I actually got the bug at an estate sale when I was about twelve. I had bid on a tray of stuff and got it for 50 cents. I had wanted (and still own) some miniature books that were included. On my way back to my seat a guy offered me $5 for a brass scale that was also on the tray. I was flustered and didn't sell (I still have the scale, also), but I knew it was a good business.
After we returned to New Jersey in 1980, Cynthia and I used to sell at the Berlin market from time to time, and I kept a small inventory on a rack in the garage. Over the past year I have been to three sales, most recently the Collingswood Book Fair, which I attended with the help of my sister, Sharon. Although not normally a bookseller (I'm more of a book buyer, some would say hoarder), with Sharon's contributions we were able to set up a modest couple of tables and had a pretty fair day.
Now that I've been accustoming myself to the flea market world once again, I have ventured out in search of some inventory. I have been using two online auction sites - RCI Auctions, which specializes in restaurant and bar liquidations and for me is a source of wall art, vases, etc., and GovDeals.com, which is a clearinghouse for many Federal, state and local jurisdictions offering everything from confiscated Bentleys to lost items like wallets. In fact, I was in Edison the other day picking up a lot of 40 used men's and ladies' wallets I had bought for $26. Since some of them are brand name items like Coach and Fossil, I expect a reasonable turnaround on these. In any event, since I was already in North Jersey, I got a schedule of nearby storage unit auctions and attended thee of those. Now these are much like the auctions you see on the show Storage Wars, without the cameras, drama, and drawn-out post mortems, but certainly with a cast of regular bidders with distinctive, sometimes odd, personalities. Oh, and I sold a wallet. I was sorting the box while waiting for one of the auctions to start and sold one to another bidder for $3.
Most lockers were heavy with furniture, which is not my business, but I did buy a small locker for $5 that everyone else turned up their noses at, and I have at least $25 in saleable stuff to show for it, without even going through everything yet. The reason people passed was largely because the space included a rather nasty-looking mattress set, which I took to the dump for an $8 fee. It was a large Tempurpedic mattress, which probably retailed for several grand. But it looked like it had mold and I have no idea how it could be cleaned, and had no room to store it anyway, so into the dumpster it went, with a great lightening of spirit. (Among other things - that mattress was heavy.)
And today I attended the holy of holies when it comes to auctions - the estate auction. This is where the contents of a home are laid out on the lawn and a lot of the stuff is sold rapid-fire in box lots for only a few dollars each. Nicer pieces, jewelry, toys, Lionel trains, and the like are sold by the piece, of course, as is the furniture. I had to get up at the ungodly hour of 4:30 to get to this place in outer hicktown, PA, but it was worth it. These are pretty rare, as most auctions are at fixed auction houses where the prices are normally rather higher. This is what I brought home for $24.
It was so much fun I could hardly stand it, but I had run out of room (plus it was cold under those trees), so I came back in time to spend an hour at my local library's quarterly used book sale, which is where I feed my own demons as well as gather some inventory.
Over the next few days I will catalog, price and repack this stuff, and we'll see how well I really did. More on this later.
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