How to profit from car-booting and collectors events:

1. Research the items you want to buy, be knowledgable on your subject and know your price limits, know what you can re-sell for. Factor in your costs.
2. Plan Select two or three car boot sales with staggered times that you can get to one after the other.
3. Check the weather before you go, if it’s raining it will literally be a wash out but sometimes the sellers that do turn up may be very desperate to sell their items
4. Take plenty of sturdy empty bags.
5. Take plenty of coins which should be easily accessible, the big bundle of notes should be safely stowed and access them discretely.
6. Make sure your phone is fully charged not least so you can check sold prices on ebay.
7. Look out for pick pockets when in a big crowd, there are plenty of them at boot sales and you don’t want to have stolen more than you make in profit or you might as well have stayed in bed.
8. Be prepared to travel. To get to the best sales, you may need to travel. ...
9. Arrive early, within the first two hours anything worth buying will be hoovered up
10. Go with a friend – not only is it more fun but two pairs of eyes are better than one but be prepared to split the loot!
11. Parking, park as near to the entrance as you can this means you can return to the car for refreshments and to offload any heavy or bulky items before you do a second sweep
12. On arrival try to get round once as quickly as possible.
13. Look under tables and in boxes as well as on top of tables
14. Look out for large groups of buyers congregating around a vehicle this is normally a sign they have sniffed a bargain or two, get over there quick and try to get some of the action be prepared to fight for it though.
15. Identify sellers with bargains, these can take many forms but there are rules of thumb:

• Specialist dealer tables with oddball items. For example a dealers table full of china and with 2 Hornby trains may not rate the trains or understand their value.
• Regular general dealers will normally be organised. Items which have “done the rounds” will often have price labels on them.
• Some dealers table will be full of “ebay unsolds” these are fairly easy to spot, sometimes there may be an obvious signs such as a box with the words “ebay unsolds” on it. The rest of their stock will appear to be interesting and retro but will be often low value, heavy, bulky or fragile items that they simply don’t want to post. Take extreme caution with such tables as it will be very tempting.
• House clearance dealers will be denoted by large Ford Transit and Luton style vans. These will often be parked in a trade section, these are worth looking at, the nature of house clearance means that they will literally get a bit of everything and it is hard to be an expert at everything.
• Genuine private sellers fall into several categories, some will literally give things away and buckle at the slightest bit of haggling at the other end the private seller will be so terrified of selling something below it’s market value they will over compensate with ridiculous asking prices and no haggling and others will start quoting ebay prices at you. My answer to those is “sell it on ebay then!”

16. Generally don’t ask for sellers to keep items I have bought until later for a number of reasons, sometimes you can’t find the seller later on, sometimes the sellers drives off with your items, sometime the seller takes things out of your box or sells them again in the confusion.
17. Once you have been round once and your arms are hanging off with heavy bags get them back in the car have a swig of water, a quick bite and get back out there.
18. On the second sweep go slowly and in the opposite direction you first went in, sounds strange but you can see things from a different angle and might spot things you didn’t see the first time round.
19. Haggling, when you are ready to make your purchase remember to haggle – hard! If the seller has lots of things you want to buy, make a pile and say whats your best price for the lot, then offer them half this amount and eventually meet somewhere between the two prices.
20. After the event, maybe sample the local cuisine nothing beats a bootsale baguette at 10 am after you have been charging around for 3 hours, muse with a friend over the bargains you bought. When you get home check out your purchases and plan your next trip out.

Happy hunting!!!