We recently wrote a blog post explaining the best ways to find local car boot sales. Among these were reading your local paper, relying on word of mouth and visiting online car boot sale directories.
This week we are going to look at some of the more popular directories to see how useful they can be. We will also be randomly testing how up-to-date each directory is by checking if they have removed the Pontefract Lane car boot sale which was cancelled in January.
Car Boot Junction is the UK’s most popular car boot sale directory. It is easy to navigate from the home page, with the option to select sales by County as well as Town, which is handy. They currently advertise a total of 1840 car boots (subject to change) so the chances of your local sales being listed are pretty high! When we checked the Leeds listings, we did find that the Pontefract Lane car boot sale was still listed despite being cancelled in January but the directory seems to be regularly updated.
Your Booty is my personal favourite car boot sale directory. Like Car Boot Junction it is nice and easy to navigate but it also offers plenty of other useful content, including buying and selling tips as well as helpful links to local authorities if you want to setup your own car boot sale. The best thing about the site though is the accuracy of the listings – they remove any sale which hasn’t been recently updated by the organiser. So when we checked the Yorkshire listings, we were not surprised to find that the Pontefract Lane car boot sale had already been cancelled.
Car Boot Calendar differs from the rest of our entries as it requires a paid membership, currently £14.00 a year for the magazine subscription and £8.99 for online access to their database. Is it worth paying for this information when you can get it for free from other car boot sale directories? Well I won’t say too much as I haven’t subscribed yet, but the free issue they have available on their website looks good. They not only cover car boots but auctions, antiques fairs and flea market which may be useful to some. I also imagine their listings are very accurate as they will direct access to many car boot organisers.
While this site isn’t as comprehensive as Car Boot Junction or Your Booty, it is definitely worth checking out as a lot of smaller, less well known sales seem to be listed there. As many of you may already be aware, the larger car boots are now saturated with dealers, making those small, infrequent sales great places to visit to pick up bargains. You can also register as a member and reply to the listings, allowing you to ask questions about the sale or let me people know what you thought of it.
Another great car boot resource which lists sales in a standard directory format as well as having a feed of latest additions and one-off sales. This is a good way to spot up and coming sales or those which are only held a few times a year. They always have some interesting news on the home page as well – not sure where they find it all to be honest! Like Car Boot Junction, the Pontefract Lane car boot sale was unfortunately still listed.
Check Ahead
As our example demonstrates, it is very difficult for the sites to be 100% accurate as they rely on organisers to let them know. Unfortunately the organisers least likely to update their listings are those who have recently cancelled their events! So If you find a car boot sale listed on one of the above websites it is crucial that you phone ahead to make sure it is still running. There’s nothing worse than arriving at a car boot sale only to find that it is no longer running as this <amusing example demonstrates>!
Until next time