Another Sunday, another go at doing a car boot sale. This one went rather better.
Sarah, Cliffey and I spent Saturday night at Sarah's house, with her brother Stuart and rather a lot of pizza keeping us company. We rose early on Sunday morning - some found it easier than others - and headed down to BP* to kick it off.
And we did fairly well. My old record player went within the first hour (although strangely enough nobody wanted the records that I'd hoped would go with it - seems there's no market for The Jam, George Michael, and a compilation of 'BBC Space Themes' nowadays), as did my bag of Action Man figures and several of Cliffey's knickknacks.
However, as the morning wore on, we became concerned at the non-sale of two important items: Cliffey's table football table, and Sarah's dad's TV.
Expectations had been high for these two - their starting prices had were £25 and £15 respectively - but there were no takes and the slow dwindling of the asking prices did nothing to change that.
Morning became afternoon, and we started to panic. Not so much for the profit; more because the three of us wouldn't be able to fit in the car if this pair of relatively hefty things was coming with us.
"TV for a fiver?!" we cried desperately at any and all passers-by. Lunchtime had been and gone, and the majority of traders had called it a day, including the lovely lady whose stall had been pitched next to ours (and whose CD rack I eventually bought for a pound out of sympathy - more on that later). We had spent the last hour or so 'modelling'** the football table, to no avail. The situation was looking bleak, and as I headed to the clubhouse to hear the results of the £100 prize draw, it looked like we would have to consider just tossing the football table on the cordoned-off rubbish area and giving Sarah's dad his TV back.
But as I gazed out of the bar's window, I noticed two things:
1) A large red car had pulled up alongside Xander, and...
2) The football table, which had sat alongside our stall all day like an albatross around our collective neck, had vanished.
Upon returning from the raffle results (we didn't win), I was informed that some men had bought the TV for £5 (on the proviso that Cliffey carry it to their car, which was reportedly parked a country mile away), and that the people in the red car had taken the football table for £2 (except Sarah had forgotten to actually take the money off them before they drove away, so it was effectively free).
So we dubbed the day a moderate success and headed off. Sarah had gained £5 from the sale of the TV, I had made £12 or so for flogging my various trinkets, and Cliffey had trousered somewhere between £20 and £30, which is pretty tasty.
Even better, those are the figures after we had, between us, spent a small nation's royal mint on other people's stuff. A quick rundown of our purchases:
Joel - Blondie's Parallel Lines on vinyl for £1; Charizard plushie for £1; melodica for £2; aforementioned CD rack for £1; old Liverpool home strip for 50p - back reads "Gerrard 17".
Sarah - Big fuzzy blue jacket for £2; tribal African face thing, £4.
Cliffey - Giant Tigger plushie for £1 - "big enough to spoon"; Cluedo board game for £1 (I think).
And afterwards we went to Harvester. So a massive success really.
Joel.
*The name of the field in Sully where this shit goes down. I have no idea why it's called that.
**Or 'playing on to pass the time during which nobody wanted to buy anything'. Whichever.
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