Haggling, American Style

The traditional rummage sale is a backyard affair at which the customers gather to buy a neighbor's castoff items --ranging from rusty potato peelers to used refrigerators--at castoff prices. In the past few years, however, the sales have grown too big for the one-family garage; they have moved into farm fields, drive-in theaters, convention halls and even Pasadena's famous Rose Bowl. A far cry from the old neighborhood affairs, which were largely stocked with merchandise from family attics, the new supersales have become major outlets for professional merchants anxious to dispose of leftover goods.

The biggest rummage sale of them all is the "Seven Mile Fair," a rural flea market that sprawls over 50 acres of fallow soybean field near Milwaukee. The fair has attracted as many as 1,000 sellers (who each pay a $3 registration fee) and 100,000 browsers, who haggle over the price of bassinets and branding irons, laundry soap, auto parts, farm tools and bakery goods. Charles L. Niles, who originated the fair and now spends all his time operating it, recalls the time that someone walked into the main office seeking an oxygen mask: "I announced it over the p.a. system, and within ten minutes we had one."

California, naturally, has produced the most spectacular bazaar of them all: an enormous affair conducted in the Rose Bowl, where bargain hunting now rivals football as the favorite sport. Every second Sunday in the month, year round, some 35,000 customers queue up outside the Bowl to pay the 50-c- that admits them to a day of offbeat shopping. Inside the stadium several hundred hawkers display their merchandise along the 50-ft.-wide walkway that circles the stadium. They have each rented booth space at $5, $10 or $15 (depending on location) to sell clothes, curios, antiques and all kinds of gadgets and recyclable junk. For the nostalgia-oriented, who form a big segment of buyers, there are WPA buttons for a dollar, rolls of World War II barbed wire for $35 and 1920s radios for $5. One of the hottest items on the flea market circuit: used blue jeans.

Perhaps 60% of the Rose Bowl merchants operate a high-class shop somewhere else and use the Pasadena sale to unload excess stock. One designer, Frances Bi-coll, offered second-graded bikinis for $6 that if perfect might retail at I. Magnin for $25. She explained, "We can sell them here for below wholesale and at least break even, instead of holding them over into next year." Mrs. J.F. Whitecotton, who until last month worked as an assistant in a school cafeteria, peddles different wares.

With her husband, an upholsterer, she collects and sells "Depression glass"--those transparent pastel plates, pitchers and glasses that used to be given away as bonuses for buying certain items during the Depression --and makes as much as $200 on a good day.

Besides Depression-level prices and the absence of a sales tax--most states exempt these so-called "casual sales"--the supermarket-style modern rummage sales and their smaller neighborhood counterparts offer the old-fashioned fun of a country fair. Their proliferation has also revived the ancient art of haggling, long since fallen into disuse in the U.S. Picture the satisfaction of one Connecticut housewife, for example, who bid for a three-year-old G.E. refrigerator and got it for $50. At the same sale she picked up a Kenmore washer with a new motor for $40 and a 3-h.p. lawn mower for $30. Her only regret : "I missed a Chevy pickup truck that went for $75."

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