Because I am either A) insane, B) foolish, C) easily bored, or D) all of the above, I am now the proud renter of a flea market booth. Over the years we have accumulated lots of cool stuff, and sooner or later, for most of the stuff, we decide we don’t need it any longer. Some of the more expensive stuff goes on Ebay, some of the cheap stuff goes to garage sales or gets donated. There are some things in that sweet spot in between the two extremes that make great flea market material.

I’m not sure I really thought it all the way through before I began. It turns out that a flea market booth is a lot, and I mean LOTS of work. Gathering stuff up took most of a Saturday. There were debates about exactly how many Spider-Man figures we should keep for my nephews and potential future grandchildren. Several spare Power Rangers were missings hands or legs. I was willing to get rid of  many of my comics, but some weren’t bagged when I bought them and weren’t in good enough condition to sell. Once we had a fair sized collection of things nice enough to sell, but not so nice we couldn’t live without it, we moved on to pricing. Writing prices and wrapping little stringed tags on action figures takes a while.  And that’s if you know exactly what they are worth (very hard to determine in most cases). For books, DVDs, and video games, I printed prices on address labels. It took so much longer to get this done than I had anticipated.

But that was before we ever made it to the booth. There was still much work to be done. First, I had to shop for stuff to display my stuff on. Even goijng with inexpensive options, we spent well over $100 on shelving, pegboard bits, and other incidentals. Carrying all the shelves, comics, books, and other stuff wasn’t exactly easy on my back, either. And then there was the assembly. A running joke in our home is “I’m not Bob Freakin’ Vila” and putting all the shelves and things together was way outside my comfort zone.

However, many dollars, tablets of ibuprofen, and hours later, the booth is done (enough) in time for the first day the new Flea Market is open. I am hopeful that I will at least make my money back!