ABSTRACT
Dealing comprises another form of collecting. Dealing can either be a purely economic affair, or as is often the case, dealers can be collectors turned traders. For the collector, dealers are often either devil or angel depending on the relationship they have with them. Small-time dealers themselves, however, do not usually get rich from their endeavours, as the text demonstrates. Most dealers who trade on flea and collectors' markets, and so on, are doing so as a hobby, whilst hoping to make some small profit from it. Dealers comprise a collecting structure because they are often collectors themselves, and because they often stimulate new collecting serendipitously. Many a casual visitor to a market or fair has been started on a lifetime's interest in this or that from a chance encounter with their first example of it on a dealer's stall. From the example ofMorgan, the car-boot dealer (Morgan, 1993) we would assume that all dealers are sly sharks looking to rip off the public. Experience shows, however, that many dealers are friendly and helpful. It is such dealers with whom collectors strike up clientpatron relationships (Martin, 1999: 130-43). The collector who regularly attends a collectors' market or car-boot sale, or who frequents a collectors' shop, will often find their patronage rewarded with items held back for their approval by the dealer. In this way, the dealer builds up a small clientele to whom he knows he can seIl certain items, thus reducing the risk in buying them for resale. At the same time the collector develops a source of acquisition which becomes encoded as part of their ritual. lt is from such streetwise relationships that the commercialisation of collectors' clubs has grown (Chapter 20).
