Vintage view: How to clear your stall at a car-boot sale

You can’t judge a vintage book by its cover, nor a darling old lady by her benign, moist-eyed charm.

Boot sales, like antique auctions, just bring out the devil in some people. Otherwise honest and hardworking souls get behind the stage of a trestle table, fasten their backside to an orange crate and, hey-ho, they come over all Dickensian villain.

Wandering a Munster venue last month, I was beguiled by a truly ancient woman beckoning me furiously (as you can, at 110 years old), to her join her at her tented haunt.

Moving warily forward, I could see she had a dodgy-looking Staffordshire flat-back gripped in each hand, like fat bantam chicks helpless in an eagle’s talons.

She leaned in, raining soft, warm spit conspiratorially on my cheek.

‘These”, she hissed, barely above a beetle cough, “were found in the shed of an auld’ farmhouse in a bucketful of turf.”

I glanced down. Curiously, there it was, poked under an oilskin cloth — the very bucket of recent legend. It even contained yet another Staffordshire-styled figure, shoulder and head surfacing from the muck. Were they growing in auld cottages?

Old house, dusty out-buildings, my new geriatric instant-pal and concealed treasures. This moment was pregnant with everything a completely numpty buyer at a boot sale would need.

Behind Mrs Methuselah, rows of similar, immaculate and clearly new flat-backs shone in glittering, Asian splendour. We huddled in and together, took another look of open wonder at the rosy-cheeked gentleman with spaniel lately rescued from its peaty grave.

“Wonderful,” I said brightly. “I’ll have to just think that over. What a find.”

Jaw aching with phony smiles, I slipped away to spare her a rough review.

What a performance. If you want to sell your vintage pieces at a boot sale and, presuming you know what you have, at the very least say nothing that you can’t stand over before God. There are plenty of things you consider hideous and worthless that buyers will be tickled into a fiver for.

There’s no skulduggery involved in just laying out those goods and giving a solid ‘I don’t know’, if you don’t.

Mixed boxes will always get passers-by angled-over for a dig. Put some glinting glassware and metals into the stir for a flash of interest.

Arrive early for a good central pitch, and don’t be surprised to be set upon by keen car-booters as you muscle the boxes out of the car. For this reason, it’s a good idea to price the goods ahead of time with low-tack stickers or figures in a notebook (with plenty of margin for bargaining), as it can become confusing on the day with 50 items and elbows and questions raining down on you.

Be prepared for deals on a batch of items — do you really want to drag them home? This is a boot sale, not the RDS.

Retail-style prices and haughty pronouncements of “I’ve seen that up in the Miller’s Guide’, I know it’s worth that €300” will just alienate drifting, prospective buyers.

Bring plenty of plastic bags, old newspaper and bubble wrap — you might have to protect the goods after the sale.

Make an occasion of the buy. A chat and a smile, even a bit of accrued history of the piece, encourages people to feel good that they have taste, and that you are pleased they took that thing to a new home. Don’t treat the time-wasting tourists any differently. They may have a cup of tea and a bag of chips and return to you.

I think that old woman with the sunken statuary is still waiting for me to come back.

We have history.