Cigar Box Guitar Selling...

Had a fun day selling cigar box guitars at the Heritage Antiques Vintage Flea Market in down town Lufkin. There was a parking lot full of vendors at the antiques store and more vendors lined downtown First Street which was blocked to traffic as the first City of Lufkin Market Days which will take place the second Saturday of each month. 

Here's my booth all set up ready to go. Time for this event was 9-2pm but I have found with these thinks the hardcores set up at 6:30 or 7 and that was the time I was there to begin. 

 Of course no cigar box booth would be complete without a celebrity endorser present to kiss girls and hug babies and Banjo Bill was once again on hand on tenor banjo to lay down a solid old time groove. 

Overall a totally interesting day. Sales were a bit different from the pattern these things have followed in the past. I sold one nice tin banjo and a bunch of the one string diddly bow stuff. It was unusual that none of my percussion sold but I did give one shaker away to a guy that bought two one strings. 

I met a guy that was to say the least, an usual looking dude.  While interested in the booth he moved on but when I got home I found he was a beginning builder and had added me to his friends list on the Cigar Box Nation Forum. 

One of the other vendors, a book seller has planted gourds. He promised me some for instruments. I promised him a free instrument if he provided me with some good ones. 

I bought 5 used records, an old Firefall I had on 8 track as a kid, a double Little Richard Hits, Glenn Campbell Galveston, a Betty Davis and an old Tony Joe White. At a buck each I have buyers remore this morning that I did not buy more. 

Saw two very clean looking Peavy speakers that looked just right for putting together a Meatsweats sound system.  The vendor even came down to a price that was exactly the amount of money I had made in my booth. Downside of this was that I would have had to spend more money on a power amp and speaker cables so I passed on the deal.  

I ran into an old high school friend who recalled an old story about how I came in one day in 1976 with the record Frampton Comes Alive and said "boys I believe this is going to be a hit." I still recall that day also and that those guys had never heard of Peter Frampton. The record was a big hit. My friend was glad that I was still into music just as passionately this day as I was in 1976. He made no comment on the fact that all that talent and promise of a good ear had devolved into the  lo-fi tone of one or three strings and the company of banjo players. Maybe that will be a story he will tell someone else, "hey guess who I saw..." 

Seems like there were less kids in my booth this time. There was a teenage girl who seemed to be with the folks in the booth across the way who came in the booth several times. I could tell she was very interested but shy and Bill got her to pick up a one string but she grabbed it left handed and we asked she said she was a righty so we told her to flip it over and after touching it for 30 seconds and struggling a bit to figure out which end was which she said "too hard." I could write a blog post that goes on all day about this subject but I think you know what I mean.         

Thanks again to Heritage Antiques. Some one told me they donate all their proceeds from this event to an organization to end world hunger. I did spend some money in the church scout troop booth to help them out but I'll probably buy a lawn chair I saw on sale in today's paper with some of my profits.