So here's my little mock-Roma family with our tent and our wares at the British Invasion car show last weekend. We spent two days trying to tempt the white people (they were mostly white, but you know what I mean, metaphorically, when I say that) to buy the goods we have spread out upon our blankets. Lots of browsers strolled through our tent but very, very few of them reached into their wallets and bought anything. And darn it, I forgot to teach the kids about how to pick pockets before we got there! As a result, I undertook an effort roughly akin to moving house, twice in a weekend, and made no money.
Still, it was not altogether a bad experience, really. It may have put me off antiques for good, which may be a good thing. Also, Whusband really chipped in, helping to pack and cart and dealing with the kids and this was quite nice. He has tended in the past to be, uhm, "critical" of my collecting and has expressed doubts about my claims that all this stuff was valuable. He had a prime chance to say "I told you so" here, but he didn't. He even agreed that the stuff was nice and encouraged me not to sell it cheap. His chit chat with one of the (rare) paying customers may even lead to the sale of an old Porsche we keep in the barn and drive three times a year. So, not a total loss. Oh - and I sold one of those three saddles, in case you were wondering. The guy who bought it really put the screws to me, trying to get an even deeper discount from the fire sale price posted. (Whusband said I should send him packing but I sold it in the end for $15 more than I paid).
Maybe next year I'll try fortune telling. What do you have to pack for that? A crystal ball? A deck of cards? That I can handle.
It's going to take some time for me to recover from all this. A perfect time to sit with the computer and read other people's blogs.
