Event Coverage overheard things at the swap meet

I was selling a coffee can full of chrome bumper bolts at a swap meet, the sign said "10¢ each or 2 for a quarter", several times that day " here's 75¢ I'll take 6"

 

The running gag with the guys I know is no matter what it is or how it's priced someone's going to offer a dollar for it.

Instead of breaking a thing, I did tell a guy to go try making an offer in Wal-Mart or Michaels Crafts (it was a new model kit) and see what happened. I carry a small selection as a sideline of the hobby stuff I do in the winter. There's another guy who does just models and hot wheels and I don't want to go too hard against him, but he tells me the same thing, people want to offer less. He just says no. My strategy now is to just not put a discounted price on them, if you want to haggle we'll start at the list price. If I can't make any money on them then when I'm too crippled to go to them anymore I'll sit and build them myself.

I have crates of old carbs, the one yard we got into and bought out of I bought a car with tons of them in it, and the guy had them squirreled away all over. Now if I want a carb, say I go to a you pull it, they're $25, 1bbl, 4bbl, brand new, run over three times by the loader, $25. So I sell mine for $10 for the old common ones nobody cares about. Guys want to offer me $5 for one because "they just need this one little part" ... great but that doesn't make the rest of the carb worthless. Fun to watch guys paw through looking for that $10 Stromberg 97 though. Every one of those I've ever had sold on eBay.

 

Two old guys talking : Parkinson or Alzheimer, which one ???
Parkinson's, "I would rather spill half of it , than forget where I put the bottle"

 

My brother and I were looking at a cross ram manifold with carbs for an early Mopar at a swap meet a couple decades back. A guy walks up, and my brother recognizes him, and knows him. He is a well known hoarder from Southern Alberta with about a thousand cars sitting and rotting on his farm, with pretty much none of them for sale, or at least exorbitant prices. He comments on the cross ram manifold, and states to all of us about how he has one just like this at home. My brother pipes up and says, no you don't. He exclaims, yes I do. And my brother states to him, that he doesn't have one just like this, cause this guy's manifold is for sale. He walked off in a huff.

 

That's great! I'll have to use that line one time. I always love these guys who hoard a whole load of cars all over acres of land and refuse to sell a thing But I guess it's theirs to do what they want. I guess they are waiting for Mike and Frank to come along. It's sad to say but I usually like going to the garage sale their kids have after their gone.

 

Overheard at a swap meet, : Damn right I am gonna buy it !!! Might wife makes all the Small decisions, AND I make the BIG decisions, And she TELLS me What the BIG decisions are....

 

Was at a swap meet the other day:
Looker, asking price of an item: "How much?"
Seller: "As tagged, $30."
Looker: "Will you take $25?"
Seller: "Come back at end of the show, if I still have it, yes."
Looker: "I won't be here that long."
Seller: "Well then, we will both lose." (I loved the look on the looker's face)
Looker - walks away, bystanders all chuckling.

 

I don't know if anyone else has had the experience of dealing with guys I like to call vultures. As soon as you pull in to set up they are trying to get into your trailer undoing straps and opening boxes before you are even set up. I have since learned to have my canopy tent and tables in the back of my truck so I can set them up first. As much as I like to sell my items I like to get set up beforehand. I usually tell these guys the price is double the marked price if I don't have it on the table yet. I actually had one guy tell me to hurry up and I gave him two words and it wasn't good morning.

 

I tell them to screw. When I'm done unpacking I'm ready. Snowman

 

Ha, yeah I get a kick outta those kinds too. Had a similar experience I & my son had a yard sale at his home. Everything we had for sale was outside, on the lawn or in the driveway. One guy gets out of his car, walks past everything and goes UNDER the Do Not Enter tape across the garage door & starts looking & asking if the stuff in the garage is for sale. Son had to get rude with him, told him to leave.

 

Talking about garage sales how many guys have had their hot rod in their garage covered or uncovered while having a garage sale. People will climb over barb wire to get inside your garage to pull up the cover. I usually have to park it somewhere else while I'm having one. Or if you have a project in there they make stupid offers to buy it like your an idiot who doesn't know it's value or call someone else to come by to see it.

 

Even worse, they dont want your car. They just think they can sell it for a huge profit. And they think that just because they want it, you are REQUIRED to sell it

 

Went to a swap meet once with an n.o.s. 1964 Dodge Dart grille. I put $100.00 on it for a sale price. A young couple comes up to check it out. BOY, did they ever check it out. Clearly, it was new old stock and never mounted on a car. The guy says, "Is $100.00 the lowest you will go?" My swap meet space buddy, Galen Govier says, "If the car isn't worth it, don't buy it". The guy could not get the money out fast enough to pay me.

 

I was set up at the Pomona Swap Meet many years ago and the guys directly across from me had a nice '29 Model A roadster body for sale. On the side of the door was marked $2,500 in chalk. It sold pretty early after which the guys erased the "2" and wrote "SOLD" below it. For the rest of the day people were walking by and having fits and cussing out loud because they'd missed out on such a great deal!

 

We have two great fall meets a week apart here in the northeast; Carlisle and then Hershey. Walking down the aisle in Carlisle I spot a guy that has a '32 Ford K-member in not so nice condition and a pedal box for same car. I politely ask the guy what he wants for them. He shoots me his WAY high prices on them. I comment that those prices seem a little high, thank him and begin walking away. I wasn't disrespectful or offer him a ridiculously low price or anything like that at all. He commences to start literally yelling at me. I turn to my friend and we look at each other and just burst out laughing at the guys behavior. This makes him even MORE mad and gets him going into an even louder tirade. At this point, my friend and I totally lose it, laughing our asses off as we walk away and seller just about has a stroke yelling at us. He and his parts were still at his table at Hershey the next week and STILL at his table at the spring Carlisle the next year too. Hah!!! My buddy and I laughing again (but we didn't let him see us because we didn't want him to keel over dead).
Andy

 

Early on in my build, same buddy and I are at Hershey. Weather forecast is absolutely horrible for the full meet. We get there early on Thursday when the weather was just about to get really crappy but it wasn't crappy YET. I have very little funds with me at the time and a very specific list of things that I need when we turn the corner of an aisle and I spy something that is NOT on my list and I do NOT have the money for; a reeeeealy nice pair of vintage edelbrock heads for my flatty. No electrolysis at all. They seriously look like they have never been run. I bend down and start looking them over. Seller asks me if I know what I'm looking at and I tell him that I do. They are priced at $450. He says make me an offer. I tell him that they are really nice but they are not on my list and I don't have the money for them. He looks up at the sky all worried like and says again for me to make an offer. I tell him apologetically that he's not going to like my offer and I don't want to insult him. He insists on me making him an offer again. I wince in pain as I say, "I can give you only $250.00 for them." and immediately apologize for the low offer, "but that's all I have" I say. He looks up at the sky again and says, "can you give me $260.00 so I can at least make 10 bucks on them". I walk away with the heads and my buddy thinks I'm God for the rest of the swap meet due to my negotiating skills. I told him I was just being honest but all he kept saying the whole meet was, "Damn, I never seen anything like that" and, "Damn, you're good"
Single best score ever and I was just being honest about it.

 

I was un loading my stuff at a swap years ago, had a decent set of Tri Tip lakes pipes I scored in a trade
wanted $100.00 I think you could have get them new for around $150.00
mine were used with scrapes in the chrome etc. Vulture walks up and offers 75, I let them go for 85 and thought I did pretty good.

Later same day some older guy comes walking out with them under his arm...I asked him as he went by how much he paid for them
$150.00...

 

That's a good one . I guess that is what is referred to as free enterprise. I guess that happens all the time.What's even better is when the vulture doesn't end up selling it and then has to lug it home. A small victory in my eyes. I once sold an international tractor grille popular with rat rod guys to an old guy across the isle from me. He immediately doubled my asking price and put it on his table. I have now watched him for the last eight years lug this heavy front end to the meets all over and even the hot rod book he has a picture of this grille on a car for display has become so faded from sitting in the hot sun you can barely read it anymore.

 

Two guys walking the aisles and one says to the other , " Yeah , but he can no longer call them Shithole s , PC for that has been changed to " Turd World Countries"

 

This topic reminds me of when I was at a small junkyard. It's back in the boondocks, little known of except to locals and a few who might've heard thru word of mouth. The owners are a couple of good ol' boy brothers, really laid back and if one didn't know 'em you'd think they had never left the place. I doubt a crusher had ever been in there I saw some 30s vintage with trees growing thru 'em. Last fall I pulled a few pieces for a '64 Comet I'm working on. A couple of other guys come out of the yard with a box of stuff - Caddy taillight, 2 old pickup park light bezels, some nameplates and a few wheel covers. The stuff wouldn't even fit together on a ratrod. I'm thinking maybe $40-$50 for all. They ask the owner "how much?" - One of the brothers takes a look, says - "$150.00" - the 2 guys get bent outta shape, said it's not worth that. One of the owners says - "How much you gonna ask for it on eBay?" - I couldn't help but laugh. Those 2 'cherry pickers' got schooled by that ol' boy right there. I bought stuff from those guys, they know what I'm working on, and they are very reasonable - and smart.