A Day At the flea market

After a few suspenseful  weeks, the boys were off on their Flea Market Flip adventure. The gambit of emotions one must feel . The anxiety, the unknown, the excitement. Just thinking about it makes my head spin. Anyway, they were put up in a cute local hotel in New York, near the Flea Market they were going film the next morning. Here is where my insight ends and Gabe’s begins (unless you would like to hear about my dog sitting adventures while they were filming, which is  as exciting as it sounds. It just involved a lot of binge watching some TV shows) .

“Hey Guys it's me, Gabe, it's time for the inside scoop on Flea Market Flip are you ready? !! Our story consists of 3 parts buying, workshop day and selling, and believe me they are all an adventure!
 We arrived at the quaint hotel around 3 pm. The hotel was empty except for the employees. I remember thinking, is this the right place?  Am I to early? Or worse to late? Brushing off the nerves, Marco and I decided to settle in, drop the  bags and get something to eat. (15 minutes later) We are waiting for the elevator to get to the 3rd floor and we hear voices of two ladies laughing, heading toward us. Marco gave me a look and I knew what he was thinking( Are these our competitors?) It was silent in the elevator… it could have been due to the excitement of what was to come or just elevator etiquette where you move to the corners and look at the ceiling or door. Anyway, we got back to the lobby, and it was full of the Flea Market Flip crew members. I couldn't believe it. We were meeting the people we watched on TV for so long. It was amazing to meet the crew. We introduced ourselves, shook hands with the producers, agents and crew.  They were all so nice. Marco and I couldn’t wait to get to the Flea Market the next morning but hunger was kicking in and we were off to find the local restaurants. We woke up early to head over to the Stormville Airport Flea Market. It was colder than usual for this time of year. We were wrangled up together in pop up tents, with pairs of strangers and crew members. They gave us a printout detailing which teams will be competing. We hadn’t met our competition yet so we weren't sure what to expect, little did we know we had actually bumped into our competition in the elevator. Funny how things work, isn’t it? After the crew explaining the rules ( really fun stuff...not), Marco and I planned to explore the Flea Market right away as we were given time to poke through some of the items available while we were waiting for our turn to film. That’s right ladies and gentleman, there are multiple episodes filming on the same day. Don’t you just love some old fashioned Hollywood Magic?

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​Don’t worry we couldn’t talk to the vendors or buy things before hand (RULES ARE RULES PEOPLE). Before we could hunt, Marco and I were called over to a tent to meet our competition and low and behold, it was the girls from the elevator!  They were great! Jenn was so much like me and Karen was so much like Marco. We had so much in common, but that’s a whole other blog post. We were so excited to meet them! We were so talkative that the producers had to keep telling us to be quiet, from that moment on I knew it was going to be a fun episode! After talking with the ladies from Long Island, we were given 20 minutes to scope out and hunt for potential finds.Twenty minutes goes by very quickly in a Flea Market……………..

Finally it was our turn to begin filming, and to say we were eager to get started was an understatement. Looking cool and tropical in our outfits, we were ready to become the Caribbean Treasure Hunters. It was to cold outside for our outfits, but we brought the heat. (Mind over matter)  Filming is nerve wracking, especially when we had the opportunity to meet Lara, but we quickly got into the swing of things. We were anxious to get started and hunt for our pieces. As soon as we were allowed to begin, I took off for the pair of chairs I had found during a walk through. Lara, Marco and the camera crew were following behind. I needed to get to those chairs, they were a rare find in a Flea Market, I was so inspired by the chairs, I. HAD. TO. HAVE. THEM. ​​ Before I knew it I was running. I imagined myself pushing through the camera crew, to get to the chairs, no one else could have them, they were mine. I had them in my sights! Almost there.  Not sold , not sold, they are mine I repeated in my mind. I kept running and running....Nothing would get in the way of me and those chairs. Leaving Lara and Marco behind, one set of cameras was with them and a very out of breath cameraman with me.

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 We were able to get a really good price on the chairs and the hunt for the rest of our flip list was on. Unfortunately all the other items we found during our browsing time were gone, so the pressure was really on! Down but not defeated, we continued to search and encountered a popular vendor where we found the two remaining pieces for a great steal. Just a little TLC and they were good to go. Our goal was to spend less than $100 on all of our finds, and with a little, bargaining we did it! 

-Gabriel ​

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