The crowds massed in Worcester Park

I've was passing Christ Church St Philips yesterday when the Boys Brigade Jumble sale was due to start and I couldn't believe the crowd that had gathered! For a minute I thought that Gary Barlow must be making a guest appearance or something and I've certainly seen smaller crowds at some "celebrity" book signings. Perhaps some people, taken in by the hypnotic lure of daytime TV and Antiques Roadshow are holding out hope of finding a lost Van Gogh or first edition of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" or maybe there is some genetic attraction surrounding jumble sales that I am blissfully immune to. Certainly queuing up outside one half an hour before it's due to start is not something I'd have thought of before though some words were muttered about 'dealers' but that was apparently in reference to hunters of vintage clothing rather than purveyors of recreational pharmaceuticals.

Perhaps my immunity to jumble sales is a product of my upbringing. When I was a lot, lot younger my mother would help organise jumble sales in the local church hall and I would sit behind the row of tables and whilst she fended off the heaving mass of humanity who would attempt to strip the tables bare I would test the limits of my boredom threshold by trying to find out just how much fun can be extracted from a set of coloured pencils and a pad of paper. When questioned she didn't seem to know why people went to them either but then I was probably around four years old then so any meaningful answer she could have given me would have gone entirely over my head..

Are there any jumble sale regulars able to tell me what it is that's so appealing? Cost? Opportunity? Necessity? Chance to have a good rummage?