Just to find out if you guys you do a lot of fleamarkets (or garage boot sales or whatever you call them in your country) to search for your favourite vintage toys? Or if you use local newpaper ad...
Luckily in Belgium fleamarkets are quite common (except during winter ie from November to March). But still, I could only find no more than an handfull of star wars figures in 6 months of search...most of my figs come straight from Ebay. I placed several ads in local newspaper but did not bring anything either!
Just wondering what is the "trend" in USA, UK, Australia and other countries.

I'll go to the flea markets every month- rarely is there vintage star wars. We have a quarterly toy fair with some vintage goodness.
70% of my stuff is from ebay (25 % from forums)

In the UK we have what are called "car boot sales", however most of the good stuff dried up years ago.

I now tend to get my stuff from ebay, private sales or through the forums.

Yes here in the UK we have car boot sales but you very rarely find vintage starwars but almost weekly I find Modern era POTF2 stuff.

I get around 70% of my stuff from the forums 20% Ebay/Auctions and 10% Colector Fairs etc

Not a fan of ebay at all really

Pretty much anything vintage for me comes from either Ebay or the forums. Most flea markets here these days are dealers selling just about anything but toys. Lots of cheap jewelery and household stuff.

I don't think I never bought anything from Forums (shame on me). Since I was planning to buy a LL Jawa, maybe this is the best solution. I really don't trust much Ebay for such expensive items. We have some trustfull mexican TIG members in this forum...that's probably what I will do.

I usually get a good bit of stuff off of the local online classified ads. Most of the time, people are selling their childhood collections. I don't get too much off of ebay, shipping is just to expensive most of the time. I've never had much luck with garage sales. Most of the time, it is just newer stuff. Some times you also get lucky with estate auctions.

Well i don't go to flea markets that often (maybe 1 or 2 times a year) and therefor i never picked anything up on those.

Last year i came along a box off vintage ghostbusters, many stuff, looked good, but the price was to high for me as i knew nothing about those and i did not wanted to risk overpaying on items i wasn't planning on keeping in the first place....

My best hope to find on a fleamarket would be, a beater lot of figures with the "Clipper" cardbacks included in the box.

Mostly do eBay. Flew markets near me never have good stuff

Portyman wrote:

Mostly do eBay. Flew markets near me never have good stuff

Never say never

I frequently visit flea markets. Scored quite some vintage stuff (Last 17 figures for 25 eurocents!). Most is common stuff or in very played with condition but there are gems to be found. I agree most is POTF2+ stuff (which people think is golden because it's in the package). One time a person asked 20 euros for a boxed potf2 figure (green card), and 50 eurocents for a Last 17 Han Solo Carbonite (without block, but still!).

So indeed, never say never!

There are still plenty of bargains to be had on ebay if you know where to look

Occasionally, I put some vintage star wars items out when our community has a garage sale. My next door neighbor is a fan, and he always get a kick out of looking at what I put out. I have been able to make a few connections in my area that way because of this as well. One guy even sold me some of his old stuff because he saw I had some out and asked if I was a collector. So, you never know.

I go to this Antique mall that does auctions on a monthly basis. I do see Star Wars stuff there quite often, but it's usually beat to hell stuff that goes for x5 fair market value. At one of the auctions, they had recarded figures & it wasn't mentioned anywhere. These were really bad recards, especially if I could spot them. I told the people working but no one cared. Each of those figures closed for in excess of $200 each. It was insane.

I miss the flea market days, used to get some good deals here and there. I use eBay, forums, local toy shop and some online toy stores.

Summer months are GREAT for yard/garage sales here. However very very little ever turns up for Vintage. I hit a couple deals from craigslist too. Flea markets don't really turn anything up either. Or if they have something, it's usually those sellers that think they can charge 35 dollars for a Vader head case with no straps.

Most of my purchases come from ebay, with a fair amount from forums.

sotoam wrote:

Occasionally, I put some vintage star wars items out when our community has a garage sale. My next door neighbor is a fan, and he always get a kick out of looking at what I put out. I have been able to make a few connections in my area that way because of this as well. One guy even sold me some of his old stuff because he saw I had some out and asked if I was a collector. So, you never know.

That's a great idea, I've never thought of that. Making some local connections would be pretty handy, I live in a city of 100 000 people, you'd think at least someone else here would be involved in the hobby too!

I love checking out flee markets and garage sales I got some great deals at them some times I am looking for items for parts like the Falcon I needed a motor and I found a falcon at the flee market for $5 with almost all the parts and a working motor so that was a good find.

I hit three second hand stores today and found nothing worth buying. There were a couple titanium figures from star wars, but that was all. They did have some nice Terminator/gears of war/and Nightmare on Elm street figures for sale, but they weren't cheap enough to put my money down on.

I'm hitting a flea market in the morning.....I'm kind of addicted to the point of craziness right now......