Stolen from at car boot

[littlemisscomper]

This is more of a 'What would you have done?' Rather than 'What would you do?' because it's too late to do anything, but just curious to know. I did a car boot sale today. I had anything worth more than about £1 on the table in front of me, but I also had a lot of crap that I just wanted rid of, sorted into boxes marked '5p'/'10p'/'20p' etc. around the outskirts of my stall. There was this guy who was blatantly stealing from the 5p and 10p boxes, popping the bits into his back pocket and inside jacket pocket. I watched him as he was doing it, and he made eye contact at one point so he could see I was watching him. I don't know whether he'd have taken anything else if he hadn't been spotted but he only ended up with about 50p worth of stuff. My question is, would you have said anything? Would you have challenged him, or told one of the organisers? I didn't because it was just little bits of junk, but maybe I should because he could have been whipping things from all the stalls. Maybe it was my duty to make others aware? On the other hand he looked very 'down on his luck' and who knows, maybe he was just taking a couple of bits so he'd have something to give his kids at Christmas! The 5p box had things like toy freebies from comics in it.

So, what would you have done?

"Are you really so desperate that you're stealing from someone who's clearly not doing so great herself that she has to sell whatever she can to make ends meet?"

Or something along those lines. Loudly. Pointedly.

Happens all the time in the bigger ones. I don't know what I'd do if anything. Maybe just "say please don't take my stuff" if it's still here when it's finished il give it to you if it was just going to end up in recycling or something.

I would tell the people who run the car boot. They can usually get them out. Stops them doing it to others too. People put in such long hours there, in shitty weather for sometimes not very much money. It’s awful to be stolen from.