Selling The Stockpile Items....CRAZY GOOD!

What to do when you have pulled together 2 YEARS worth of Toiletries from your stockpile and still have EIGHTEEN BOXES of stuff?

You take it to a Flea Market and sell it, that's what you do!
And that is exactly what I did last Sunday.

There is a weekly Sunday Flea Market from June to October held at a local Drive-In Movie Theater about a half hour from my house.  Now, I've lived here 9 years now and have NEVER been to this Drive-In, either to see a movie or attend this flea market.  I have heard it's the best one in the area....but I kind of think it is the ONLY ONE around this area too.lolol
So I had no clue if there would really be enough shoppers at the flea market(especially in October)to make it $-wise worth my while to haul my butt out of bed at 5am and schlep everything there, set up and tear it down and schlep home.  Add in I had to pay $15 for a space too and it makes for one conflicted reticent flea market vendor.

It was still dark when we left the house(hubby went with me to help...isn't he a good hubby?).  And it was cold as a witch's teat outside.  As we descended the mountain into the valley we also hit dense fog.  That made for some slow going to get to the market down by the river.  It was still dark when we got there and while we were setting up.  While the drive-in wasn't filled with sellers, it was almost full.
I had my 5ft. folding table and had enough room to set-up 2 plastic shelving units...1 was 3 ft. long & the other was 2 ft. long.  I made 2 'tables' out of each 6ft. high unit by separating them each in half. That pretty much took up the whole length of my space.  Hubby took all the boxes out and lined them up across the side of the car(which we pulled in sideways, parallel to the tables and we began stocking the tables with goodies.

The market opened at 6am, while it was still dark.  The HARD CORE Shoppers started arriving in the dark with little flashlights so they could see the treasures in the dark.  It was so surreal between the darkness, the fog and all those little flashlights shining!lolol
I figured we'd get the tables filled and then I'd start making little price stickers  for things.
But Nooooo....I never even had a moment to get the stickers out of the car!
As soon as it got light enough to see without a flashlight, we got hit and we got hit hard and it didn't let up for 2 hours!!!
Like bees to honey, the shoppers swarmed on us.
It.
Was.
CRAZY!

I had to stay right there to yell out prices as nothing was marked and I didn't have time to make any signs either.  Customers were 2 or 3 deep at times trying to jockey to get to the table to grab stuff.  People were taking stuff without asking prices!
Heck we even almost had a fistfight between 2 ladies over some Men's Speed Stick Deo.
Really....it's Speed Stick ladies....get a grip.  Not like it's anything valuable, like Chocolate....lol
I still can't believe the insanity.

Of course, we had a fair share of hagglers even though my prices were very low.  One guy offered me $5 for 8 jars of peanut butter.  Oh, I just had to refuse his GENEROUS offer....lolol  There were others but this guy had other shoppers making comments like "What an idiot!" and "Geez, talk about your skinflints!?" after he left my table.
Some of the shoppers were in disbelief at the prices I was charging.  They were not regular flea market type folks though and kept saying, "Wow! I pay XXX for this at the store!" and things like that.  I had more than enough people happy to pay my prices so I didn't even have to deal with the hagglers.

We finally had a lull in action around 8:30 am and got the tables filled again.  15 mins. later another wave of shoppers descended on us like locust.  This time they were coming behind the tables and just helping themselves from the opened boxes by the car.  Everywhere I looked there were customers!lol  It got too tiring to keep track of them all(yes, we had to watch for thieves)so we banished  everyone from behind the tables and just brought the boxes up front so we could crowed control everyone.
It was super busy again, and the next time I looked up it was 10am.

Things calmed down after 10am but we had steady sales for another 2 hours.
It really died out around noon and lots of vendors started packing up.  Around 12:30 some guy came and bought 2 boxes of items(I'm assuming he has a store or stall in a business somewhere he was buying for).  He of course wanted everything for less(end of the day and all)and kept trying to get me to lower prices.  I did give him a little break on some things(like the gazillion bottles of men's Gillette 'Poo & Body Wash I got for almost nothing at Weis earlier in the year) but I held firm on most of it as my prices were very low to begin with and I would rather donate it than give it away, YKWIM?  I made another $94 and he got a bargain to resell or whatever he was going to do with it all.lol
After he left with what he bought, we packed it in and headed home....after I made a quick stop on the way out at the produce stand for fresh local veggies with some of my profits.

I brought my camera and I was going to take a photo of everything we bought to sell after we got set-up but, well......things didn't work out the way I wanted them to.lol
So you'll just have to remember my stockpile organizing photos of all my Extras last week in this post HERE. Add to your visual imagery 12 plastic shopping bags(sorry Joe!lol)of food I grabbed at the last minute and threw into the car as well.

Here is what is left from the 16 FULL boxes we took to the flea market.....

After we got home and I repacked those boxes, I have less than 3 Boxes of extra items left.  And it would have only been 2 full Boxes left if I hadn't made the mistake and let some woman put aside 2 bags of stuff and hold it for her while she went and found her hubby to get some more money.  I was so busy that I didn't even notice she didn't come back to buy the things until almost the time we left.  There was primo stuff in there like Q-Tips and Pantene that I know I would have sold had it been out on the tables.  Oh well....nothing to dwell on....just learn my lesson and move on.lol

Oh, Joe will love this.  I took a bazillion plastic shopping bags to use, thinking I'd never use them up.
But I DID use every single bag up!  I even was digging through the car for more bags under the seats and I ended up giving one lady the paper bag from the biscuits we bought at Burger King on the way to the flea market.lol
So all those plastic bags I brought home when I went shopping and forgot my recyclable bags at home Joe?....they got recycled to my customers.  I'll cross my fingers the shoppers continue to recycle them too. ;-)


I am so glad I went and did this because we came home with.....


$947.25!!

After I deducted the Fee to set-up at the flea market(which hubby had paid), that's $932.25 Cash Monies to divvy up between Savings and a little extra to put back into the Budget.
I am sooo glad to have gotten rid of what I did and amazed at the same time that so much sold.  It helps to go in with low or NO expectations.  That way, whatever sells, it's all good.  8-)) 

Sluggy