This weekend saw the salvage sisters bleary-eyed at St. Donards car boot sale after our 6am start to beat the queues and secure a space to sell our treasures. Our loot had been gathered up at another episode of Tullyroan family house clearance, to include some antique finds by the original salvager, our mother, and also our grandmother who is now 102. The items we sold had a lucky escape from skip-heaven and will hopefully live on to adorn the china cabinets of their new happy owners in east belfast.

The buyers were a friendly bunch of locals and regulars, who were delighted to inform us of the origins and sources of some of our porcelain figurines and items, which were high in demand. We were happy to shift anything for around a pound as sadly, most of it was chipped or in bad repair. We did attract quite a swarm initially as people are definately interested in things which have vintage appeal or nostalgic interest.

We were informed by one shrewd buyer that he would shift the silver mustard spoon he’d found on our table for 50p for up to a handsome tenner on ebay! Its good to know a little more of the life story of the items you’re parting with.

There’s definatley a roaring car boot culture in NI but accessing the details can be tricky. Important nuggets like the fact that if you arrive at this one after about 6.30pm you’ll miss the cut in the queue for when the gates open at 8! Apparently 40 cars got turned away yesterday from this 50 car space.

Two good websites that we used were Car boots R Us and CarbootSales.Org, and we heard about this great page on Facebook so don’t forget to report your successes and tips there if you head out booting!

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