We're having a fleemarket this weekend, fundraising event for the school orchestra. Preparation started yesterday.
I got up to the school around 08:30. We're quite much behind, compared to previous fleemarkets, still lots of things to do before the opening (at 11:00).
This is a raclette set. It's brand new, but missing a box. I'm not really sure what to do with it, very difficult to sell things that consists of several parts on this fleemarket - people are messing so much up.
This is an ancient hair-drier. I don't remember what we sold it for, but it got sold. If I would have had more time, I would have assembled it.
Ten minutes until it opens. There is quite some queue.
We were quite few people today, but luckily there appeared some more heads just before the opening, so we were like four persons on my department - one to let people in, one to let people out and two for selling things.
The next half hour was intense. The first people to enter are often like savages. We had a guy standing in the door trying to restrict the number of people coming in at once, but I forgot to tell him how few people I wanted. Our profit gets quite much higher if there aren't more people in the room than what we can keep an eye on in the start - they come in a hurry, lift up everything, look at it, put it down at some random place. They break things. They try to collect as much as they can carry, hoping to get a very big discount for buying lots of things ... and leave everything at some random place if we won't sell the things at 10% of the price we want. They rip off the price labels, and haggles for a very low price, if one of us tells one price, they will find another one and ask for a new quote. If we get in brand new stuff and try to keep it in the box, they will open the box and spread everything all around. If the price label is on the box, you can be sure they will leave the box and instructions and spare part, bring the item over to the other side of the shop and hope to get it for a cheap price. People are even stealing items. I get so angry sometimes ... why can't people just behave a bit?
Sorry for being a bit of a racist ... but this is not much at all of a problem with the native ethnic Norwegians. We don't have much of a culture of haggling in Norway - but in some cultures it's somewhat a sports to get things as cheaply as possible. Some cultures may not understand the whole fundraiser concept, possibly they believe we put the money into our own pockets. Some people (but I believe they aren't that many) just can't afford the prices. Beggers can't be choosers - I usually tell people to get out and come back later if they want things cheaply. Towards the closing time we often get visit from people intending to export things to Africa. That's nice, they usually pick quite much stuff, and they are often willing to pay more than the worst of the hagglers.
The most valuable things disappeared within half an hour. The photo below was taken 11:35, and perhaps more than 2/3 of the original content in this corner is gone.
We often get in a typewriter or two. This one didn't work very well. Typewriters are popular among the children, nice old-fashioned toy. Oh, I also loved the typewriter when I was a child.
This is the most fancy calculator I've seen ... at least the most fancy I've seen today. Leather (or perhaps plastic) cover, with a solid notepad and the keys embedded in the cover.
At 16 we closed the doors.
Apparently the raclette set was sold ... or maybe stolen ... but still the user instructions and two parts are left.
The red phone also got sold, but none of the others ... as expected.
We've gotten in some more stuff to sell for Sunday, here I've started to stack it up.
We have much less things, and now I also have more time. I usually hang up the lamps that are designed for hanging ... but it's lots of work. I don't know if it's worth the effort ... but at least I feel better with those lamps hanging than lying around.
It's 20:00 and I'm leaving. I've been working almost without breaks since 08:30 in the morning.
The opinions are a bit divided on weather we should throw things or give them away for free if we can't get it sold for a reasonable price. I do favor the approach done by the book department, throw the books out and put up a poster with the text "GRATIS":
All photos available in better resolution on IPFS QmeJwN3NbDorqRWBmJhjGmMbkG9tt17enGCQUAte9EfXiu. License: CC BY-SA 4.0