Movieman - Great tip for anyone selling in a public setting.  Anti-counterfit pens can be picked up at pretty much all office supply stores like Staples and Office Max.  Walmart used to sell them, but I haven't looked in awhile.

I just checked Staples online.  They have the pens as cheap as $3.49 each!  Well worth the investment.  They even have a UV light set up that you slide the bill under to check it, $31.49.

There is nothing worse than thinking you made a great sell, and next thing you knew you lost money.  It is even a good idea for people selling for cash on Craigslist.  If someone feels threatened by it, just tell them you had been taken on a previous sale, and have to protect yourself.

Let me know how they work out for you. 

I have only been to the flea market the one time so far.  I can't wait to get back again so I have more times to compare it to.


I listen to the swap shop on a couple of local country stations (those are the most that do them).  The ones around here offer an email address along with a phone number to get your information to them.  I aslo did a search on google for radio stations around here for that have swap shops or over-the-air classifiedes.

These tips not only work for flea markets, but they also work for yard/garage sales.

At one of my yard sales, I had a couple of big rigs that heard about it on the swap shop and detoured through the area I was at just to check out and buy some equipment.

If you have a lot of items that will appeal to old farmers and ranchers, the country radio station swap shops is a great place to advertise.  Not only do the farmers that are listening to the radio in the morning hear it, in small towns like this, they end up somewhere drinking coffee and talking to their friends.  Word of mouth goes a long way.

I've only been a vendor once at a flea market.  I did pretty good in my book for what I was selling (cb radio equipment, sports cards, dvds, and misc. items).  I also had a table set up to show and sell wood burnt art, but didn't sell any at the flea market.

First and foremost, I made it a point to say hi to as many people who past the table.  Not just a general hi, I would do my best to make eye contact with them.  About 60% to 70% of the time the people would at least slow down to take a glance or stop and chat it up for a bit and leave with a purchase.

A couple of tips that I used when I went to the flea market to generate more traffic and get extra sales:

1.  Advertised on craigslist (I had a lot of people stop by just because they saw my ad on there.
2.  Advertised on free radio swap shops (again, people sought me out just because they heard the ad).
3.  Advertised on local hoby forums, such as for fishing and hunting.  (got traffic from them).
4.  Printed up a lot of business cards.  One for each of my main product line business. (sports cards, cb shop, and custom wood burnt art).  When someone was looking at a line specific table, I would introduce myself and hand them a business card from the table.  


I neted about $450 to $500 at the flea martket.  With the business cards, I netted about another 200 or so after the sale.

When I had someone really looking at certain items, like with the sports cards or cb radio equipment, I would offer to make bundle deals.  When they were buying sports cards, and they were at a certain dollar amount, I would offer free cards of their favorite players.  When they would look thorugh to find the cards they wanted for free, they would find more that they wanted to pay for.  So, once again, I offered more free cards in addition to the ones they were buying.

Also, when they looked through the sports cards for certain players and did not find what they wanted, I offered to go through the rest of my collection when I got home and would give them a call or an email when I found stuff for them.



I know there are a lot of different tips people have for flea markets.  These are just a few that I used.  Please add to this thread.  I would like to know how others make the flea markets better for themselves.

I know of one store in my area that does really well but it's not your typical resale shop more upscale
I would love to run a resale shop someday. Personally my strategy would be to try to run a store and have walk in customers but I would really utilize craiglist. Many of the things that I personally think are not enough money to justify messing with craigslist, finding common times, meeting up, etc I could then list on craigslist and have people come by teh store to pick up since I'm sitting there all day anyway.

Tha is a great strategy.  I had a cb repair shop in the office of a small mechanic shop my dad and I had a couple years ago.  I used that strategy for the cb radios.  People would see me on craigslist, come by the store to buy an item, and usually buy more stuff or bring some radios for me to work on. 

To bad the mechanic shop didn't make enough money and the cb shop didn't generate enough to justify the overhead.  Truthfully, though the cb side did ok, I do better now working out of the house part time.

Well, I already posted my introduction, so I guess I am ready to hit the broads, I mean boards.

Though I am very new to the Storage Auction scene and have not been to an auction yet, I have been into retailing used items for a couple of years now (part-time).

Last October I went and set up at my first flea market, Canton Trades Days (Canton, TX).  I primarilly went to show off and sell my wood burnt art  (outside spot).  It lasted from Wednesday to Sunday.

On Wednesday, we set up only art (big mistake).  I drove back 65 or so miles to Mt. Vernon to pick up a lot of my cb radio equipment from my shop, about half of my sports card collection, and about 100 dvds.

From Friday to Sunday, my wife and I grossed about $850 and netted probably around $450 to $500.

All in all it was agreat experience for the first time.  I can't wait to buy some lockers one of these days and try it again.  We had a blast!  The best part was, I used 4 days of my 2 weeks of vacation from truck driving.  So it was a win-win situation.