In the latter half of the 90s I spent a lot of time at Brighton Secondary School, especially in the school's music department; though on occasion, not as much time as I probably should've. This was my High School. After my time there, BSS began a fundraising scheme of running a car boot sale on the second and fourth Sunday of every month to support the music program I spent so much time with back in the day.
The car boot sale is great for both the seller and purchaser and I have been on both sides of the trestle table. As a seller the stalls are very inexpensive as their costs are dictated by car size. The maximum cost is $30 to host a stall, but as I only had a car it cost me $20. This is excellent for those considering a garage sale. You don't have to let people into your house, you get a lot more foot traffic and you don't need to pay advertising costs. About half the sellers are these types of sellers (and I certainly was), the other half are sellers of craft/homemade items, vintage antiques/collectables, trinkets, bric-a-brac, farm produce/hobby farmers, plants, tools/hardware, food, baked goods and sausage sizzle.
When I was a kid (pre 90s) there were often 'Trash and Treasure' markets of a weekend, and that's really the sort of market the car-boot sale is. As a buyer, I have found endless amounts of bargains here between the hours of 7am-12pm (sellers arrive from 6am). My mother raves on about how great a deal she gets on plants and how much it doesn't cost her for a bag of oranges, whilst I and my friends magpie for shiny objects and vintage.
This is an extremely popular sale so nearby streets seem to be as choc full of cars as the market is. I usually can't be bothered looking for a park or walking my treasures all the way back to a distant car, so I just pay the parking fee (which also gets donated to the music program). The market rotates from the front oval to the back oval to keep the grass fresh, but on some Sunday's they have so many sellers that it spreads to all ovals. At their discretion they run additional Sunday markets in Summer. read more