ATTACK OF THE ONE ARMED RIFFLER

I had a commission to process a collection at the other end of the country recently. As I didn’t need to move a huge amount of stock I decided to take the train and leave the Volvo in the garage. Unfortunately this garage was not the shed which leans against my house, which in any case is full of my slower-moving merchandise; this was the sort of garage that has mechanics and a ramp, so I returned to a huge bill, but that’s another story.

As well as getting time to stare out of the window and observe the country going about its business, the benefit of a long train journey is you get access to a huge stack of abandoned newspapers and magazines. You find yourself reading stuff you would never have bought, let alone had time to peruse. In the back of my mind when wading through the print, there’s always the possibility that a fragment of knowledge, an idea or a nugget of information will fall into place and change my entire life. However I can honestly say that this scenario is unlikely to occur with the Collectors Gazette. This is not a reflection on the standard of the writing, but more because in all these years I have never seen a copy of the paper abandoned on a train. I can only put this down to the fact that the contents are far too precious to discard. It is more likely to be lovingly transported home and stored in binders, or passed on to your brother in law.

I was at one of those hardcore shows recently; you know the kind where there is a noticeable lack of women and children, and a preponderance of beards, glasses and heavy rucksacks. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking them, some of my best customers wear all these, and some even take them off in bed. The problem is their fixation on the business in hand renders them unaware of the risk they pose to anyone standing near them.

Bags are a necessary evil. It’s obvious that customers will need to carry their purchases from one table to the next. Nothing gladdens my heart more than seeing evidence of colleagues making sales, apart from making my own sales of course. The trouble with backpacks is that they overhang and take on a life of their own. It’s particularly dangerous when they turn round, as anyone in its path will end up with bruising. What these guys need is an HGB (Heavy Goods Bag) licence.

Photographers with traditional SLR cameras and telephoto lenses are even more dangerous. The frontal protuberance inevitably balances the projecting backpack with lethal consequences, as the bag tends to be weighted with heavy metallic objects. As well as decapitation for anyone unfortunate enough to be standing in the vicinity, the bag swinger is a menace to himself, as the centrifugal force can build up and turn him into a whirling dervish spinning out of control. These ‘swapmeet pirouettes’ have been known to last up to ten minutes.

You might think that shoulder bags would be less dangerous, but I’ve seen them take out whole shelves of collectables too. This trick is favoured by another swapmeet menace, the One Armed Riffler. This character either has a shoulder bag or a pile of carrier bags. He doesn’t want to put them down in case they are stolen, trodden on or accidentally left behind, but something on your table catches his eye. The result is someone rifling through your carefully prepared and presented stock, creasing paperwork and even attempting to open boxes, with one hand. You get the feeling that even the stock on a supermarket shelf would be treated with more respect.

But there’s a much more frightening visitor than the fiddler of singular appendage; he behaves like a woodpecker and is known as the tintapper. He is oblivious of his destructive capability and his modus operandi goes something like this:

"My goodness" (picks up item with left hand, drops it on top of more valuable item, puts heavy bag down on display, picks up item again) "I think that’s" (tap tap with finger), "yes I’m sure it is" (tap tap tap even harder with fingernail bouncing off item at ninety degrees). "Yes, I do believe that’s tinplate!"

"Why, what an observant fellow you are," I say, relieving him of said item. "See how if I press here with my thumbs" (bend, grunt) "it creases into a dent. And now" (twist, sproing) see how the tabs have popped out. Yup, it’s tinplate alright. If that was plastic it would have cracked by now!"

"Amazing! How much is it?"

"Well it was twenty pounds before you drilled a hole in it with your finger."

Of course all this leaves me unconcerned as I have a free insurance policy. It’s called the box under the table, which is where all stock goes after the tintappers and one armed rifflers have finished with it. From the customer’s point of view, the best thing about the box under the table is that when you’re kneeling down to look through it, you’re safe from having your head knocked off by the bag swingers.

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