Santa Monica Airport Swap Meet recap

Last Thursday I decided to see if I could get a spot at the Santa Monica Swap meet. I had done that swap a few times before with varying degrees of success from $400 to $3500 in one day. I called, left a message and hoped I could get a stand-by spot on Sunday.

Sunday I got there early waited around for a bit and got a space by 7am, which was lucky. I set up and had a couple slow hours with no sales, but then the customers started trickling in. I think the dealers were hampered by Thanksgiving, I'm sure many regular shoppers were out of town, while others were at the mall.

Here's a panoramic snapshot of my little 16'x16' patch of tarmac:

 

And a close-up of one of the tables:

Now what's neat about the first shot, is that recently I found another shot I took over a year ago in the same space the first time I sold there. I was sharing the space with a couple friends, 50/50, but I gave them the lion's share of the space because they had cheaper inventory.

The two ovals are my stuff, along with a card table or two at far left. In comparison, it's amazing that I made any money at all. In truth though, all that stuff are things I accumulated over the years and not really "inventory" in the truer sense. I do see that I was making an attempt to accept electronic payment (see orange case at center, it says PayPal accepted), but overall I look back and laugh.