99th flea market and antiques fair opens in Barjac with high expectations

Like twice a year, you shouldn’t be late. Either to buy as soon as the market opens, or to watch this hive come to life at 9 am. If this day of Thursday served you to locate, during the unpacking, a unique piece, you will even have to anticipate Friday, place yourself, and know how to align yourself with prices that are not really negotiable, the sellers remaining professionals. Even if “the market is sluggish, regrets Michel Raoux, not very buoyant at the moment”.

As in April or August, around four hundred exhibitors are expected under the plane and chestnut trees of Place Charles-Guynet. A stable figure, despite the market. Many come to save a bad summer. “Some of the junk dealers who arrived told us that they expected a lot from the fair because elsewhere, it didn’t go well…”testifies Michel Raoux.

Opposite, customers jostle less in summer than in spring, including foreigners, because of the holidays. The fair still expects an international and well-endowed public, in a market that has not “not especially” suffered the same inflation as everyday life, according to Michel Raoux.

Next year, the fair will celebrate its hundredth edition, which was put on the baptismal font in August 1972. The committee is already working on a giant aperitif, with the exhibitors and the population. Some animations are also under study. “We owe that to the people, smiles Michel Raoux : twice a year, they cannot move for five days…”