17 Jul 2013

car boot sale-ing

Last sunday mitch and I left the flat at 6:45am armed with 4 big boxes of stuff. Why? To take part in the brockwell park car boot sale of course!
I'd never sold stuff at a car boot sale before and I certainly learned a lot from this first experience.


Good points

★ A productive morning - The early start meant that I really felt like I'd done something with my day (i usually spend whole sunday mornings in bed before getting up to a very leisurely brunch - so it was nice change).
★ It's a pretty good way to get rid of odd stuff that wouldn't sell on ebay. You know the things I mean - old board games, toys, books etc. Stuff that'd you normally just give to the charity shop but only at the car boot you can make a bit of profit. (That sounds terribly uncharitable but the stuff we didn't sell went to the oxfam in herne hill - we're not total jerks!)
★ Meeting people. As I've said before, I very rarely meet new people, I'm quite settled with my social group and rarely, if ever, meet people outside of it, so the car boot sale was perfect for engaging with an altogether different group of people. Not only do you get to have a good old chat with the punters but also with your fellow sellers. ALL the sellers we met/spoke to (and that was quite a lot) were v.friendly and chatty.
★ Something different to do - mitch may have done a car boot before but not with me. It was a pretty fun thing to do together, you know, working as a team. Although, I have to admit, mitch was the real star - he was so good with the potential buyers and definitely made most of the sales. I perked up by about 10 but he was the one with all the positivity and kept us going for 6 hours! I did end up making a few sales  and I deffo got a buzz from it.


Bad points

★ We had to get up really early and even then the car park was already over half full with sellers. Not long after we arrived a few people got turned away due to lack of room!
★ It was really hot - unluckily for us the car park was almost completely exposed to the sun. I applied sun cream several times while we were there and still got burnt. However, had it not been nearly 30 degrees the car boot sale might not have been as busy as it was so I shouldn't complain really.
★ You can't choose your neighbours - the people who pitched up next to us were, on the whole, nice people but the lady did talk a lot and a couple of times prevented us from conversing with potential buyers. As for the guy, he found a rugby ball in the park and then sold it to a little kid and later bought something from us and then sold it on his stall for 3 times the price. Mitch did warn me that that sort of thing does go on at car boots and there's no law against it but it just doesn't sit well with me. The guy also kept complaining (loudly) to us about the punters not buying any of his stuff. I dunno, it just wasn't the sort of convo I wanted to have, nor did I want to tell him how much money we made, despite his asking a number of times.
★ It can get a bit boring. Most of the time we both manned the stall, which was cool, but we needed breaks (the loo, filling up the water bottle) and when I was left on my own I realised that doing a car boot sale alone would not be fun.
★ It's a hard days work for not much in return. This aspect didn't actually bother me too much as the main aim for us was to get rid of our stuff and we did - a whole box full! There were definitely people at the car boot who do it all the time - you can tell by their set-up and items for sale - and they probably walk away with a v.tidy sum. We set ourselves a target, just to make it a little more interesting, and to our delight we actually reached it plus a little bit extra. The profits will pay for dinner and drinks in the village on night next week and that's good enough for me!
this was our little plot.

After the car boot sale we went to watch some of the brockwell park dog show but had to leave before the end as we were both completely shattered. I'm gutted we left before the fancy dress round as this years theme was space and aliens. On our way out we did catch a glimpse of a dog in a princess leia outfit - it looked ace.
the 'cutest puppy' catergory. Trust me, they were all cute.

pooches galore!

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Ta v.much :)

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