A Girl with a Box Truck

Woohoo! We made it through our first outdoor antique flea market and let me tell you, a girl with a box truck is a wonderful thing - I want my own now! By the time we'd packed everything, the 14 foot U-haul was full and so was our car. Some how we managed to squeeze it all on to our small site and thankfully by the end of the day most of it had gone away. The verdict is in - this was BIG work but it was also BIG fun!

We arrived at 7am to set up under the only tree on the lawn and most importantly right next to our best girl Sandy (who I might add has a box truck of her very own). Our first sale of the day was to her. She recently cleaned out two entire estates so it took two trips with her truck fully loaded to get everything there. By 7:30am the dealers were circled around her truck and when she started unloading boxes it was a feeding frenzy. I've never seen anything quite like it and the funniest part of it all - I was right in there with the best of them, pawing through stuff too! We bought three boxes of nice old photos and an antique frame.

I'm a little tired in this photo but I've got my game face on and I'm ready to sell. That's Sandy behind me working her magic with the hovering dealers.

Ken's raring to go - bring on the customers!

We had some pretty sweet things to sell.

This piece sold in the first hour of the sale, go figure...

Since the antique center staff does the selling for us we only interact with our customers if they happen to be in our booth while we're sprucing it up. It was especially nice yesterday to get such positive feedback from browsers and customers and to watch the responses of those who simply passed us by. We learned a lot. The item that got the most attention was a beautiful 1940's yellow laminate table. Almost every person who came by petted it lovingly and told us stories about how this was THE table they grew up with. The hipsters thought it was simply way cool. People couldn't seem to keep their hands off of it - it got more pets than a litter of kittens! It eventually went to a lovely young woman who'd been by three or four times in the course of the day to look at it. We were glad it went to a good home.
We're a tad bit exhausted by our first flea market experience but we had a blast. The weather was great and so was the company. Sandy plied us with homemade snacks and a cocktail in the afternoon - it was a fantastic party and we're already signed up for the next one. My fortune at dinner after the big event read "You have only begun to scratch the surface of your real potential", Ken's said "You have sound business sense". Here's hoping!