Boot sale bargains!

Today I want to talk about car boot sales!

So who visits these things and who has had and boot sale finds?

I visit boot sales all the time and I think everybody will be surprised at what bad taste bear items I have found! I remember wanting to collect bad taste bears when I was still at school but I could never afford them and even Ebay was too expensive at the time. Anyway one sunny morning I was walking along when I saw a bad taste bear box lying on a blanket. It was a Frank and when asking the price a woman replied, “Oh that vile thing, you can take it”. I remember being fairly surprised that I had struggled to afford even loose bad taste bears for such a long time and now I had a boxed one which had cost me nothing. I was hooked.

In the next few months I found about a dozen plush bears at 50 pence each, and then bright and early spotted a nice lady with a whole table full of bears. The woman explained that a council worker who checked on her regularly had explained that the bears should be taken out of sight from her kids, and so she was selling her whole collection! I excitedly rummaged through the bears and picked out 30 bears I needed including a golden Hannibal, Henry, Headley, Bronze Jason, Wicksy, Duncan, Sid and a heap of others. Most had yellow labels and white bases. I asked the lady how much she wanted for all 30 and she replied £60, now at boot sales I cant help but haggle so I walked away with them for £50.

It sounds great doesn’t it? Well the best is yet to come!

Up bright and early as per usual, (the early bird catches the worm as they say), I spotted a few more bears. I walked over and the bears had boxes but no polystyrene, they did have pink tissue though. One of the bears was Pete. I knocked the guy down to £4, which I remember thinking was a lot for a bear with no polystyrene but then again I knew Pete was an early bear so I brought him. Now at the time my brother was huge into the bears and I happened to show him my latest purchase. “Oh my god” he said, that looks like a super bear! “A what?” I said? (Remember at this point I only had about 50 bears from boot sales and had not really ‘read up’ on them so to speak).

My brother explained how his nose was huge and he only had 4 stamps and at the time I was pretty poor so I sold the bear to my brother for £100. At this point I wished I had looked closer at the other 4 or so bears that were on the table but I had passed up! My brother later went on to sell Pete for £400 on Ebay and gave me another £100. That’s not a bad profit on £4 is it? :)

Since then I have found a few more Henry’s, Ewan’s, Russell’s all kinds of bears, and the great thing is you never know what you are going to find! Sadly though I think the days of finding super bears are now over, but I could get lucky again, and if I do this time I’ll hold onto them! :)