Word: flea
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...praising the enterprise that she and her husband run in Houston: a flea market, that most elementary form of commerce. All across the U.S., inflation-weary Americans searching for lower-priced goods are making flea markets a jumping business. Thousands are operating in non-luxe hotels and discount stores, at race tracks and drive-in theaters. Some are in cities, patterned after the grandfather of flea markets, the Marché aux Puces in Paris, and the ancient bazaars of Cairo, Baghdad and Tehran. Many, many more are sprouting on what were once dusty, barren plots along highways a few miles...
...biggest profits in flea markets are earned not by sellers but by the organizers who collect stall rentals and often modest gate entrance fees...
Sometimes the idea is just to salvage a going concern. Notes Bill Buchholz, who runs flea markets billed as "swap meets" at his Miami drive-in theater: "The quality of the movies is so poor and the cost of getting them so high, I'd go right out of business without the swap meets." Quite a few flea markets are still fleabags, but the institution has taken on enough respectability that the U.S. Economic Development Administration has funded Washington, D.C.'s first permanent flea market...
Though growing larger than ever, flea markets still allow anyone with an eye to sharp trading to go into business almost instantly. All a would-be proprietor has to do is rent a modest stall or table, for $4 to $20 a day. Then the fun begins: people display an incredible array of items pulled from closets, attics, gardens, in-laws and, only occasionally, outlaws. With an eye for hot merchandise, police sometimes patrol the bigger markets, but the difficulty of making positive identifications means that there is often little they can do to knock down any fences...
...sample of the prices and pitches at New Jersey's Englishtown Auction Sales, the largest flea market in the mid-Atlantic region: $3.75 for a solid leather belt ("Why pay a buck for a bonded belt that will become brittle and broken?"); a still-to-be-dickered price for a potbellied-stove door ("When you need it, you need it"); $1.75 for a goldfish ("You get the bowl, you get the sand, you get the fish, you get two weeks' supply of fish food"). Says Steve Sobechko, who owns the Englishtown market: "It's a great recycling...