Book Review: The Flea Market Handbook

Title: The Flea Market Handbook

Author: Robert G. Miner

Date: 1990

Publisher: Wallace Homestead Book Company

ISBN: 0-87069-559-2

Length: 203 pages

Illustrations: black-and-white photos

Quote: “[A]t any age you can go into your own business and not risk a big investment of anything but your spare time. As the business grows you'll decide how far you want to go with it.”

Reality check: People have made big profits reselling “antiques and collectibles” in flea markets. Those people happened to catch a demographic trend. The market for resale items isn't dead, but it has probably passed its peak, at least for my generation. It's still possible to make a profit on resales, and on the spare time people put into hauling them to markets and shows. People who enjoy trading these items, like people who enjoy books, are still trading for fun and profit. I do not, however, see those people buying luxury homes in the islands.

This post is being pre-scheduled to appear on a Friday, at a time when I expect to be in a flea market myself, and although at the time of writing I don't know how many people are going to be in Gate City's Friday Market, I can tell you that the ones who actually display "flea market type" collections aren't guaranteed a profit on the money they spend to truck their stuff out there and rent a space in aid of the V.F.D. Some will go home with more money they took in, some with less. Nearly all are retired, although now and then one does see a desperate young working parent or family, and rely on pensions for actual income, on flea markets for entertainment. The ones who are making money, who mostly seem to come from places outside Gate City, really have mini-stores and are selling specific types of new junk--videos, hardware, underwear or whatever--not "flea market type" businesses at all. You may or may not see actual farmers, although on sunny summer days you'll see some, and the fruits, vegetables, and/or meats they sell may or may not come from their own farms. (I will say that when I went in with a real farmer to sell the farmer's own organically grown vegetables, the farmer's small display was all sold long before closing time.)

In this chatty book Robert G. Miner discusses his success with “antiques and collectibles,” the things he's learned about the whole resale business, the kinds of people he's met, the pros and cons of different types of displays, the strategies he's used to advertise his business. Can you replicate his success? No. Learn from it? Yes. Demographics have shifted and business is generally slower, but this book still describes the way flea markets still are.

Do you want to allow this writer's enthusiasm for his second career to seduce you into trying a similar career? Meh. Miner is a salesman. Good salesmen avoid telling outright lies but they present the truth in selective ways. “Plan to take a minimum of $25 in coins plus small bills...a good supply of quarters if you're selling less expensive items, plus bills in one, five, and ten dollar denominations. The 20s will mostly take care of themselves as the money rolls in.” Hah! The appeal merchandise has for anyone in a crowd will vary from day to day; those who make flea markets a regular “job” have profitable days and unprofitable days, but if you're selling legitimate merchandise (which means other people are selling it too) at fair prices, expect many days, especially at the beginning before you've found regular customers, when you never see a $20 bill. A lot of people go to markets to look not buy, and protect themselves from any temptation to become profitable to vendors by bringing only $5. As a result, when someone does bring a $20 bill into the Friday Market, quite a scramble may be observed as vendors scuttle about trying to locate change...

“Antiques and collectibles” are the mainstay of many markets that rent space cheap to “casual” vendors, but they are also often regarded as the bane of those markets. People who want to sell hand crafts and garden produce see nothing wrong with adding a shelf of secondhand “junk,” books they don't want to reread, clothes and toys their children have outgrown, as the space they rent may allow. Market owners or fellow vendors may, however, tell them outright, “This is not a flea market, or is a flea market on Sundays only. Leave the junk at home.” 

It doesn't really make sense that there's one set of people who look for rock-bottom prices on secondhand junk and another set who are willing to pay reasonable prices for handmade things. In fact I've observed that when a market is known to offer both types of booths, both sets of shoppers will be represented, and everyone can be happy. However, if you sell secondhand clothes or furniture, you will attract a clientele who will be downright surly about any new, hand-crafted clothes or furniture you offer, which is why, as a knitter, I try to avoid secondhand clothes. (Sometimes people dump them on me anyway.)

And where is the line between “antiques and collectibles” and “junk”? There isn't one. That is: Suppose someone buys you a bottle of some cheap sugary stuff you don't care to drink. You let it take up space in the kitchen for six months; then, seeing that nobody else wants to drink it either, you consider reselling it. “Diet Dr Pepper? Stale, out-of-date Diet Dr Pepper? Eeuurrgghh,” people say when they're thinking about actually drinking the contents of the bottle. Any beverage that's said to “improve with age” is the nasty fermented kind where “better” means higher in alcohol content. But wait fifty years...believe it or not, people are buying never-drunk bottles of soda pop from fifty years ago, as “collectible” display items, for far more than they ever considered paying for soda pop that was fit to drink.

The lunchbox or backpack with the cartoon characters on it, that always looked tacky to you and now looks unbearably babyish to your child? The “fashion” item that never fitted you or suited you, that seemed to scream “Here is a stupid fashion victim” and made you think disrespectful and even uncharitable thoughts about the relative who sent it to you as a gift? The lamp that didn't look good to you in any room, the set of dishes that you thought clashed with food, the “dust catcher” you never found at all amusing...as long as items just like them are still in the stores, they're strictly “junk” that may be unwelcome even at “antiques and collectibles” markets. In fifty years, after most of the items just like them have been smashed and burned, they'll be valuable.

So, one thing Miner's experience has to teach all of us is: Don't waste things—even if you find them neither useful or beautiful. Books like this one, with images and price lists of “junk” items that have become “collectibles,” teach us never to destroy anything for which someone else might find a use some day, even if that's not anyone you would care to know. During spring cleaning several things in your home may sing to your heart “Please release me, let me go; you don't love me any more,” but the place for those things is a charity resale store (or a flea market) where poor people (and investors) can buy them cheap, not a landfill.

A quick Internet search shows that some person called Robert G. Miner has died recently. Was that the author of this book? Hard to tell. If you buy The Flea Market Handbook from this web site, we'll write to the publisher to confirm whether the author, who claimed to have reached retirement age, is still alive somewhere. We are not sanguine. The book is still available for competitive prices so you know the drill: online, $5 per book, $5 per package, $1 per online payment; three more books of this size will fit into one $5 package.