What are Car Boot Sales?

 by: Janet Lemke

If you live in England then you will already be familiar with car boot sales but I will still offer some valuable tips on how you can make money or find a bargain. However, if you are a resident of any other country then you are unlikely to know what car boot sales are and I hope to enlighten you as to these weekly events.

Firstly, a car boot is the same as a car trunk. So, car boot sales involve selling items from the back of your car. Well, that is how they began. Car boot sales used to be a small gathering of people who filled the back of their cars with goods that they wanted to dispose of and set up a trading stall in the hope that they could make a few pennies from their unwanted goods. Car boot sales have now become big business. Think of them as an offline version of EBay.

Car boot sales typically take place on a Sunday, although it is true that their popularity has led to them occurring on other days of the week. The most common locations for car boot sales are parking lots or even fields, anywhere that can accommodate a number of traders. The sellers pay a fee to park their car and put up a table on which to display their goods. Nowadays, there are professional ‘car booters’ who visit sales on a regular basis and may even have a truck full of goods for sale.

Most car boot sales do not charge an entrance fee for buyers who walk in to see if they can pick up a bargain but a growing number of organisers have realised that having an entrance fee, however small, can bring them extra income.

So, once you have decided that you have unwanted items that you want to sell at one of the car boot sales there are a number of tips to ensure that you leave at the end of the sale with more money than unsold items.

Ideally you want to have your goods in the best possible condition to attract high volume of sales. To be specific, if you have baby clothes that your child has grown out of then you want to make sure that they are washed and stain-free. Car boot sales attract buyers in search of a bargain but also of certain standards.

You should always have an idea of how much you want for an item that you are selling at car boot sales but be prepared to accept less. Haggling is a major part of car boot sales and you are wiser to accept a slightly lower price to make successful sales rather than stick to your original price and end up taking your goods home.

If you are a buyer at car boot sales then you need to be careful when it comes to electrical equipment especially. I have been conned quite a few times into buying kitchen equipment that it turned out did not work once I got it home. There are a lot of people at car boot sales who are genuine about saying that a particular item is in working order but it is impossible to connect an item to the mains and test it in the middle of a field so be careful.

Car boot sales can be great fun if you are a buyer or a seller. As with everything else in life you need to be selective and not buy something you don’t need, unless you want to have your own stall at one of the many car boot sales happening next week!