The Strange World Of Boot Sales

The Sunday before last we embarked on a journey into the unknown! As part of the ongoing attempt to declutter my life (and make a little extra cash) Matt and I did our first boot sale.

We were up at stupid o’clock on a Sunday morning with the boot of the car duly loaded with tables and a couple of very uncomfortable stools, cash tin and several boxes of tat and made our way to the ‘Huge Car Boot Sale’ in Alton.

We didn’t really know what to expect although I had had a little advice from two veteran bootsalers that I know. Apparently we were mugged as soon as we arrived. Not in the hoodie, 'give me your mobile phone' sort of way of course. But before we could even get the car unloaded we were surrounded by eager buyers. Apparently the ‘professionals’ get there early and go on a bargain hunt. The first guy was only interested in records (although he did also invest in a large smiley face clock that I had) and bought 21 of my old 7” singles for the bargain price of a tenner. He was followed immediately by two people who had both swooped on my old collection of Whimsies which were snatched up for Twenty quid between them, so not a bad start to the day, even if the pace didn’t stay quite so hectic for the rest of the morning.

There was a strange collection of absolute junk on offer with one or two treasures if you look hard enough. We gave ourselves a budget of £5 each for a little shopping and took it in turns to have a look around and came back with a tripod, in full working order, a Polaroid camera complete with film, a garden tool (a sort of cross between a rake and a spade), a Darth Vader money box and a Darth Vader desktop mobile phone holder (not so sure about the last one!). There was also a little underhand dealing in TY bears along the way but I won’t go into that.

So I reckon that so far I’m about even on getting rid of clutter vs. gaining more but didn’t have a bad day, well worth the early start. So much so that we’re going to do it again this weekend. I wonder if that Skateboard will still be there….