The Buckley Flea Market
At The Flea Markets
From James Donahue’s Journal
My late wife’s brother Bub, and his wife, Rosemary, were into flea market operations. Bub was big in buying old furniture, refinishing it, and selling it, sometimes as antiques, and making good money at it.
After Aaron and I had an experience selling things with our cookbook at a flea market near Alpena, Doris got the idea of setting up one Monday at Croswell, where there was a large weekly flea market combined with a farm cattle auction. We decided to hit some garage sales in the area, buy some items for resale at the market, and see how it worked out. We were lucky in our search and got a few collectable items at a very low price. Doris took everything home, cleaned the stuff up, put price tags that either doubled or tripled what we paid for them, and packed everything to go with us to the Croswell market. The idea was to try to use the market as an outlet to also sell our cookbooks.
We had to get up really early in the morning and get to the market grounds almost before dawn to get a good spot. All of the market operators were there then, scrambling for those key spots. Then we spent the next hour or two setting up tables, putting out table clothes, and arranging our display of items for sale. We had a lot of fun that first day but we stood in the hot sun for hours, got extremely sunburned, in spite of the hats we were wearing, and came home exhausted. We sold a few books and a lot of our purchased items that included dishes, pots and pans, pictures and frames, a few small pieces of furniture, books, and tools.
Once we did it, we were hooked. We began working flea markets in earnest. I bought a large customized Dodge van in Deckerville. The van had fold down seats that could be made into beds, carpeting and curtains over the windows. It was large enough that we could put a lot of things for sale in it, and live in shade while working the market. We bought several metal framed folding tables that allowed us to set up a large U-shaped display reaching out from the side door of the van. We began hitting a Saturday market in downtown Port Huron where we built up a good business of regular customers. We also hit the Croswell market on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July weekend, and Labor Day, which all fell on Mondays and were the biggest and best markets of the summer. We drove to the Buckley, Michigan, week-long steam festival where one of the biggest flea markets in the state operated. And we even went to the Detroit area to try some of the big markets operating in that area. We plunged into it with everything we had.
We learned a few things about that kind of operation. We needed an attractive table, with items well displayed on a white tablecloth. Big items like furniture, pictures with frames, and large pots and pans could be shown from the ground under the table. We needed a large umbrella to shade us from the constant barrage of the sun. We needed to arrive early to sell because people rushed the markets then for the best buys. Afternoons were usually slow and most venders began packing up and going home after the noon hour.
Venders sometimes were our best customers. They usually walked the tables early in the morning, as folks were setting up, looking for good bargains on collectables. Not all people working the markets knew the value of some of the things they were selling. This was usually true on the holiday weekends when novices came to sell junk found in their attics. It was easy to find great deals on their tables.
Doris and I bought books on antique and collectable glass and other items, and got pretty good at spotting things of value among the junk on some of those tables. We began collecting certain types of glassware, especially targeting carnival and Depression glass dishes. It was not long before we had complete sets of certain designs of antique and collectable dishes. Instead of selling them, we acquired a beautiful display cabinet and put them up for show in the house.
We had a routine we followed every week. The garage sales began every Thursday for some odd reason. Most people don’t get paid until Friday, so it didn’t make much sense. But the sales opened on Thursday and sometimes ran through Saturday. After the first hour anything of value was quickly snapped up by the flea market venders. It took skill to beat them in that game.
Every week we poured over the local shopper’s guide, selecting the best looking garage sales and setting up a route so that they all could be hit as early and as quickly as possible. Some opened at 8 a.m., while others didn’t start until ten. You could hit some early, raiding their wares even as the homeowners were still setting up their tables. Other sales were held indoors so nobody was allowed in until the exact time given in the advertisement. Those were the most exasperating ones to hit.
We kept a supply of cash on hand so every Thursday morning, Doris would hit the road with about a hundred dollars in small bills in her purse as well as a checkbook in case she came onto something costly and needed access to more money. I would go to work, do my police rounds early, and by eight o’clock, would be hitting all of the garage sales in and around Sandusky. We came in on Thursday nights with the vehicles full of dishes, tools, furnishings, pictures, pots and pans, antique toys and all kinds of collectables. Doris spent Fridays cleaning and patching things. We put price tags on things, then packed for the market and put everything in the van so we were ready to drive off early on Saturday, usually headed for Port Huron.
Jennifer, who was quite young at the time, always went with us. She grew up around the flea markets. She learned early how to deal with customers, make sales and make change when Doris and I were off scanning the other tables in the markets. We also had to make toilet breaks, usually in porta-potties that really stank. The markets always had food venders hawking lots of coffee, rolls, hotdogs, hamburgers and soft drinks. Consequently most flea market operators who had been at it for any length of time were well overweight. My favorite breakfast at the market was a hot cup of coffee and a large sweet roll. We also bought fresh homemade bread and all kinds of fresh produce at some of the markets.
I personally bought an amazing collection of vinyl records, cassette tapes and CDs as well as historical books that went into my personal library. I bought so much music I purchased a very good stereo system that not only allowed me to listen, but also record the music I had on the old vinyl records to cassettes. This saved the original recording from getting worn and scratched. I eventually had a rather amazing collection.
The Buckley Flea Market was held once each summer and was our favorite event. We spent an entire week there, living in our van and not only selling things, but shopping and buying from other venders. We also found great food concessions, and got to watch all of the antique steam tractors in operation. People came from miles around to attend that event. It was rough living, sleeping in those van beds, using those smelly portable toilets and brushing our teeth on a public water tap. But up and down the line interesting things happened. We would hear live music and find a full band performing, or maybe somebody would just begin strumming a mandolin or a guitar. And we were constantly meeting interesting and unusual people.
There was one bad incident. When we were packing one hot summer afternoon at the Port Huron flea market. I had a partly consumed can of pop on the table while I was packing the glass. As I worked I would grab the can and take a few swallows. That is how I always drink carbonated drinks because I don’t really like them. I just needed the liquid and it was the best I could get. When I grabbed the can that time a yellow jacket had crawled inside. I took it in my mouth and was stung in the throat. Jennifer stayed behind with our things while Mom and I took the van to the hospital. I was given emergency treatment and kept there for about two hours before I could get back to Jennifer. She was all alone, still waiting for us when we arrived.
The flea marketers always worked with cash and never kept books. I always thought it wrong, if they were making a living doing this, they didn’t declare their earnings and pay taxes. I kept faithful records of our weekly earnings and the money spent each week at garage sales and occasionally attending auctions to buy our wares. That first year we were audited. The IRS hit us for an extra thousand dollars in December because we could not produce receipts for all of the quarter, fifty-cent and one-dollar items bought at garage sales. They would not accept my system of bookkeeping. It ruined our Christmas holiday. After that, we stopped keeping records and sold cash under the table on everything, just like everybody else. I had learned my lesson. If I was to be in business in America, I had to be willing to lie, cheat and steal. We lost interest in flea marketing after that.
From James Donahue’s Journal
My late wife’s brother Bub, and his wife, Rosemary, were into flea market operations. Bub was big in buying old furniture, refinishing it, and selling it, sometimes as antiques, and making good money at it.
After Aaron and I had an experience selling things with our cookbook at a flea market near Alpena, Doris got the idea of setting up one Monday at Croswell, where there was a large weekly flea market combined with a farm cattle auction. We decided to hit some garage sales in the area, buy some items for resale at the market, and see how it worked out. We were lucky in our search and got a few collectable items at a very low price. Doris took everything home, cleaned the stuff up, put price tags that either doubled or tripled what we paid for them, and packed everything to go with us to the Croswell market. The idea was to try to use the market as an outlet to also sell our cookbooks.
We had to get up really early in the morning and get to the market grounds almost before dawn to get a good spot. All of the market operators were there then, scrambling for those key spots. Then we spent the next hour or two setting up tables, putting out table clothes, and arranging our display of items for sale. We had a lot of fun that first day but we stood in the hot sun for hours, got extremely sunburned, in spite of the hats we were wearing, and came home exhausted. We sold a few books and a lot of our purchased items that included dishes, pots and pans, pictures and frames, a few small pieces of furniture, books, and tools.
Once we did it, we were hooked. We began working flea markets in earnest. I bought a large customized Dodge van in Deckerville. The van had fold down seats that could be made into beds, carpeting and curtains over the windows. It was large enough that we could put a lot of things for sale in it, and live in shade while working the market. We bought several metal framed folding tables that allowed us to set up a large U-shaped display reaching out from the side door of the van. We began hitting a Saturday market in downtown Port Huron where we built up a good business of regular customers. We also hit the Croswell market on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July weekend, and Labor Day, which all fell on Mondays and were the biggest and best markets of the summer. We drove to the Buckley, Michigan, week-long steam festival where one of the biggest flea markets in the state operated. And we even went to the Detroit area to try some of the big markets operating in that area. We plunged into it with everything we had.
We learned a few things about that kind of operation. We needed an attractive table, with items well displayed on a white tablecloth. Big items like furniture, pictures with frames, and large pots and pans could be shown from the ground under the table. We needed a large umbrella to shade us from the constant barrage of the sun. We needed to arrive early to sell because people rushed the markets then for the best buys. Afternoons were usually slow and most venders began packing up and going home after the noon hour.
Venders sometimes were our best customers. They usually walked the tables early in the morning, as folks were setting up, looking for good bargains on collectables. Not all people working the markets knew the value of some of the things they were selling. This was usually true on the holiday weekends when novices came to sell junk found in their attics. It was easy to find great deals on their tables.
Doris and I bought books on antique and collectable glass and other items, and got pretty good at spotting things of value among the junk on some of those tables. We began collecting certain types of glassware, especially targeting carnival and Depression glass dishes. It was not long before we had complete sets of certain designs of antique and collectable dishes. Instead of selling them, we acquired a beautiful display cabinet and put them up for show in the house.
We had a routine we followed every week. The garage sales began every Thursday for some odd reason. Most people don’t get paid until Friday, so it didn’t make much sense. But the sales opened on Thursday and sometimes ran through Saturday. After the first hour anything of value was quickly snapped up by the flea market venders. It took skill to beat them in that game.
Every week we poured over the local shopper’s guide, selecting the best looking garage sales and setting up a route so that they all could be hit as early and as quickly as possible. Some opened at 8 a.m., while others didn’t start until ten. You could hit some early, raiding their wares even as the homeowners were still setting up their tables. Other sales were held indoors so nobody was allowed in until the exact time given in the advertisement. Those were the most exasperating ones to hit.
We kept a supply of cash on hand so every Thursday morning, Doris would hit the road with about a hundred dollars in small bills in her purse as well as a checkbook in case she came onto something costly and needed access to more money. I would go to work, do my police rounds early, and by eight o’clock, would be hitting all of the garage sales in and around Sandusky. We came in on Thursday nights with the vehicles full of dishes, tools, furnishings, pictures, pots and pans, antique toys and all kinds of collectables. Doris spent Fridays cleaning and patching things. We put price tags on things, then packed for the market and put everything in the van so we were ready to drive off early on Saturday, usually headed for Port Huron.
Jennifer, who was quite young at the time, always went with us. She grew up around the flea markets. She learned early how to deal with customers, make sales and make change when Doris and I were off scanning the other tables in the markets. We also had to make toilet breaks, usually in porta-potties that really stank. The markets always had food venders hawking lots of coffee, rolls, hotdogs, hamburgers and soft drinks. Consequently most flea market operators who had been at it for any length of time were well overweight. My favorite breakfast at the market was a hot cup of coffee and a large sweet roll. We also bought fresh homemade bread and all kinds of fresh produce at some of the markets.
I personally bought an amazing collection of vinyl records, cassette tapes and CDs as well as historical books that went into my personal library. I bought so much music I purchased a very good stereo system that not only allowed me to listen, but also record the music I had on the old vinyl records to cassettes. This saved the original recording from getting worn and scratched. I eventually had a rather amazing collection.
The Buckley Flea Market was held once each summer and was our favorite event. We spent an entire week there, living in our van and not only selling things, but shopping and buying from other venders. We also found great food concessions, and got to watch all of the antique steam tractors in operation. People came from miles around to attend that event. It was rough living, sleeping in those van beds, using those smelly portable toilets and brushing our teeth on a public water tap. But up and down the line interesting things happened. We would hear live music and find a full band performing, or maybe somebody would just begin strumming a mandolin or a guitar. And we were constantly meeting interesting and unusual people.
There was one bad incident. When we were packing one hot summer afternoon at the Port Huron flea market. I had a partly consumed can of pop on the table while I was packing the glass. As I worked I would grab the can and take a few swallows. That is how I always drink carbonated drinks because I don’t really like them. I just needed the liquid and it was the best I could get. When I grabbed the can that time a yellow jacket had crawled inside. I took it in my mouth and was stung in the throat. Jennifer stayed behind with our things while Mom and I took the van to the hospital. I was given emergency treatment and kept there for about two hours before I could get back to Jennifer. She was all alone, still waiting for us when we arrived.
The flea marketers always worked with cash and never kept books. I always thought it wrong, if they were making a living doing this, they didn’t declare their earnings and pay taxes. I kept faithful records of our weekly earnings and the money spent each week at garage sales and occasionally attending auctions to buy our wares. That first year we were audited. The IRS hit us for an extra thousand dollars in December because we could not produce receipts for all of the quarter, fifty-cent and one-dollar items bought at garage sales. They would not accept my system of bookkeeping. It ruined our Christmas holiday. After that, we stopped keeping records and sold cash under the table on everything, just like everybody else. I had learned my lesson. If I was to be in business in America, I had to be willing to lie, cheat and steal. We lost interest in flea marketing after that.