Car boot sales UK : Local, USA Yard sale

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Directory > Home > Car Boot & Yard Sales

In the UK it’s mainly "Car boot sales" and in the USA it’s "Yard sales" but either way they are basically the same thing: Individuals take the opportunity to sell personal property that they no longer require in order to de-kludge their homes and get some money for it.

The car boot sale (‘boot’ is the equivalent of ‘trunk’ in the USA) allows people to gather in one place to sell their property which means they can get a very large number of potential customers concentrated in one place. In the USA this is closer to a ‘swap meet’ or ‘flea market’, or a multi-home ‘yard sale’. In contrast, the USA yard sale (or garage sale) is just one home selling things in their own yard, though as implied sometimes several houses on a single street might do a yard sale at the same time.

Either way these are largely informal events where no business licence and hence no sales tax (VAT in the UK) would be levied. Having said that Car boot sales often have commercial traders as well but it’s up to them to deal with their own tax situation.

Having researched and studied the two options (Car boot vs Yard) it seems the car boot has several advantages: They can get far more people visiting (with major advertising in advance), security is dealt with by the organiser and they have their own toilets. (The yard sale horror stories are quite off-putting.)

It’s common for professionals to scour the car boot and yard sales to pick up valuable objects very cheaply where the current owners have no idea of their true value.

Your Booty
An independently run free website listing car boot sales running across the country, it’s intended as the largest UK directory of car boot sales and any other similar event.

Car Boot Junction
Another free website listing car boot sales by area it also includes useful information and a map of how to get there, also has advice pages on running and visiting events.

Car Boot Calendar
Billed as the Bargain Hunters Bible this website is not free and you can’t access the events without joining so it’s difficult to assess. It does have forums apparently.

UK Fayres
As they like to say they have the definitive list of all events that are a "gathering of stalls" including car boot sales, all types of fairs, auto jumble events and more.

USA

Yard Sale Queen
Great website, full of really useful information about running your own yard sale, and lots of cautionary tales about what to watch out for as well as heart-warming stories.

Garage Sale Source
"One person's trash is another's treasure." This site provides free garage and yard sale listings for an unlimited time and will help you find the ones nearest to you.

Yard Sale Database
This ought to be a totally awesome website as it provides a map of the USA and you can zoom in on any area to find the yard sales – only trouble is, it hasn’t got many yet.

Organized Home
Just a generally great website but provides this useful information about yard sales and how to organize your own if you’re in active de-kludging mode, read before you try it.

Last updated December 22, 2007 10:49 AM