Gathering Antiques and Vintage
Harvesting Antiques and Gathering Vintage: Fall Festival Season Is Here
Welcome to fall and to the endless opportunities to get out and attend some flea markets! The crisp morning air brings everyone to life. Gone are the oppressive dog days of summer, and instead, the comfortable, cool air of fall has arrived. Bring on the harvest festivals, craft fairs, and antique picking!
Back Story
I went to college in a small town in Pennsylvania. Kutztown, Pennsylvania, to be accurate. It was then that I attended my very first “Extravaganza.” A local farmers/antiques market hosted a grand outdoor event where antique dealers set up shop on the expansive grounds. That was 1981, and Renninger’s Antiques Extravaganza has been going strong to this day.
Getting Prepared
This past weekend was just such an event, and I’m here to tell you not only how to find such an event near you but how to prepare for your day in the fields. Number one is… It’s a field. Leave your nice new fall boots at home, and pull out the old ones. There may be rain, there may be mud, but most definitely, there will be dirt.
Next, you will need to be hands-free. Meaning, lug nothing. You do not want to not be that big purse person. The one who is constantly swinging their purse to their back, only for it to continually swing right back and into the table of things you are attempting to look at, as well as hitting those around you. Wear a small cross-body bag that is edited to hold just what you need. Cash, ID, medical card, credit and atm card, lip balm, sunglasses, a snack, small bottled water, and your phone. AND DON’T FORGET YOUR MEDICATIONS! Once you embark into a big field of endless tents and vendors, the last thing you will want to do is hike back to the car for your meds.
Take It Off
Fall is the time for layers. That crisp morning can easily become an extra warm afternoon in the fall. A short-sleeved shirt covered with a flannel shirt may be all you need. A big sweatshirt can also be peeled off and wrapped around your waist. Or thrown into your cart. Cart? Yes, cart. When you are buying smalls and breakables, be prepared with someplace to put them. Vendors may or may or may not have wrapping materials. I bring with me a folding pushcart to haul my finds. I also throw a roll of paper towels in the bottom so I’m prepared to wrap breakables. The cart also allows you to keep shopping instead of having to run back to put things in the car.
Be Ready To Negotiate
Never, I repeat, NEVER, put all your cash in one place. Be sure to place small sections of monies in different zipper compartments. And place some smaller bills in your pants pocket. There is no need to flash cash. Small purchases are easily paid for with your pocket money, and you can pull funds from a section holding smaller increments of money. This way, you can negotiate without revealing you came prepared with some serious bank. A twenty-dollar bill being pulled out as you offer $20 will get the seller interested in reducing the price. Also, separated sections for your cash protects you from accidentally fumbling some bills to the ground and leaving them behind, unaware.
Many vendors these days do take credit cards. Always ask (after reaching your negotiated price), so you can save cash for the vendors who are cash only. Many venues do have an ATM inside one of the fixed buildings, so keep an eye out for their locations.
Reverse Planning
If there is one thing my significant other has taught me, is reverse planning. (Living with a Marine has its lessons). Reverse planning works like this. Questions: Where do I have to be and when? How long does it take to get there? How long will it take me to be ready? What else will I need to allow time for, before we depart? Each task is marked with a time, and then each task leading up to departure is counted in time increments. Do this right up until you can identify what time you need to set your alarm. Now… when doing this, include breakfast! Once in the field, you don’t want to be hunting for food vendors; you want to be hunting Vintage! We of course, go nowhere without a good breakfast, or should I say downright hearty!
Make Friends
There will be vendor after vendor, who does not deal in the items you are in search of. Scan as you walk and move along. You don’t want to waste time in a place that isn’t serving your needs. But when you do arrive at a vendor whose product is one you want to explore, be sure to acknowledge the vendor. You think you got up early? That vendor has most likely been up since 3 am, hauled his trailer and goods, and hasn’t had a second to complete setting up. A “good morning” goes a long way and may just be the connectivity needed for them to start offering you better prices. Also, vendors typically deal in items they are passionate about or feel connectivity towards. Storytelling and knowledge about where something came from or how it was used is very typical. It is the connectivity and sharing that many vendors attach to.
Know Something’s Worth
You never know what you will end up with at such an event. You can’t just expect to find your dining room furniture if no one has brought dining room furniture to sell. Every event will yield many things you didn’t anticipate. So when you are purchasing the unexpected, how do you determine if something is a good value? The answer is simply this… What is it worth to you? With antiques, there is some vintage god somewhere that could quote you something’s true worth, but you are in a field. If the item is somehow very meaningful to you or is just the right something-something for that place you’ve been pondering, it’s worth gains value to the buyer. If you are a collector and that item fits into that hard-to-find spot amongst the collection, it too has more worth. If it's something you can walk away from and it seems pricey, then walk. And if you yourself deal in Vintage, ask yourself this… can I double my money on this. Chances are that a $20 item could yield you $40 in your brick-and-mortar location. That’s when you know you should make the purchase.
You may not always have the best access to the Internet while in “The Field,” but be ready to use it. One method is to put highly descriptive words into your search bar, and then refine your search by searching “images”. Example: “Wood box marked explosive”. Then look at what images match and click the link to any postings that feature that item for sale. The other tool is to have downloaded the “Google” App. When you open the app, there will be a camera screen; take the item’s photo, and hit search. The app will isolate the item and show you the images that match best. Clicking the link will oftentimes reveal its pricing. And finally, remember that an eBay asking price is not the items sold for price. eBay has in their filters a line item that says, “Sold For”. Using this filter oftentimes reveals what we knew from the beginning. An item's value is directly related to how much someone is willing to pay for it.
Pick Up!
So what do you do when you have purchased a larger item? Most vendors will hold your purchased item until you can come back with a vehicle later or return to haul it when you have concluded your shopping. It’s important to know a few things. First, ask them what time they will be packing up. So you are sure to return well before that time. Next, take some photos. Take photos of your item as well as photos of the area where the vendor is located. On a good day, you may have a number of items to retrieve. Photos allow you to know what items they are and roughly where they are located. This is valuable information. The worst is to know you have something to return for and to have forgotten the whereabouts.
The Challenge
For many years I lived in Georgia. I regularly returned to Pennsylvania and frequented my favorite antiquing locations. I would then return to Georgia with my van packed to the brim. Pennsylvania is a wonderful location to source antiques; however, Georgia was not. So I would return with my bounty and would fill my shop with things not often found in the south and priced far better than things I could source locally.
One day (a long, long time ago), I was sitting in my home in Georgia going through a Martha Stewart Magazine. The images looked so familiar, and under closer scrutiny, I could identify that I was looking at Renninger’s Extravaganza. Martha had sent some of her staff members to the Extravaganza. They were each given $100 to see what they could find for that amount. And Martha Stewart team’s resulting purchases were impressive.
Now that I am sharing this special location with the readers of this blog, I thought it would be fun to revise the challenge. Accounting for inflation (without any knowledge of what that could be), I randomly selected $200 as the sum of cash my partner Richard and I, would each have to spend. You can see our results in the attached video.
Finding A Festival or Flea Market
Such events and flea markets exist in every state. Here are some sources for your own journey into the field. Happy Fall, everyone, and happy picking!
