heard that sim cards can sell for up to £5 each at Car Boots.Get them free off the net freebie sites,and/or Ebay,where they sell for £1/£2 each.

Bargainloverbec

I did a car boot with a couple of friends last summer and we made £124 between us - not bad for half a day's work.

Beware of some of the regular car booters - one woman came along and offered me £2 for a box of jewellery and bits which I accepted, half an hour later it was all out on her table priced up individually. Grrr.

I really enjoyed myself but definitely take at least one other person with you as it's hard to keep an eye on everything if you're by yourself (and someone needs to stay with the stuff whilst you nip to the loo!).

bluezone

I do car boots regulary with members of my family (OH wont get up that early!). We try to do one on sat morning and then one on sun morning. I have been doing them on and off for years during the summer months and enjoy it. Once you sell the first couple of items you feel better about getting up that early :j

Most car boots round this way (Cambridge) are 5 or 6 quid a pitch and we tend to make about £100 a time - we tend to buy lots of old tat that no one wants in our local auction (mainly we want one thing out of a box of tat so sell the rest of the tat at car boot!)

During the winter months we have sold some bits on Ebay but to be honest you pay so much in charges that we have decided to sell the tat on bootsales unless we have furniture and more collectable items that need a wider sales pitch. We have made about £2000 between 4 of us on Ebay over 2 years. We enjoy watching the bids roll in but not the packing of the parcels and taking them to the post office - we get much more enjoyment of handling the actual cash and not having to parcel it all up.

The main difference is that you get to meet other "regular booters" rather than just speak to people in emails.

Anyway good luck to who ever was going to do a bootsale before I side-tracked on to other subjects

sportbeth

I did one in Woolwich last christmas to make some extra cash and I've never been so terrified. Mistake 1: we turned up in a Cherokee Jeep so the vultures smelt money as soon as we drove in. We were too scared to get out of the car when the all surrounded us and one guy just opened the boot and climbed in.

No-one would get away from us long enough to set up, they were all over everything. Half our stuff got nicked and when we went home we had made about £50, which sounds good but if I had taken my time and sold on E-bay like I do now I would have trebled the figure.

I would really, really advise you to sell on e-bay instead. What I do is save stuff that doesn't sell and either put it on as a job lot or give it to charity as I would have done anyway a couple of years ago when I was flush. It is so much easier and much more fun than standing in the rain haggling with a chav over a 25p skirt which you know would get £1.50 on ebay whilst you try to keep your eyes in a million places to stop the Chavs nicking your gear.

And the jokes that you have to put up with from the blokes are just not worth the early morning start for. Oh, and I swear half the people that came near me when we went were lunatics that should have been in the asylum.

sportbeth

I did one in Woolwich last christmas to make some extra cash and I've never been so terrified. Mistake 1: we turned up in a Cherokee Jeep so the vultures smelt money as soon as we drove in. We were too scared to get out of the car when the all surrounded us and one guy just opened the boot and climbed in.

No-one would get away from us long enough to set up, they were all over everything. Half our stuff got nicked and when we went home we had made about £50, which sounds good but if I had taken my time and sold on E-bay like I do now I would have trebled the figure.

I would really, really advise you to sell on e-bay instead. What I do is save stuff that doesn't sell and either put it on as a job lot or give it to charity as I would have done anyway a couple of years ago when I was flush. It is so much easier and much more fun than standing in the rain haggling with a chav over a 25p skirt which you know would get £1.50 on ebay whilst you try to keep your eyes in a million places to stop the Chavs nicking your gear.

And the jokes that you have to put up with from the blokes are just not worth the early morning start for. Oh, and I swear half the people that came near me when we went were lunatics that should have been in the asylum.

lushlifesaver

My dad and I did a carboot last summer because I'm a serial gamer and a hoarder (sp?) and had a few HUNDRED games to get rid of for various consoles. We got there before they opened the gates and were in the first 20 into the grounds the vultures decended on us within minutes and my dad was getting the table etc set up so i started to haggle (my parents started this skill early in me by taking us to carboots before i could walk) and sold 8 game boy advance games with booklets but no boxes for £150...I thought the guy was mental since they cost me £5 each and were really old!
my tops tips have to be:
1.take a table and cover AND a blanket/cover for the ground : spread your stock out and people look at more of it
2. if the vultures attack: tell them its 'left over stock' from where you were yeterday...they flee amazingly fast
3. Haggle: unless its some old dear tell people 'i can't except less than (insert decent price)'
4. put things for teens/children on the ground : firstly because they are more willing to bend down to look and secondly its nearer to a child's eyeline so they are more entinced (toys/books etc)
xr
p.s sorry that this is so long!