Swapmeet
March 9, 2019
Happy New Ye…. oh wait. Its March already. But yes the first event for us as such, today, was the brilliant open day at Greatworth Classics combining with the first of many (we hope) DDK Swapmeets. Life before eBay was very different. If you wanted to buy used car parts you’d have to actually buy a magazine or paper, make a phone call and go and meet up with the owner, face to face. Or you’d go to a swapmeet. A gathering of people and boxes, lots of boxes. You’d go, rummage and haggle. That was the simplicity of it. Taking a mental list of requirements to finish your garage project. Sure, some larger swapmeets such as the famous Beaulieu Auto Jumble survived the onslaught of the internet and eBay, but smaller more specialist events such as the Husbourne Crawley Porsche swapmeet dwindled. This was always a slightly out of season trudge round a muddy field next to a pub, plenty for sale and plenty of haggling to be done. A great social event though and you’d always see familiar faces tucking into their bacon sarnies. Today it was reborn as if all the participants had been cryogenically frozen for the last 15 years and along with their boxes had been thawed out again.
The location was the impressive HQ of Greatworth Classics who kindly agreed to host the swapmeet as part of their open day. It’s a superb facility with some really interesting projects in the works. Check out their website here. The swapmeet was suggested by one of the DDK club members and what a great suggestion it was! A superb turnout of both people and cars, we can’t wait to go back next year. Haggling is not dead…
5 comments
Comment by angus
angus March 10, 2019 at 8:58 am
Wow these are really great and completely capture the event. And missed the rain too.
Angus
Comment by admin
admin March 10, 2019 at 1:32 pm
Thanks very much Angus, and thanks again for hosting. That’s a really impressive set up you have there too.
Comment by Simon Varley
Simon Varley March 12, 2019 at 3:51 pm
Thanks Angus. Garry and I had a great day. It was nice to see my cars at various stages of restoration. Very impressed with the Grey Targa, im looking forward to my first drive. There were some stunning cars on show. Well done Angus and your team, can’t wait for the next one.
Comment by Bootsy
Bootsy March 19, 2019 at 1:09 pm
Some wonderful images which capture the day
Comment by admin
admin March 19, 2019 at 4:21 pm
Thanks Bootsy! Great to catch up with you