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 :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment