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Bargin Hunt for real, sort off

philc

LE
The wife is a fan of all these lets go and find riches at a car boot or antique fair TV programs especially Bargain Hunt to the point she fancies her chances and wants us to enter.

I am very against the idea for several reasons, I am not always a ray of sunshine and she can not make a decision to save her life about any thing.

So I have come up with a solution, this weekend we hit some big antique fair at a race track, each with £200 cash and have to buy 3 items which we then take down the local auction house to flog, simple or so you would think. I just know she will buy bugger all and if she does buy some thing will not want to flog it. However I will win as it will put paid to any fanciful ideas about appearing on TV.

So any tips or pointers, vague knowledge about old books, vinyl albums, militarily items and silver, or so I think, could fall flat on my face.
 
From personal experience I would chin off the local auction house and stick your items on eBay with world wide postage. If you are lucky some yank will snap them up.

With this in mind aim to buy small expensive items. Silverware is always good or something with an inscription with royal or university links.
Masonic items also sell well.

Cameras are also worth a punt. Old 120 film cameras look good on some Hipsters shelf and they will pay good money for it.
 
You now what mate, if you can afford it, it's not that bad an idea.

You never know, you might acquire a new hobby, or if you're good enough at it, a new income stream.
 
Apart from bric-a-brac, general sale rooms are quite poor and attract run-of-the-mill punters off the street. Results are often going to be unenthusiastic.

If you have specialised items for sale, you're better going to sales that attract interested buyers. Whether it's musical instruments, vintage toys & models or militaria etc, try and find a sale room that specialises in such items. It may mean going further afield, however.
 
So I have come up with a solution, this weekend we hit some big antique fair at a race track, each with £200 cash and have to buy 3 items which we then take down the local auction house to flog, simple or so you would think.

My wife watches those as well.

They do it arse-about-face, buy at retail and sell at auctions (mostly to trade). The retailers probably give them absolute bargains so as to get the publicity and lure in the punters. As CowboyBob says, buy tat at car boot sales and sell it as antiques on E-Bay. If she makes a profit doing that, then try and do it on TV. There's lots of people at it, the time I did a boot sale, there was a feeding frenzy of shifty-eyed OAPs eyeing up the contents of the car boot before the car had even stopped.
 
The wife is a fan of all these lets go and find riches at a car boot or antique fair TV programs especially Bargain Hunt to the point she fancies her chances and wants us to enter.

I am very against the idea for several reasons, I am not always a ray of sunshine and she can not make a decision to save her life about any thing.

So I have come up with a solution, this weekend we hit some big antique fair at a race track, each with £200 cash and have to buy 3 items which we then take down the local auction house to flog, simple or so you would think. I just know she will buy bugger all and if she does buy some thing will not want to flog it. However I will win as it will put paid to any fanciful ideas about appearing on TV.

So any tips or pointers, vague knowledge about old books, vinyl albums, militarily items and silver, or so I think, could fall flat on my face.

Use your smartphone and google whatever you are thinking of buying, then you can compare the prices, as someone said Ebay is your best bet, you'll have the tens of millions of potential buyers rather than an auction house. Check the condition carefully, a roughed up coin/record/book can be worth a tenth of what a perfect object can fetch.

I use to buy and sell tat all the time as a pad brat, a big money earner was brass stuff which was quite cheap in the UK and flogging it in Germany where for some weird reason it was harder to come by, however the internet has fucked that up as Herr Strudelpumper can just now order what he likes from around the world. Be wary of antique fairs because the majority of the sellers are quite capable of selling shit online themselves so their prices tend to be slightly higher on their stalls, they normally have more of an idea about an items worth than an average member of the public. Your best bet are car boot and church jumble sales where Mrs Brady the little old lady has **** all idea what the world wide web is and has no comprehension of the value of her Russian grandmother's Faberge egg, she will be happy with the 50p you give her.
 
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We have done car boot sales, unfortunately the ones in our area are worth the sum of feck all, the stuff you see you would throw out and the great unwashed are truly a sight to see.
 
We have done car boot sales, unfortunately the ones in our area are worth the sum of feck all, the stuff you see you would throw out and the great unwashed are truly a sight to see.

Try church jumble sales, nicer (and more importantly older) people tend to flog their wares there.
 
We have done car boot sales, unfortunately the ones in our area are worth the sum of feck all, the stuff you see you would throw out and the great unwashed are truly a sight to see.

One of the biggest in the country takes place not too far from me. I went once. Never again. A dismal waste of time.
 
One of the biggest in the country takes place not too far from me. I went once. Never again. A dismal waste of time.

Once they become very commercialised (Every single week in the same location) they tend to be quite shit, with people setting out stalls as a business rather than clearing the attic once a decade. The smaller ones that happen a couple of times a year are normally still good as the professionals tend to stay away because they have a regular patch elsewhere.
 
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We have done car boot sales, unfortunately the ones in our area are worth the sum of feck all, the stuff you see you would throw out and the great unwashed are truly a sight to see.

I enjoy people-watching, the great unwashed are indeed entertaining to keep a surreptitious eye on. When I'm visiting my parents', I always go the Sunday market with my Mum; aside from the people-watching, all I'm interested in is a Roast Pork French Stick, or a Fried Breakfast in a bun.
 
My Dad when through a phase of going to house clearance sales. He picked up some nice stuff but never got around to flogging it on.
His star buy was an Elizabeth Blackadder print for £45.
They normally sell for around £1000-£2000.
Had it been an original water colour it would have been worth £10k.

Also look out for job lot coin collections, the silver and gold coins will have been picked out, but there will often be valuable brozen/copper coins from the 1700's and 1800's.
 
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