A New Flea Market Location

Last weekend I scouted out the Truman Markets in St. Charles, MO and was pretty impressed. They're in a temporary site, but they have two huge white tents that are enclosed and placed over gravel and paved walkways - much nicer than being in the barn at Belleville and dealing with the mud when it rained! On top of that they've arranged to have heaters in the tents to help keep them warm and are going to see if that will make them viable for the winter.

What makes this so great is that I now have winter options that I wasn't sure I was going to have after the barn shut down for the cold months at Belleville. On top of that this market runs Friday-Sunday every weekend, which means that I can pick and choose the weekends I have free to book my space and it's more flexible, which works great for my schedule. Bonus number three - it's cheaper for a weekend than it was to be in the barn at Belleville! For $15 a day I can have a 10x10 booth, which is $3 a day cheaper than Belleville.

This market seemed pretty nice. I picked a bad time to go and judge traffic (Sunday mornings are always slow) but that gave me time to actually chat with vendors about their experience at this market, traffic and to scope out competition. The market has a lot of variety - there are food vendors ranging from kettle corn to empanadas, crafting people (there's a lady who makes fleece hoodies for pups and I want to get Pan and Freya one each for Christmas) and then there are the antique/vintage folks and your average "garage sale" type folks that you find at flea markets.

I'll have my first booth there this weekend from 9-4pm Saturday and Sunday, so if you're in the neighborhood you should come on out! Take the Cave Springs exit off of 70 and head North toward Truman, if you keep going you can't miss the tents about 3 miles down the road!!

I'll post about my success, or lack there of later. I'm also trying out a dollar jewelry table and a dollar box to see if that will help me just sell items in general. Yay for a weekend of experimentation!

Christmas Stuff

The last time I had gone in to the South County Antique Mall to check on my case (619 for those of you in St. Louis), I was asking the manager what sells. He said now was the time to start putting up holiday items. I commented back that I didn't really have anything like that and wasn't really sure I wanted to get into it and he replied "It sells." That's all I needed. I started scoping out Christmas items at auctions and managed to snag a box of pretty nice stuff.

I decided I'd string all the ornaments that weren't in boxes into sets and then I'd sell the sets. I put a curtain rod in my case to hold the strands of blown glass ornaments and I was pretty proud of my space saving, cool display idea. Sadly when I went to put them in the case my brilliant idea went up in smoke. As I was closing the case door the rod slipped and fell, causing me to loose more than half of the ornaments in a horrible display of shattering shards of multi-colored glass... Sadness :( On the up side, when I went to check on stuff today I had sold one Christmas item already - a 14-piece old nativity set that I really didn't think anyone would want... I only had $8 on it, but hey, at least it sold!!

Second Flea Market - Success!

So I learned from my first flea market - be ready to haggle and start offering some lower price options. In order to do this I made a "Dollar Box" and put items in it that I had gotten in auctions that just happened to be in a box with something else I really wanted. It seemed to work pretty well. Basically I consider those "free" or "bonus" items anyways and anything I can sell is a good thing!

At least this time around I broke the $200 mark, which for me made it a very good weekend!!

What I sold:

Red Dietz Lantern - $5
Wagner Roasting Pan - $20
Pabst Blue Ribbon Bottle Opener - $1
Candlesticks - $1
Heart bracelet - $1
Unicorn pin - $1
Brown and blue beaded belts - $11
Two gold compacts - $20
Mickey Mouse Pocket Watch - $17
Sterling silver hat and sword candle snuffer - $10
School desk - $20
Monocle magazine - $10
Antique watch parts - $1
Blue swan candy dish - $5
Blue and silver spider pin - $8
Nightgowns - $30
Blue glass pitcher with 5 glasses - $10
5 tier corner shelf - $15
70s Barbie - $10
White bracelet - $4
Wooden Duck -  $1
Flower Frog - $1


 Finally what felt like a good day!