Right at the far end of a market, past the stalls everyone clusters round, a woman at a fold up table with a shoebox on it was selling a small brass magnifying glass with a wooden handle for five pounds. It had come out of a house clearance, and she had no sign, no price list, just someone waiting for anyone to notice.
That's usually where I go first now, past the middle stalls with the good lighting and the bloke shouting about knock down prices, to the two or three at the end that everybody else ignores. Not because I'm contrary, though I probably am a bit, but because that's where the stuff nobody's picked over yet actually is.
Why is the stall at the end of the row worth checking?
In the box was a little brass magnifying glass with a wooden handle, the kind that's gone a warm dark colour with age rather than being varnished that way on purpose. The glass itself had a tiny bubble in it near the rim, which I actually liked. It meant somebody had used the thing rather than kept it in a drawer for sixty years.
I asked her about it and she said it had come out of a house clearance, one of those boxes where nobody in the family wants the small stuff and it all ends up on a table like this. She didn't know anything more than that, and I didn't need her to. I paid five pounds for it and she seemed almost surprised I'd asked at all.
That's the bit I keep coming back to with the edge stalls. It's not that the middle of the market is overpriced, it usually isn't, it's that fewer eyes have been on the edge stuff, so it hasn't had a chance to get talked up. Nobody's stood there for twenty minutes deciding whether it's worth more. It's just sitting in a box waiting for someone to actually look.
Why the £5 rule still holds
I never leave a market without finding something under five pounds, and I'm fairly stubborn about it. It's not really about the saving, five pounds either way isn't going to change my week. It's that the rule forces me to keep looking properly, right to the end of the row, instead of doing one lap of the busy stalls and calling it a morning.
Some weeks that means I come away with nothing more exciting than an old tin or a chipped saucer, and that's fine too. This week it meant a magnifying glass with a story I'll never fully know, which honestly might be better than one I would.
What five pounds actually buys you
Here's the thing about an old magnifying glass like this one: it still works exactly as well as a brand new one. Glass doesn't really age the way people assume old things do. Mine's going to live on my desk next to the post I never quite get round to opening, and it'll do the job perfectly well for reading the tiny print on things, or for actually seeing the detail on the next find I bring home.
If you fancy something similar without hunting the edge of a market for it yourself, a small vintage-style magnifying glass with a wooden or brass handle on Amazon will get you close, and it's a genuinely useful thing to have knocking about rather than a novelty that ends up in a drawer.
Why should you shop the edges of a market?
October's when the markets start filling up with a slightly odder mix of stock, boxes that have clearly come out of someone's loft clearout before the weather turns properly cold. That means more of exactly this kind of thing sitting quietly at the far tables, waiting for someone who's bothered to walk that far.
So next time you're at a market or a car boot and you feel your feet start to turn back towards the entrance because you've done the main run, don't. Walk to the actual end. Have a look in the box nobody else has opened. Worst case, you've had a nice walk. Best case, you've got a magnifying glass with a bubble in the glass and a story that starts with somebody's gran.
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