Sunday 17 February 2013

Flea market fun.

Our town's got a pretty good flea market which I tend to visit whenever it's on. As part of my decluttering goal I decided to have my own little stand with a friend for a few hours on a Sunday morning. Since I've recently cleaned out the craft room, I already had a little hoard of stuff ready to sell. I loaded the car the night before and got there at 7.45 for an 8.30 start. This was plenty of time to set up the stand and label up the items using about a 1/4 of a roll of masking tape and a permanent texta. Everything was set and I was convinced it was going to go off. However it ended up being a scorcher of a morning and by 12.30 (end of the market) it was at least 40 degrees. This kept some customers away but it was a reasonably successful morning where I made about $101.80 (after paying for the stand) from the junk that was clogging up the craft room! The rest of the stuff ended up in the thrift shop donation bins except for a few larger items I'm going to try my luck selling online.

  1. Get all your stuff to sell together in advance and load up the car the night before.
  2. Organise a large table for display and a clothes rack. (we borrowed them from friends) It helps to have a ute or van too for transport.
  3. Have plenty of little change as lots of people seem to come with their large notes straight from the ATM.
  4. Bring along a seat, water and some snacks to keep you going.
  5. Be friendly and willing to negotiate on prices.
  6. Lastly and very importantly!- make your stall look nice and don't put out too much at once or people won't know where to look.
I'm pleased with my little profit but more pleased with the nice amount of empty space I have. The only thing I got from the markets was this delightful little elephant teapot which I got by swapping some of husband's old pokemon cards- who knew pokemon cards were still going strong?
 Lisa x



4 comments:

  1. Nice job on the flea market stand!! I have tried to sell our stuff but we tend to be in a smaller area so it is more of the garage sale thing vs the flea market.. and you have no idea what kind of crowd you will get!

    It sounds like a great start to your amazing job on de-cluttering!

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    1. Thank you! I am a bit divided on what is more successful- a garage sale or flea market stand. I live in a town of about 15,000 so flea markets tend to attract the crowd from other towns too but actually some friends and I had a super successful garage sale last year where we made close to $800 for charity even though it was a rainy freezing day- turns out people were desperate for a bargain :)
      L x

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  2. $100 is pretty good considering it was just stuff cluttering up your house!

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    1. I know right- I think I've got a bit of an addiction to reselling things!

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