Posted on 28/08/2009 at 10:11 by Julie Maddocks, Kent on Saturday
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Spare a thought for the man who turned up at the Antiques Roadshow this week with his prize glassware he’d spent more than £1,000 on, only to have his dreams of riches shattered.
The TV show’s glass expert had to break the news to the collector that his item was no more than an empty olive oil bottle, Tesco circa 2008, and worth absolutely nothing.
When I first heard the story I gave an initial sympathetic gasp for the poor man, which was swiftly followed by a wry smile, wondering how many others are so easily conned. My guess is it’s thousands of us.
You only have to visit your local boot fair on a Saturday morning to experience similar.
You can almost put money on there being a toaster ‘in perfect working order’ which hasn’t got a hope of turning on, never mind making a slice of bread turn brown.
Or that ‘solid silver’ bangle which is bound to turn your wrist green before you’ve even got back home.
I know that not everyone selling their wares at such events is out to con us, but there’s no doubt that some certainly do and some even make a living at it.
Just before Christmas I agreed to help our youngest son make a bit of pocket money by clearing out his wardrobe and heading down to a well respected sale.
As we arrived at 6.45am in pitch darkness, we were immediately pounced on.
Obvious dealers not only swarmed around the car, but with torches were physically rummaging through the boxes in the boot to find what could be valuable items demanding how much we wanted for them. However hard we tried to barter we just couldn’t do it and ended up accepting the offers made to us.
Foolishly, and to be honest, due to sheer panic, we sold stuff left, right and centre, initially relieved to be clearing the goods so quickly and to have the cash in our pockets.
But as the morning progressed it became clear we’d been naive.
Time and time again the same type of items were being sought-after and we quickly realised we had been done.
This was proven to us later in the morning as we took a walk round other stalls and discovered our own items being sold once more, but at hugely inflated prices.
While I realise that this is how the game works, what did disturb me was to see our well worn, run-of-the-mill Pokemon computer game labelled as ‘limited edition’ costing a fortune. It did make me also see just how trusting we are of others.
All in all our day last December proved profitable, with the games and books we would otherwise have just thrown away making Mike a healthy £129 profit, not bad for a morning’s work.
It does prove the saying, ‘one man’s rubbish is another man’s gold,’ to be true.
But be warned – we didn’t come away with a completely empty car and our spending made a dent in our day’s takings.
Still not sure what we’re going to do with the genuine Elvis Presley white tassled jump suit we bought… guess we’ll just have to do another boot fair.