Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Different Kinds of People at the Flea Market

   

     Ahh the flea market. Every county has theirs, some shitty, some great, but some people are all the same in every single one.


Sock Lady
I have mentioned the sock lady in the past. In a nut shell: She sells socks, all named brands for like .50 cents a pair or like 20 pairs for $5.00. How does she do it? Where do the socks come from? Typically she is about 60+ years old, drives a brand new Lexus SUV and sells socks. She will cut any deal to sell her socks, trade things, and will take returns. She will tell you that her product sucks, then give you some more socks for free. Socks.


Wallet/Belt Vendor
Real leather! American Made! Signs everywhere, you know the type. $2 each for any belt, and they are not bad belts. Typically the belt guy is an older gentleman in his 70's who is currently making the belts on a table behind a cash register. You can find the multi color red neck belts and random nationality belts and wallets here. This guy is proud of his work and will not deal with you or budge on prices.


The Phone Guy
The phone guy has every kind of knock off phone case and charger known to man. He is most definitely Hispanic, and is currently talking on the phone, which means his wife is on the register holding a baby. In the market for a Blackberry case for your grand mothers phone? He has 30 different  types. Need a glow in the dark hello kitty case for your Sony Ericsson flip phone from 1997? Oh yes, he has three. He will give you deal if you buy multiple things, no returns.
License Plate Holder Guy
He sells red neck everything, but specializes in the holder that goes around your license plate. Save a horse, ride a cowboy? Most certainly he has several kinds in stock. Fuck Obama and or racist shirts and plate holders can be found here 100% of the time. This guy will deal, but his version of the deal is to throw in a knockoff sham wow thing, or bed sheet set.



Chinese(?) Box People
What the hell is going on here? Hundreds of boxes of imitation, knock off, and random fake crap piled up in a boxes for a fraction of the price. Batteries by the 100 pack that last about 38 seconds? Oh yes! Sharpie markers spelled "Sharple". Tools, games, dice, calendars of years gone by, airsoft guns, yes everything that is imitation breeds here. There is more than 10 of these in each damn isle of our flea market. Don't haggle here, seriously don't bother they don't understand you.


Watch Dude
Always of Asian decent, and owns multiple stalls. Typically next to the box people on the same row. Tons of really cool different watches, will change a watch battery in any damn watch for like $1 in like 10 seconds. Knock off Rolex? Only if you ask. Deals are limited to buy one and get this one kind of things, but pretty good. Get everything repaired here that ticks.


Perfume Goddess
She is like 70, has a pink poodle, pink hair, is too loud, and makes the whole flea market smell like a french whores asshole. She also runs the Avon booth right across the way and will point you over there. Driven to boredom, she will deal and give you samples of random shit if you can stand the smell. Run, and run fast, I say.


Food/Pickle/Nuts/Mustard/Seasoning Woman
There is a handful at every flea market, and they put out samples that have flies all over the damn place. $5 bags of nuts, pretzels, and huge pickles she made herself. Honestly, the food at these places is really fucking good and will make you a believer in good old fashion redneck american flea market enthusiasm. No deals, not ever. Who cares, the cinnamon pecans are the things unicorns kill orphans for.


Computer Technology Guy
He has just barely out of date technology for sale, and he himself has not learned about anything in the last 7 years or so. He bought 300 computers from the "For Profit" college down the road and he is now selling them as state of the art computers that your grandmother can get on AOL or Prodigy with. 10-20 computer will be set up running with monitors, bundled with the newest pirate version of windows 8 with an obvious boot loader that will quit as soon as you get it home. You can actually get a good deal on an old monitor here, but never buy actual computer components from them. Deal? Maybe. Sometimes they do not know what they have and you can capitalize on that.


Art and Carpet Salesman
Yes, they are salesman. They will lie, give you cards, discounts and hand jobs to get you to buy their cheaply printed art they say is hand painted. Did I mention they sell rugs and carpets? If you see several of these stalls in the market, they are all owned by the same guy. When he is not running the stalls, he is trying to sell them to someone out of his van in front of the Publix, or selling his rugs on the side of the road at the shut-down Mobil station.


Video Game Re-seller 
He has a bunch of games from garage sales and craigslist shit for years, and now it's time to make a little bit of coin. Game re-sellers use to complain about re-sellers and how much they hate what they do, driving the prices up blah blah blah. Now they have their own shop or shops and they do exactly what they hate. They will deal, especially at the end of the day on Sunday when they realize they need to eat for the rest of the week, or pay their mother a few bucks so they don't get kicked out of the basement. Re-sellers say they have everything, but it's at home, in a storage unit, or at another shop. They know everything and have seen everything related to the gaming community. They play old games, look them up on eBay and watch YouTube collectors videos.. all day long. Video game re-sellers are really good at Wikipedia and are elitist assholes.


Jewelry Woman
She is wearing so much gold, it's a wonder she can stand at all. She sells really out of date shit that was hot maybe a few years ago. Remember those little stainless steel square things that interlock together and make a bracelet? She has every fucking one of those things and no one cares. She will not deal with you because she is a bitch, and she hangs out with the Perfume bitch. She thinks she runs a fucking Zales. She has a shitty Geocities website.


The Book Person(s)
Two different kinds here. There is a cool guy who sells books to get buy, Ie. Chris the Book Guy. Then there is the old lady that sells the romance novels and has a really shitty attitude. She use to own a paperback exchange and it failed because everyone bought kindles, now she is in the flea market and hates her life. She will be reading a Danielle Steele Hardback, and don't you dare ask her anything. No deal, not ever.


Ninja Star Guy!
This guy is awesome. You will never buy anything from him, but he sells random junk knives from china, ninja stars, and swords that could never be used to cut anything. Taser flashlight? Of course sir, right this way. Projectile knife gun thing? Yes! Mace in the family size can that can bring a rhino to it's knees.. we have a whole section! He will deal, demonstrate, and blow smoke in your face from his cigarette and up your ass.


Fruit and Veggie Stall Barkers
They don't grow shit, let's get that out of the way right now. The samples of watermelon are always out and fresh. Only senior citizens buy anything from these stalls. Barkers buy shit at Walmart or the farmers market, take all the stickers off and put them in their little baskets and yell at you as you enter the flea market. They have been around forever and have THE BEST spots in the whole market. They will deal, but it will be on their terms.


Regular People (Yes, they sell things)
Some people just have way too much shit laying around and their wife yells at them to get rid of it. The garage sale was rained out, and well, it's either the flea market or the trash. Convinced they have something good to sell, they pay the $30 for a single small parking space sized area and sell their old Christmas shit, Webkinz and Beanie Babies. No one in their right mind would have a beanie baby stall now-a-days, so this is where you find those. They will deal, everything is either .25 cents or something cheap. I like these guys.

If I'm missing someone, oh well. I'm out of beer and tired of typing.





Sunday, January 12, 2014

Flea Market Pick Ups 5: Star Trek & Castlevania

Breakfast first.

     I really had no intentions to go out and find books today. The longest week/month in my life, working tons of hours and then deciding to go to Tampa for the weekend just killed all my energy for anything outside of work. I know it's been a while since I've updated, and I'm sorry for that, but I'll try to get back in the swing of things with this post. Back to the farm: My wife and I decided to go downtown for breakfast this morning at The Oasis in Fort Myers. Best food, servers and owners are seriously friendly. It was here that we decided to go and hit the Flea Market nice and early.

The book depository.

     We walked all around and looked at everything and got a few things for my wife (pictures later). I went to my typical haunt in the building outside the main complex and ran in to my buddy busy as hell selling books. Check out the crowd!

Digging for fantasy gold.

     He pulled me back behind the shelves where his car was parked, told me how he finally got to see the blog and loved it. I guess we are fans of each other now in a strange way. He dug through some boxes and found two he saved aside, and put them on the tailgate of his truck for me to take a look at.

Tailgate wonderland!

     Found about ten books I did not own, nice old crusty first editions in my ball park. My wife added some magazines to the bunch and a movie and he gave me everything for $16.00. "I know this is over your $10 budget, but I think it's a pretty good deal". Yeah, it was. Before I show you the goods, here is a few pictures of behind the stalls:

The Nazi storage warehouse at the end of Lost Ark

     There is no lack of inventory in this place. Movies, books, comics, magazines, vinyl, games.. just tons of stuff. I found a cool book back here unrelated to Science Fiction believe it or not.

Artax holding the books to the table.


As always, you can click to zoom.

 The wife haul. She spent more than me, and we both blew our budgets.

     Above is my wife's finds. All but the plates were pretty much given to me by our buddy at the book exchange. The Dragonslayer graphic novel is the first of two parts, which I have owned before but mailed them to a fan of a Dragonslayer page I made in the 90's as a gift. Good to have one of them back! The Starlog mags are from the early 80's, which was the golden era of Starlogs. I could do several articles just on them! Oh, I almost forgot! The Worlds of Power book.



     Every five or so pages had some kind of game hint written upside down. I'm not sure if this is something kids actually bought for the hints (as the book sucked) or they were just so in to the game, that they had to have some kind of closure to it. Either way, that's all I got, see you next time.

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

New Year's Resolution

I took this picture before I headed out to work one morning

     I'll start off by saying Happy New Year to everyone out there. I hope everyone had a safe and happy new year's eve, drank tons of booze, and maybe read a book. Personally, my wife and I had a pretty cool party going on, had some new friends over and watched the ball drop in relative peace.

     2013 was good for this blog. I did not put as much in to it as far as time from the year previous, but I sat down and made more plans if anything. If I nothing to post or was busy, I did not force it, and just posted nothing for that week. The last month has been much of that: I have transitioned in to my new job. The holidays are here, which is super stressful for the beer business. Lots of family flying in a out of Florida, coupled with the excuses from above make me so busy I can't find time to go looking for books. No books, means no post most of the time unfortunately. Not that this stopped anyone from viewing the blog however. Readership was up again, and the year finished strong with almost 10,000 unique views over the last few months... and growing.

     Thanks to everyone who has followed me, read my rants, and found books with me along the way. I'm going to try and make 2014 a better year for the blog, find better books, and travel further than last year.