Swap meets - do you still go?

[SuperBuickGuy]

I 'missed' the always-in-April swap meet in Portland this year.... I just couldn't enthuse myself enough to go. Has Craigslist and Ebay killed the large swap meets? I think the small ones will always do okay because it's like a big reunion of car-guys, but the larger the more impersonal and the more horror stories (you want HOW MUCH for that rusted crap?)

What say you....?

[fatguyzinc]

craigslist here is like a giant bowl of granola-
full of flakes, fruits, and nuts...

i have (seriously) had this conversation or a
version of it with many MANY craigslist dreamers--

*ring. ring. ring* hello?

yeah, i was calling about the add for the blah blah blah,
you still got it?

yes i do.

ok, would you trade for a 3 year old 40" plasma screen tv,
a 6'6" lightning bolt triple-fin, and $500 cash? thats CASH, brah....

uuuum....NO. id rather push it outside and light it on fricken FIRE
first, ya friggen idiot! *click*

so much so that i pulled all my adds. f@rkit, the stuff can sit
there and rot away instead. tired of dealing with moronskis.

[ratpatrol66]

I only sell at Mt Vernon swap any more. Its a small event with enough people to make some coin and low key. Worked the Monroe and Puyallup swaps several times, just to many cheap ass bastards!

[Dan Barlow]

#3 with a sweet ice tea instead. I got a free hood for the red vette that way . I don't sell much , usually when I'm done with something , it's done ! I also use EBay.

[Loren]

Don't go much anymore, I have enough stuff. But if I did, those guys who buy lots of industrial matter at auction and then bring it to the swap meets to sell piecemeal are a favorite.

Is there such a word as "high-ball"? The opposite of a buyer throwing out a ridiculously low offer for something he doesn't really need anyhow, this would be a seller pricing items he doesn't really need to sell so fantastically high (...just to see if he'll get it...) that you'd have to be a fool to bite. Rows and rows of that at the last few I've gone to, along with a bunch of new Chinese crap.

Maybe ten years ago there was a two-door Plymouth wagon I had my eye on at the local San Diego "Big Three". $1600 was the price, shoe-polished across the windows. I did wind up buying it...a year after that, off a street corner from the same seller, for $400. It was like, the swap meet would be the worst place to go shopping for such a thing. Actually the old wagon was probably worth even less, I later just used it in trade.

CL can be a hassle but better than spending bucks on a classified like we used to. I do OK selling by using frank language and no phone number until just before we actually meet.

[Runner1972]

I haven't gone to one since English town a few years back. It's the same thing with me, I cruise CL and laugh at the prices of some of the stuff being sold around here.

[Barry Donovan]

None of that around here..
swap meets.

I remember one from early 80s, I was 12 or so. Rhode island. My interest was skyrocketing like puberty.
it is a more powerful memory, predating electrons. All natural swap meet.. some of the last.
I remember some of the aged gatherings, conversations.
my neighbor was a builder, real old stuff.. 30,40s. We used to go with him. I think his goal was pre-bomb era to make hot rods.


in fact.. my first fuel injection was 2014. That is how much knowledge stuck in my head.

[DanStokes]

I haven't done swaps in years. I mostly work with weird stuff (215 Buicks at one point, Mercedes Diesels today with other oddball engines in between) and I haven't found much that fills my needs at a swap. So I gave up on them.

Dan

[Jimbo17]

I also stopped going to swap meets because of the crazy prices and many people ready to except the fact that what they are selling is just not worth the price.

Even the big car meets that have car corals seems like the prices are really crazy to me.

I see complete rust buckets on trailers for between $8,000 and $10,000 !!!! Nor sure how guy's paying these prices before you even start to restore the car unless they just have money to burn.

I have friends who dropped almost $90,000 in a 41 Willy's and then went to Turkey Run and saw one a lot nicer then theirs for $37,000 for sale

Jim Hill

[studemax]

I'm done buying, but I work plenty of booths at swap meets - either helping with the selling, or dispensing advice and information, handing out free magazines, and making coffee for those who drop in.

[67 Malibu]

We have a couple of outdoor ones that do spring/fall meets & a big indoor one in March that kicks off the season. I sell at that one & hit the other ones just for the fun of it. This is a pretty fiscally conservative part of the country so if people want to ask a stupid price for anything they will get to carry it back home. I actually found some things that I need at the April one. But I simply do not have the time to travel a half-day to the big ones.

[Monster]

Don't do swap meets or CL anymore.

[SuperBuickGuy]

Don't do swap meets or CL anymore.

who are you and what have you done with Steve?

[Monster]

I'm seriously considering selling the Vette.

[SuperBuickGuy]

I'm seriously considering selling the Vette.

about flippin' time. I wouldn't tell him this but he's much more a Camry driving type then someone who should be sporting a Corvette.