You know the Jimmy Webb song sung by Glen Campbell, “Wichita Lineman”?
There’s a line in it which goes “I know I need a small vacation”……….
I take off a couple of days a year, probably not enough. Ordinarily one of them is on or about July 6, at which time I go to the Sioux City event, Saturday In The Park, but this year they had nobody on the bill I wanted to see.
So, I signed up to attend a local mini flea market (I’m going to call it that anyway) in the parking lot of a local antique store where I like to hide sometimes.
I haven’t sold outdoors for over a decade. It’s a complete disconnect from me and my regular glued-to-the-computer existence.
Started in the morning too, and I usually start in the afternoon. Didn’t have much preparation time due to events that took place the two days prior to this one.
But I boxed up several hundred pounds of stuff, loaded the van, appeared at the sale and spread things out on a bench, “sort of”. Since I had selected my stock on the basis of its being in my way, there was not a lot of focus or cohesion to what I brought and I figured I’d watch the shoppers and shuffle things around as I noticed what they were looking at.
I didn’t price very much, with the exception of some records which had Rainy Day Music pricing on them.
Unfortunately July 6 in Storm Lake competes with THE major flea market weekend at Lake Okoboji, some 60 miles north of here, and the stream of shoppers I wanted to watch were a bit of a sporadic trickle.
I don’t mean that I didn’t do a little business, because I did, and one of the major buyers was a guy I’ve been happy to sell records to in the past. But I didn’t sell my water skis, and I didn’t sell my Old Style Beer advertising piece, both of which I did really kind of want to sell.
The action was largely in polished rocks. Of course, after a decade of slinging those around at eBay I really don’t HAVE a lot of polished rocks anymore, but it was over the rocks that the most interesting conversations took place.
Like I say, it was the disconnect that was interesting. I tweeted a little, so I guess I cheated there, but seven or eight hours without any keyboard time is a radical change for me. The Empire survived (somewhat) although I failed to get out 10 listings on one ID, no calamities occurred without me unless you count the notice from eBay that they were yanking my Top Rated Seller status from my main Id (and I do count that), and it was a pleasant day and I had a tree and didn’t burn all my skin to pieces.
Garage salers or antiquers or flea market shoppers are interesting to me. I’d almost like to add a live loop like this to my regular yearly routine. Dickering is more the norm there than on the Internet (find that surprising?) but there’s a social aspect to it that makes me think it’s more about being able to tell the provenance in an entertaining fashion than anything else. You just slip in the prices at the appropriate time.
I was called upon for the provenance several times. I knew the answers. That was really neat. That’s how I started at eBay: it more about the song and dance then the Extremely Valuable Thing, but over the years due to my affinity for eating, it has become strictly about the money.
Having surrounded myself with things that didn’t carry with them any Selling Drama, I noticed right away that I can remember how to be creative and that being creative is something I like.
If I did three events a year like this one, I could support myself for one day of Real Life, so there’s a bit of a disparity there between the economic rewards and reality, but I noticed one other thing last night-I slept like a baby. I haven’t slept like that for a very long time.
That probably means something.
