After a week of bubble wrapping, sorting and pricing up for the big spring event at Peterborough, the day finally arrived. Last year was horrific, it snowed and snowed...after a month of praying to the gods of weather, the dreaded TV forecast showed a cold spell on the way. Fortunately no snow, but cold nights, meaning thermal underwear, coats, socks and boots...all this after the previous t shirt weekend when we sat on the patio in the sun !
Arrived noon, to meet the dreaded queues of traders waiting to descend -a new town within a City was springing up. Cars lorries campers caravans of all shapes and sizes, old new foreign and British. After a 2hr wait (which is so typical of the organisers who couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery ) we all finally got in, only for more chaos as they forgot to make it a one way system, meaning traffic moving from 5 different directions came to a gridlock in the middle. Resulting in several thousand traders cursing and swearing, even mild natured Tony went out to give the traffic control security a piece of his mind. Four hours later, stall finally set up we crawled back to a freezing cold camper van no hook up to electricity , drank copious amounts of wine and fell asleep. Next morning 6am boiled eggs and toast, back to the stalls. 8am the traders come in, in their thousands to buy....we had a great day, the sun shone and suddenly the frustration of Thursday vanished. Following day Saturday when the public came in...it was cram packed, but we like most of the other traders had a dreadful day, no one wanted to part with their money and haggled on everything, even if it was £1...shows us that the recession is nowhere near over :-( and too many of them actually believe they are going to get the discounts that they miraculously do on Bargain Hunt and Antiques road Trip
Of course bargain hunt appeared, so did Eric Knowles (who upset our friends next door to us by saying aloud on camera their posters were reproductions when walking past, he never even stopped to look at them...well as they were original, and had cost them a lot of money, they rounded on the film crew and gave them a piece of their minds. The film crew smelling a potential riot of like minded traders ganging up on them, beat a hasty retreat :-)
The man who wears funny bow ties and leads bargain hunt, came to our stall...I made excuses to tony and bolted to the van to make tea. When I got back I asked tony if he noticed, and of course Tony had been walking around with his eyes shut and never even saw him :-)
Well it's been and gone, and over till October....was it worth it..yes because I learn very time I go, I see lots of people who have now become friends, and learn from them. However I have total respect and praise for those who trade in any 'pop up' situation, be them market traders, craft traders, antique traders or any trade that has to build up and dismantle a shop front to sell. Because my god, it is such hard work, it leaves me totally mentally and physically exhausted for about 24 hrs afterwards :-(
Monday, 24 March 2014
Monday, 10 March 2014
Back to Market Harborough 9th March
Had a two week break from selling, today was back to the antique market in Market Harborough. You might remember me saying previously the original market moved from the town centre to a school, for temporary reasons due to refurbishment of the market hall. I don't think it's worked out very well due to people not being aware and bad signage, however it moves back soon so will be a relief, we have booked up our new stall so will be interesting to see how things go now.
Transporting a load of antiques, not to mention all the stands and display cabinets is pretty much a nightmare, it takes about an hour just to set up which leaves me pretty much in a ratty mood and poor Tony regularly gets his head bitten off!
This Sunday footfall wasn't brilliant, but because I had a cabinet full of oriental curiosities and pretty rare stuff, quite a few dealers descended on me like a swarm of locust. Now dealers..being those who are IN the trade, are a pretty difficult lot to deal with. There are the the godmother and godfather dealers, who you can't piss off unless you want to find a horses head in your bed! There are the "woe is me" dealers who come along try to knock you down to the bear minimum with tales of woe and the "Devious dealers" who try to tell you something you have (which they really want) is nowhere near as valuable as you thought it might be.
Unfortunately I got all three categories on Sunday, the big mama of All godmothers turns up first, sweetly smiles and pretends to be our bestest friend, we haggle...now haggling with a godmother is pretty hard..but we haggle throw along a few very snide insults at each other..and finally we shake..she buys several items and knocks an eye watering £150 off my profits....now while u might think I am stark staring raving bonkers...I am..BUT she has offloaded me of several items of stock very quickly, still at a comfortable amount MORE than I paid for them, so I get a quick turnover. Next up is one of the "woe is me" brigade, trying to tell me my lockets are too expensive for him to buy, and how much he likes them...I stand my ground and he comes back three times in 2 hrs with different stories, his speciality being how hard he is finding it to cope with inflexible dealers like me. Finally he coughs up and hobbles off.
Last of all is Mr Devious....he tries to convince me that my gold chain is not gold..and gives me a lecture on how I am charging too much......Tony to the rescue tells him in a very polite way to.piss off, I sold the chain later to a delighted member of the public..so had a great deal of satisfaction telling Mr Devious when he crawled back that I had sold it ( tee hee)
It can be quite intimidating and I am still learning ( after a lot of mistakes) how to deal with these traders, but its dog eat dog in the antique business, if you think Eastenders and Coronation Street are a bunch of gossiping miserable man eating, devious creeps, then they are nothing compared to the antiques business. Forget Bargain Hunt, they should start up a soap about Antiques!! Some of them are quite bad..one was showing me how they had "tarted up" an old box with matchsticks in gravy browning to make it match a missing piece..now while they did a very good job, the box was selling for £150 (!) so please look very carefully at anything you are looking to buy at an antique fair or market because you can't return it. In shops, antique emporiums etc, you usually can, and even better develop a good relationship with a trader you can trust (I have a couple I regularly buy from I can trust) and you will be more protected. Also remember paying online by credit card and PayPal gives you even more protection, so if you use eBay try to pay by PayPal or credit card.
Anyway my next stint at antique selling is PETERBOROUGH at the east of England show ground on Fri and Sat 21/22 March. http://www.bobevansfairs.co.uk/east-of-england-showground.htm
This is HUGE and sells just about everything (it's where many Bargain hunt and Put your money
where your mouth is programmes are filmed) well worth a day out :-)
Transporting a load of antiques, not to mention all the stands and display cabinets is pretty much a nightmare, it takes about an hour just to set up which leaves me pretty much in a ratty mood and poor Tony regularly gets his head bitten off!
This Sunday footfall wasn't brilliant, but because I had a cabinet full of oriental curiosities and pretty rare stuff, quite a few dealers descended on me like a swarm of locust. Now dealers..being those who are IN the trade, are a pretty difficult lot to deal with. There are the the godmother and godfather dealers, who you can't piss off unless you want to find a horses head in your bed! There are the "woe is me" dealers who come along try to knock you down to the bear minimum with tales of woe and the "Devious dealers" who try to tell you something you have (which they really want) is nowhere near as valuable as you thought it might be.
Unfortunately I got all three categories on Sunday, the big mama of All godmothers turns up first, sweetly smiles and pretends to be our bestest friend, we haggle...now haggling with a godmother is pretty hard..but we haggle throw along a few very snide insults at each other..and finally we shake..she buys several items and knocks an eye watering £150 off my profits....now while u might think I am stark staring raving bonkers...I am..BUT she has offloaded me of several items of stock very quickly, still at a comfortable amount MORE than I paid for them, so I get a quick turnover. Next up is one of the "woe is me" brigade, trying to tell me my lockets are too expensive for him to buy, and how much he likes them...I stand my ground and he comes back three times in 2 hrs with different stories, his speciality being how hard he is finding it to cope with inflexible dealers like me. Finally he coughs up and hobbles off.
Last of all is Mr Devious....he tries to convince me that my gold chain is not gold..and gives me a lecture on how I am charging too much......Tony to the rescue tells him in a very polite way to.piss off, I sold the chain later to a delighted member of the public..so had a great deal of satisfaction telling Mr Devious when he crawled back that I had sold it ( tee hee)
It can be quite intimidating and I am still learning ( after a lot of mistakes) how to deal with these traders, but its dog eat dog in the antique business, if you think Eastenders and Coronation Street are a bunch of gossiping miserable man eating, devious creeps, then they are nothing compared to the antiques business. Forget Bargain Hunt, they should start up a soap about Antiques!! Some of them are quite bad..one was showing me how they had "tarted up" an old box with matchsticks in gravy browning to make it match a missing piece..now while they did a very good job, the box was selling for £150 (!) so please look very carefully at anything you are looking to buy at an antique fair or market because you can't return it. In shops, antique emporiums etc, you usually can, and even better develop a good relationship with a trader you can trust (I have a couple I regularly buy from I can trust) and you will be more protected. Also remember paying online by credit card and PayPal gives you even more protection, so if you use eBay try to pay by PayPal or credit card.
Anyway my next stint at antique selling is PETERBOROUGH at the east of England show ground on Fri and Sat 21/22 March. http://www.bobevansfairs.co.uk/east-of-england-showground.htm
This is HUGE and sells just about everything (it's where many Bargain hunt and Put your money
where your mouth is programmes are filmed) well worth a day out :-)
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