The Little World

I went to the swap-meet section of the plastic modelling exhibition a little while ago and looked around. I do that – surreptitious spying is one of those hobbies that you can do with little initial outlay – Just a black cloak and broad – brimmed hat. The dark sunglasses and anarchist’s bomb are just refinements of the theme. I wanted to take my hidden spy camera but I couldn’t find it…

Well it was a good morning, and the people were having fun. They were standing behind trestle tables outside the main exhibition hall and had stacked boxes of kits up 10-deep to tempt the passers-by. The passers-by had a tough time of it getting by, as the persons closest to the tables stopped everyone else from seeing the bargains. I find that this occurs in museums and bookstores too and I have evolved a system of flatulence and a hatpin that never fails to clear me some browsing space…

Well, I needn’t have bothered. The sale was genuine and open, but totally eclipsed by the offers made in the hall by the regular dealers. Of course the current dealers could not offer 1959 Airfix Series One bags of warped Spitfires because these have been superseded by current boxes of equally warped kits but it was interesting to note that the prices asked for some of the old dreck was 10 X that of new stock.

I did observe some very good work by the enthusiasts – packaging unsalable sweepings from the bottom of the workshop in sealed packets and then carefully nestling these packets in tissue paper. A case of suggesting that the Vicar’s egg was made by Fabergé…Add a price tag that would leave an asthmatic person in distress, and you have the ingredients of a very interesting market.

I was also struck by the number of people who had apparently purchased things that no sane human would later take any interest in…and bought them up in job lots. They were onto a winning strategy – if anyone gave them money for the stuff it would have been on a par with a Lourdes miracle, and there was always the bonus of finding a like-minded individual with whom one could mate. Oh dear me…

I like a market. I like a bargain. But I can tell an oyster that has been out of the sea for a month by the odour.