Car Boots and Other Bargains

[FLips]

A thread for all your car boot/thrift shop/market/ebay purchases as we now approach the summer seasons and getting back out the house again.

We went to two car boots yesterday at Sedgefield and Seaham with mixed results.

Sedgefield we'd not been to in years, actually the last time we went I bought Lego Dimensions figures so we're maybe looking 5 or so years. It was pretty naff in terms of what we were looking for and mostly every table had rusty old tools and drills. That being said we did come away with two pickups.

First of all The Simpsons Board Game for £2. Naturally after doing a check when I got home there are peices missing. It looks like maybe 3-4 tokens per character which isn't surprising as they were falling out of the box when I was looking at it as the guy had clearly shoved it all in there without thinking. Strangely all 50 of each of the cards are there which surprised me. To stop further tokens falling out he gave us a carrier bag that had a small slug on it.
Probably still playable but there's an Ebay seller selling replacement parts for it for pennies so might top them up using that. Could still have a complete thing under £5.

From my quick read of the instructions it seems interesting at the least and not quite what I expected. There's basic board game play of moving squares, but the Skinner and Moe cards have a mix of things like trivia, karaoke, weird instructions/dares and in-game movement penalties. It looks all over the place and even the back of the box describes it as seven different games with their own set of rules being played at once.

My wife also spotted an official PS2 DVD remote for 50p. We keep an eye out for PS2 stuff for our mate. No dongle so it won't work on an old fat PS2 but he said the slims are meant to have a sensor built in. Either way it was 50p so who cares. I think he'd dug it up out of his garden so I gave it a quick clean when I got home.

After that we went to Seaham which is our car boot of choice. It generally has a lot more range and is a nicer setting, located on the cliffside field overlooking the sea rather than an old knackered racecourse. It's pricier to get in if you go as an early bird (£5!) but it gets so busy at 12pm when the price drops to £1 that it's worth it as all the sellers are usually set up by 11am so you have a nice hour-long sweet spot. It's also about four times the size and has a meat auction, so worth the trip.

A little more luck here. I've picked up really good stuff over the years including my SNES, my first CRT and my wife got bin bags full of wool. This week wasn't as successful but I got a few bits.

3 PS2 demo discs for my mate for £1. Love a good demo disc as it's a pot luck of what you'll get on them. Like a nerdy lucky bag. I'm not sure about the PS2 ones but the PS1 demos often had alpha/beta builds on that varied to the full release so alongside the banging music and kaleidoscope backgrounds they were worth it for that alone.

After my wife told me I'd never find a pizza peel at a car boot I found a pizza peel at a car boot. Well, it's not a pizza peel, I'm not sure what it is. A guy had three of them and when I asked if it was a pizza peel he said no, his wife used it for ? (he said what sounded like salon or salad but I don't have a clue even after asking him to repeat it) but either way it looks like a pizza peel and as you can see by my photo worked absolutely spot on as one when I made fresh pizza last night. £1 bargain.

My wife got an incense burner with several cones and sticks, and a cauldron shaped mug that says Witches Brew on it. The incense did make the house smell lovely to be fair and apparently one of the sticks she got keeps flies out which will be useful when we start having the door open all summer.  About £25 all in but it was from a professional stall and not someone selling stuff out their loft.

We got a couple of 1/4lb cheeseburgers from the van with onions on. For those of you who know what van burgers usually taste like you'll know that they're both simultaneously shit and also hit the spot on the day.

I almost got a copy of Metroid II: Return of Samus on Gameboy but the cartridge had chinese text on it and a chinese region code so it was either chinese or a knockoff which either way is no use to me sadly. Shame. My wife also refused to even let me ask the price on two things. One was a Kenan and Kel wall clock and the other was this...

Can't win them all I suppose.

All in all a pretty low-key day. No major purchases but I'm happy with the pizza peel or whatever it is, my mate is bringing the PS2 over later to mess about on the demos and my house smells really nice now so a success I would say. Excited to get out to more of them.

Edited May 6 by FLips

[FLips]

Not much happening this week. The boot sale was heaving because the sun was out and there was plenty of stalls.

I only picked up a few PS2 games for my mate as he was working and couldn’t make it. Call of Duty Finest Hour, Price of Persia Warrior Within and Ghost Recon 2. Also Mass Effect 1 on Xbox 360. All boxed with manuals in pretty fantastic condition for £2 each.

I got a Scart Extender for £2 which will come in handy. My collection got a little out of hand and so now I have a 2 TV setup. PS1, Wii/Gamecube and soon to be PS2 on the big telly and NES, SNES, and N64 on the little telly. Using this for the little one to tidy things up a bit. 

Almost picked a Dualshock controller up as mine has a gammy right stick but the rubber was a bit worn off and the right stick looked slightly wonky so I didn’t risk it. There was a good amount of game stalls this week but as usual slim pickings on the cartridge front. Would have taken a No Mercy but only found an ECW Anarchy Rulez.

The usual van burger and some dinky donuts to share saw us through to the end and we left fairly empty handed but plenty sunburned.

 

[TibBo]

Our local carboots are 90% proper traders now rather than random people selling their old tat.  Makes me sad. 

[cobra_gordo]

I've found some belting stuff at car boots. I seem to have a knack of saying to my Mrs as we're parking up "I'm going to look for (obscure item) today" and then finding one or two of them randomly, sometimes hidden under a trestle table, in a box, under a sheet. I've managed to summon skim boards, cigar box guitars, all sorts of crap that I probably don't need. I don't believe in manifestation but if it helps me get another original Fleetwood Mac vinyl for 30p I'm willing to start.

Favourite ever purchase was this. It's the Nerf version of the gun the rebels use at the start of A New Hope. They didn't make this for very long and they now go for between 30 and 90 quid online because cosplayers and prop builders snapped them all up and repainted them. Paid 50p for it. Had to try and hide my excitement from the seller, gave her my money and then ran giggling to my wife and kids like the idiot I am.

 

Edited May 14 by cobra_gordo
Grammar

[Dr. Alan Grant]

A question for @FLips and any other regular car booters. I haven’t been to one in years, but I’m looking to go soon to try and get rid of a bunch of DVDs/Blu-Rays and Funko Pops. In your experience, how much do people generally charge for stuff like that? I know there’ll be factors like where in the country the car boot is and condition/rarity of what you’re selling, but as a rule, can I expect 50p for a DVD, a quid for a Blu/Ray and £8-ish for a Funko?

CEX and the like give out the princely sum of 1 whole penny for most DVDs and I can’t bring myself to do that, even if they are cluttering my house up.

[FLips]

2 minutes ago, Dr. Alan Grant said:

A question for @FLips and any other regular car booters. I haven’t been to one in years, but I’m looking to go soon to try and get rid of a bunch of DVDs/Blu-Rays and Funko Pops. In your experience, how much do people generally charge for stuff like that? I know there’ll be factors like where in the country the car boot is and condition/rarity of what you’re selling, but as a rule, can I expect 50p for a DVD, a quid for a Blu/Ray and £8-ish for a Funko?

CEX and the like give out the princely sum of 1 whole penny for most DVDs and I can’t bring myself to do that, even if they are cluttering my house up.

I think 50p a DVD is more than fair. CEX only give pennies but their lowest selling section I believe is £1 DVDs so you're still undercutting a fair amount. Blu-Rays I think you can do more than £1 depending on the title. Funko you could go in at £8 if it's boxed but don't be surprised by a bit of haggling. If they're unboxed then probably lower.

I'll be honest your best bet is to maybe attend the car boot you plan on selling at a couple of times to get the general feel for it and pricing. Funkos especially we get stalls dedicated to them so maybe look up if you have any rarer ones. I know there's a thing where sellers will go round each others stalls and buy stock to sell at their own stall if you're selling it cheaper than they would. The retro stalls are notorious for scooping up any bargains to sell full price on theirs.

[Jazzy G]

I've not been to a car boot for ages. Used to go loads when I was younger and my parents would drag me along to one. 

[Merzbow]

The best carboot purchase I made was about a decade ago now, chatting up a woman and getting a boxed Amiga 600 and games for a fiver only to have a kid pop up and say "but Dad said that was ten pounds?", I paid the fiver and quickly left.

Not having a car right now makes it tough to get to ant good carboots, the one down the road is over and all the good'uns are an age away like Furnace End which has been going for decades, many bootleg games were bought from there in the early 90's.

[Keith Houchen]

First Alex Park in Moss Side Boot Sale of the summer next weekend. Will see what delights I can find!

[Dr. Alan Grant]

5 hours ago, FLips said:

I'll be honest your best bet is to maybe attend the car boot you plan on selling at a couple of times to get the general feel for it and pricing.

Going to check one out tomorrow. I’ll probably end up buying more stuff that I don’t have space for. 

Thanks for the help, dude.

[TheBurningRed]

7 hours ago, Dr. Alan Grant said:

DVDs/Blu-Rays and Funko Pops. In your experience, how much do people generally charge for stuff like that?

I always see dvds and Blu-Rays reasonably priced. Get boxsets for a fiver a lot of the time. I’ve seen Funko pops for sale for no less than £15 at the ones I’ve been too the past couple of years. Still sealed and opened. 

[Dr. Alan Grant]

Having just come back from one, the majority of people were charging 50p for DVDs, £1-£2 for Blu. Whether anyone actually buys them at that price is another matter. Nobody selling Funkos, so I might have to go by eBay sold listings to get an idea there. 

There were two separate sellers with “mystery bags” for a fiver. Amazon return items by the look of it. Bit cheeky.

I didn’t buy anything, but I was sorely tempted by a Jesus Christ comic book. It would have fit in nicely between my Jessica Jones and JLA books. I left him behind, but now the regret is already building.

[FLips]

4 hours ago, Dr. Alan Grant said:

Having just come back from one, the majority of people were charging 50p for DVDs, £1-£2 for Blu. Whether anyone actually buys them at that price is another matter. Nobody selling Funkos, so I might have to go by eBay sold listings to get an idea there. 

There were two separate sellers with “mystery bags” for a fiver. Amazon return items by the look of it. Bit cheeky.

I didn’t buy anything, but I was sorely tempted by a Jesus Christ comic book. It would have fit in nicely between my Jessica Jones and JLA books. I left him behind, but now the regret is already building.

As my (lack of) Kenan and Kel Clock will show, sometimes car boots sales are more about what could have been than what is.

[Mr_Danger]

Not a car boot but when there was a Sunday market round here it used to get raided by the police nearly every week for a while and if you were there at the right time you could literally make out like a bandit with all the abandoned pirated games, films and music cd’s. Then they started leaving all the physical discs in sleeves in cases and just put display cases out and the gig was up.

[Dr. Alan Grant]

Sold some stuff today. Funko’s are crazy popular and most people are happy to pay a tenner for them. Action figures were snapped up the moment the buyers were allowed in. Sold a dozen DVDs but not a single Blu-Ray. Oh, so my copy of Mother! with Jennifer Lawrence isn’t good enough for you people? You don’t know what you’re missing. It’s a family friendly delight. 

I had a Harry Potter book for sale in the 50p for everything section. Some lady was nice enough to inform me that it was a first edition and perhaps worth a little bit more. Gotta love the honesty.