THEY say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So if one man's rubbish is another man's treasure, I'm going to hitch up my wheelie bin and motor off to a car boot sale.

A report last week claimed that billions of pounds are spent every year in Britain on ebay, the Internet auction and sales warehouse, and at car boot sales.

Admittedly, there's something deeply and darkly satisfying about clinching a bargain, and it brings out the worst in people.

That's why little old ladies turn into screaming, brollie-wielding banshees in the January sales; and people with a knowledge of antiques will offer a pittance, willingly ripping off some poor innocent selling an old chair not realising it is a Chippendale.

And while channel hopping on Sky TV, have you seen the shopping channels where, say, a pack of five ladies' blouses worth £79.99 in the shops - limited stocks mind - start off at £30, and people buy over the phone? As the stocks diminish along with interest, the price goes down so the last few are offered at £3.

So how would you feel if you had been an early buyer and paid 30 quid? Well, you could not risk leaving it to the last minute and missing out on such a bargain, could you?

I once went to a car boot sale and marvelled at the greed and hunger of the bargain hunters, me included.

Before the stallholders could even open the boot, scavengers were on the back seat searching for tarnished gold.

Never mind the dodgy DVD copies of the latest Hollywood blockbuster that hasn't even reached the cinemas, or the new, boxed power tools that come with no guarantee and no chance to see if they work, suddenly everyone is a Sunday market trader with something to flog.

Nostalgia goes out the window when people get the car boot gleam in their eyes. Items that hold dear memories are suddenly deemed no longer fit to adorn the house and could make a few quid.

But it was the hard-nosed bargaining that really shocked me. People would offer ten or 20 pence for something with a £1.50 price tag. Haggling over it could last ten minutes.

So if it's a load of old rubbish that you would normally take to the tip, why are other people willing to snatch it off your hands at a price? I suppose that is what antiques are - one person's old secondhand stuff that someone else sees as a rare treasure.

With all this loot to be plucked from the back of a car, I got to thinking what garbage I could offload onto someone else. There's that big straw donkey that caused such problems at customs on the way back from Spain; or the lime green flared trousers from the Seventies; or the cracked old vase (definitely not Ming dynasty) that my auntie left me. Well, I never was her favourite nephew. The house, Porsche and au pair went to my cousin.

Anyway, I have this fiendishly cunning plan to pick up boot sale items for nothing. Just hire a skip and leave it in the street overnight.

Come morning, it is overflowing with items donated by kind neighbours who came in the night bearing gifts. In fact I'm ashamed to admit I have a relative who does just the opposite. She picks through other people's skips looking for useful items.

Inevitably, those bitten by the bargain bug become obsessive, professional car boot executives.

Once they have stripped their homes of even the light fittings to sell off to ravenous vultures in the middle of a field, they start buying up other people's tat and selling it back at the same place the following week - at vastly inflated prices.

Maybe it's to give senseless fools like me the opportunity to buy back auntie's vase after I was racked with guilt for flogging it in the first place. Hang the expense.

By the way, when's the tax man going to wake up to this massive revenue earner?

Going once, going twice, going up to root in the attic.

Updated: 10:25 Tuesday, August 23, 2005