To ask for your car boot sale horror stories

[lostelephant]

I do a few car boot sales a year and I've spent most of my afternoon going through the garage looking for things to sell. Although its nice to make a bit of money, there always seems to be something that rubs me the wrong way!

The worst one was when I was unpacking my car, turned back around and a woman was actually sat in the back of my car rummaging through my CDs that weren't even for sale!

Please tell me I'm not the only one whose had bad experiences

I'm trying to avoid ever doing a car boot again, but when we have done them I think you have to go with the attitude of you are having a clear out, you don't want to take anything home. I sell stuff cheap and even give it away towards the end. I try and have a laugh and never take offence at the rude people, though as I say, I'm trying to avoid ever doing another one. I prefer Ebay where possible.

I just can’t get over how many people have said that hagglers are getting into your car!? Surely you’d go ballistic

I have done a few and am selling at one on Saturday. The first one I went at the same time as a friend, so our cars were next to each other. My husband and our daughter who was about 2 at the time cycled over to join us. (about 2 miles along a cycle path next to the river so a nice trip). The bike was at the side of the car, and I was keeping an eye on it. The child seat and helmets on it. Soneone asked me how much for the bike, and looked surprised when I said it was not for sale.
I have done a few baby sales too. One chap tried to bargain me down on about three different toys. They were in good clean condition and fairly priced. Eg £1.50 for a peg jigsaw that had been hardly used. He looked genuinely amazed when I said I would not take 50p for the peg puzzle, £1.50 for something priced at £3 etc, and actually said, "so you won't sell it to me?". I responded by confirming the price.
Later in the sale a little boy was buying one of my toys and wanted to get something for his baby brother too. His mum asked the price of the peg puzzle as the sticker had come off. I thought it was sweet he wanted to get for his brother too, they were already buying one item, and the sale was bearing the end, so I sold it to them for 50p.
I don't mind a bit of haggling, and will discount if someone buys multiple items, but won't give it away.

(I didn't sell the £3 toy in the end. When I got home I remembered that it had an extra function if you put batteries in. I added batteries, wrote instructions on paper and taped them to the back, and took it to a charity shop instead).

I’ve only done one when I was trying to have a clear out and earn some money before starting Uni. All the other stall holders descended on us while we were setting up and in the chaos someone disappeared with a rack of CDs. I was traumatised 😂

I once did a boot sale as a teenager with an elderly and rather eccentric family friend. We'd been to them as buyers with him and we came up with idea of doing our own, so we gathered together the stuff that we wanted to sell and loaded it into his car (my family didn't have a car).

He'd been very keen to do the boot sale, but he hardly had anything of his own to sell - just a few bits of random rubbish (think bits of used old car parts to fit some random 25yo model). I think he just fancied a day* out. He'd brought his flask of coffee and sandwiches (fine) and his beloved accordion, which he played very loudly, incessantly, repetitively and not completely tunefully. It was a nice one (by far the only decent thing in among all of his tat) and plenty of people made him offers to buy it. At the time, I wondered if people might be trying to take advantage of a dotty old man and buy quite a valuable instrument from him for next to nothing, but looking back now, I wonder if their intentions were mainly humanitarian ones, to diplomatically stop him from his breach of the peace.

He'd brought a huge box of home-made cassettes - recorded from the radio and labelled in scrawly biro. He wasn't trying to pull a swifty one, he was just not very worldly-wise and it had honestly never occurred to him that it might not be legal to be an 'accidental pirate'. I gently tried to steer him away from putting them out for sale, but he genuinely didn't get what the problem was as 'but some of these are quite rare and people might want to buy them' nobody did.

It wasn't in a field, but the largish but quite confined car park of a local council building. I can't remember if it was our decision or the only space left by then, but we ended up in the very far corner from the entrance. He cheerfully drove on through, parked up and we unloaded.

After about an *hour, with the place absolutely packed with stalls and buyers, he announced out of the blue that he needed to take his wife shopping. They were a retired couple and could have done their shopping at absolutely any time, but it was somehow essential that they do it right now. The commotion that it caused (he wasn't that great a driver, which didn't help), with everybody having to move their tables out of the way and a heaving car park full of people who had to all crush in to the sides to let him come by. I was soooooo embarrassed.

However, by the end of it we were resolutely only the second most embarrassed people there. The outright winner was another stall-holder who decided to be the first to leave as things were really tailing off but before the event had properly finished. They were an even worse driver than my friend and were making a bit of a slow-motion Austin Powers of it.

There was a very large stall right near the entrance - a regular seller specialising in all manner of decorative plates, glassware, crockery and a great many other similar breakables, all arranged in tiers on numerous lengths of wood on upturned buckets. You can probably guess what happened next and the ensuing furious row about whose fault it was - bad driver or precarious displayer. I'm guessing that at least one if not both stall-holders ended up making quite a loss on that one

Is it ok to haggle at a car boot? We went to one last week and I saw a mirror I liked, dd found a oil burner she fancied same stall. Mirror was £5, burner a pound . I said would you take £5 for both, the stallholder said no but in such a rude and nasty way I said forget it then and walked away.

I did one, we were leaving the country so I wanted to get rid of load of tat (mostly ex's crap). Needed a massive clear out because for various reasons, I was going to have to do the move back home on my own. Had same experience as PP's re immediate descent of pillaging locusts and people selling on my stuff on their stalls for more! I did have one person return to say thank you for an M&S coat, which was a nice surprise.

Did well and was packing up when ex arrived - after he'd visited all the other stalls and bought a load more crap . . . I was fuming. Not only cost but obvious more crap that I would have to somehow cart home.

People are so rude!!

The worst one was when I was unpacking my car, turned back around and a woman was actually sat in the back of my car rummaging through my CDs that weren't even for sale!

It makes my skin crawl the way they descend on your car and start opening the doors before you've barely turned the engine off. Fucking parasites. I got taken for a mug when I did it the first few times as I was too polite and gobsmacked to handle it assertively.

Now I just say as soon as I get out of the car that I will not sell ANYTHING until I've had a chance to set up properly and they are welcome to come back or sit and wait, but they touch NOTHING until I've got my shit together.

When they keep firing questions at me I just ignore them. It takes balls of steel but I do it. I also no longer do boot sales alone. You need eyes in the back of your head. I always get DH or one of the kids to help me now.

My sis and I did one about 20 years ago, we both gathered our gear ready for 'the event' ( first timers!). All going well and tbf we were enjoying ourselves as the cash rolled in. This one lady was looking at this salad spinner for sale, asking "does it work?" I replied"yes" and enthusiastically turned the handle, I handed it to her so she could have a go - she opened it up and said, " it's full of lettuce!!" Sure enough it was indeed full of nice, crisp, fresh iceberg lettuce! My sister and I couldn't stop laughing as we had no idea where the lettuce had come from (the spinner had been in the shed for over 12 months). We told the lady ,through fits of giggles that she could have it for free and she did - lettuce included.
Got home and regaling our tale to the family about the salad spinner saga and my, less than bemused, husband pipes up, " ahhh, I wondered where that had gone to". Apparently, he had seen it in the dishwasher (I was giving it a clean ready for the car boot) and he decided to 'use it once last time'.
He isn't usually sentimental about kitchen utensils

That's absolutely hilarious

Best thing I ever saw was the woman next to us who had made a homemade Victoria sandwich, and sold it for a quid a slice :12 slices. She sold it in about five minutes

I was browsing around a stall at our local civic hall.
Mostly local people selling second hand stuff.

On a stall were perfumes in battered boxes. A teen girl picked up 3 boxes and she had £5 in her hand .....the stall holder says £30 pounds please....the kid puts the boxes back down.

A lady says thats far too expensive....the lady on the stall gets out her Argos catalogue and says look here they are £10 each ....we walked away laughing

I won't do them anymore for all the reasons previously mentioned. Plus of course the loos, which are invariably disgusting. I did take issue with one though that hadn't even bothered to provide facilities (cheapskates). When I asked where the loo was they pointed me to the pub a quarter mile down the road.
We always refer to the people who crowd round your car when you arrive as zombies. It's just something about the fixed stare into your vehicle and them descending in a group moving as one.
I had a family member who had a second hand book shop. She gave me a lot of books she couldn't sell. They were all old hardbacks (mostly faux leather bound and very foxed) but none had any commercial value due to the contents. They sold like hot cakes for £4 each. People were homing in on them obviously thinking that because they were old they must be valuable. Not one person haggled, and I was getting pitying looks as they handed over their money, probably thinking I didn't know the value of what I was selling. I could have sold hundreds of the things. 2 large boxes went within an hour. I wished I had had a car full.

The funniest thing I experienced was we had a bucket load of baby bibs, all washed and cleaned without stains, selling them at 10 bibs for 20p, and a lady said "I will have 20 for 5p" I almost didn't want to sell them to her as it was a bit cheeky but didn't want to take them back home!

Also one woman bought an odd shoe, the other one must have got lost when ferrying stuff from the house to the car, as I wouldn't have tried to sell an odd shoe, , but she really wanted the one shoe haha.

I enjoy a good car boot sale. The one's we've done have been quite civilised. You definitely need two people, though, otherwise you are ripe for thieves/distraction (and you can't go to the loo or have a look round the other stalls).

We always take good stuff and aim to sell the lot. I think you can only amass enough stuff to do one a year. I just don't understand those grumpy professional buggers who sit there with crap that is dirty and horrible. No one wants old slippers and yellow-stained pillows.

Also people who fondly imagine that there are a whole host of buyers eager to buy X Factor: The Game or a Girls Aloud annual. Don't waste your time!

DH and I did one a few years ago. We too had the descending throng at the opening of the boot. DH snarled at them which made no odds. We sold a mountain of barbies in the first ten seconds, I later realised we had massively underpriced them. A bloke offered us 10 p for an immaculate pushchair we were asking a fiver for. This tipped DH over the edge and he told the bloke he'd rather set fire to it then sell it for 10p think he got told to f off too

the one in the town over from us is fucking weird.

it's 'indoor carboot' over the winter and normal in the summer.

it's just the world's shittiest market. The same people selling the same crap every week. In the summer you get a few more "normal" carbooters.

it's a community one and local groups can help run it for a cut of the money. we've done it a few times.

but the regular sellers a re a weird bunch,t hey all know each other, have their stalls. One person gets away with paying half-price, because they walk all their crap in by way of two prams "well it's not a car..."

They have a rule, that no selling/buying can happen before "X" time, but set up before.

without fail, you get the one woman who claims she can't speak English, so "doesn't know" about that rule, despite her being there every week.

and the "My watch says it's 10am" - the man running it then has arguments saying it is by his watch. Rather than just say, blow a whistle or something.

I went to one on Monday for a wander around. I saw something I wanted and while I waited to talk to the owner, another woman tried to walk off saying something was £2 when everyone heard the mother of the owner say £3. She was going to just give it to her until her daughter got between her and the cheeky woman and refused to let that happen!

Was very amusing, plus the owner said she would drop the item I wanted to my house on the way home if she didn't sell it. Result for me not carrying it, walking toddler, baby in sling and bay back to my car and she got an extra £5 for delivery. Win win!

Last time I did one this kid came over and lingered for literally hours... He was 9 or 10, had this toy machine gun and was either commenting on our wares, shooting potential customers or hanging around our stall/van. Occasionally he'd disappear off and be under other seller's tables and they'd be giving ME evils, presumably for not controlling "my" child. My DH came to meet me in the afternoon and found this child reclining in the back of our campervan.

On the same day, a woman came back maybe 20 times to haggle down an almost new cheese toasty maker. In the end I sold it to her for about £2 just to get rid of her. At the end of they day, I had nearly finished packing up when cheese toasty lady returned and suggested I'd stolen a recipe book from her during the negotiations....

I don't know how people can be arsed with it, I spent ages sorting out saleable clothes for a baby nearly new sale one time and only made about £20. People just want new stuff, unless you have designer items which are as cheap as chips. Anything else I just bung to the charity shop now.

Do people find that the occasional car boot sales (eg run by a local charity) are more civilised than the monthly or fortnightly ones? Some of the descriptions on here are !

To be truthful, I used to do a car boot sale on a regular basis selling plants many years ago, say at least 15 years ago. Most I made was £750 and I would not go out if I thought I would get less than £200. I started end of March and finished beginning of July. End of month and cloudy weather was the optimal for greatest sales revenue.

I grew all the plants myself in polytunnels so it was a nice little earner. Had loads of return customers and made a lot of friends.

I haven't a story to add but I hate how Lego is always bundled up at the retail bloody price or more. I know it's the holy grail and my son is addicted too but if it's a greasy sandwich bag of random pieces then no I'm no I'm not paying a fiver!!!

My mum and I did one once, never again.

People want 50p for everything and it's a horrible day. A lot of people also pretend they can't speak English to get a better deal.