Exciting finds: Toy and record fair coming to Chesterfield as market goes through regeneration to attract new events

Adrian Wells runs the ever-growing AA Record Fairs along with his long-time friend, Andy Wilkinson, who has been standing markets for over 32 years.

“Andy’s a tried and true market trader, and I’m just somebody who’s trying to clear the amount of stuff from their house,” Adrian smiles.

“My girlfriend said to me one day ‘It’s taking over the house, you really need to do something about this’. So I started thinking, ‘Okay, instead of being a collector, I’ll let things pass through my hands’. And that’s where it started for me.”

“I used to buy quite a lot of music myself,” Andy adds. “Mainly from Warp Records in Sheffield. And then I got into the car-boot thing about thirty-odd years ago.

“And I kept picking all these records up that I knew little about value-wise. I used to buy Record Collector magazine, and I used to finger through it and look what I’d bought. And I used to try and learn it. So I’d flick through page after page after page, learning what artists were collectable. What labels to look for by that artist.

“I was working for the Chesterfield AGD post office at the time, and I took a day’s holiday to stand on the market. I took as much on that day, as what I was earning in a week working at the post office. And I thought, maybe it’s just a one-off, so the following week I did the same. I took the same amount of money.

“Then my contract ran out at the post office, and I thought I’ll just try and make a living out of this. So I was doing markets five days a week… So that’s what I did for thirty-odd years. I didn’t make a fortune, but I did alright.

“And just over three years ago, me and Adrian were doing various record fairs across the country, and I said to Adrian ‘We can do this as good as they’re doing… why don’t we try and do a record fair ourselves?’”

And here is where AA Record Fairs began. A for Andy, A for Adrian. The Chesterfield fair is certainly popular, the initial venue planned was the Queen’s Park leisure centre “then covid hit and got locked down, so… that was an end to that”.

“We approached the market management and asked them if they were interested in having the record fair,” says Adrian. “This was in early 2020. And they said ‘Yeah, we’d really like to do it’. With the introductory offer the council made, we were able to give all our traders some really great rates.”

In just over three years, AA Record Fairs have spread to Derby, Chesterfield, Sheffield, Lincoln, Nottingham, Leicester, Buxton, Matlock Bath, Huddersfield and Worksop.

The success of their record fairs certainly has a science to it: specialist markets make footfall.

“The footfall is great,” says Adrian, nodding. “To give you an idea, we do a record fair in Sheffield market. They have a tracker camera of people that actually come into the market. We’ve asked them, ‘What’s the difference in footfall on a normal Saturday, to when we have the record fair?’ And the uptake on footfall when we do the record fair is 1500 people.”

And here is where Adrian and Andy aim to go even further with this, by introducing a toy fair alongside their record fair, the first being at Chesterfield market on Sunday July 9.

“With the toy fair going on as well, we’ll double the footfall, maybe even triple, because you’ll get the crossover with the records too,” says Andy.

Adrian nods. “That’s why the council are so keen for us to do it, and have supported us… The market is about to go through a regeneration, and they are wanting to change how the market is perceived. Rather than it just being a general market, they are wanting to attract events to the new space, and we are one of several companies that are bringing these events to the Chesterfield town centre.”

And what inspired mixing the record fair with a toy fair? Andy explains the passion in collecting, be it music or toys.

“Thirty years ago, when I first started standing markets, you would go round car-boots, and not only would you pick up records, you’d see other collectables. Star Wars toys, Rupert annuals, Dandy annuals, Beano… other collectable toys. And they used to be for pennies.

“But nowadays, what you were selling twenty years ago, the prices are astronomical if you’re comparing Star Wars figures that I was selling… Such as Yak Face, I’d be selling for sixty quid, now you’re looking at four to five hundred pounds for that one figure. You just don’t see that at car-boot sales anymore. It’s a very specialist market nowadays.”

Same with records? “Yeah. So Oasis, Definitely Maybe, which I bought myself, and sold maybe twenty years ago for thirty quid, is now £250. It’s hitting the right thing at the right time, or holding on to the right thing at the right time, and the demand going up for that particular item, then it being ultra-collectable. Which is what interests a lot of the record collectors and toy collectors.”

Adrian agrees. “It’s that collectability. That’s what we’re connecting the two things with.”

So, if you’re a collector, or fancy a trip out to find exciting finds, head to Chesterfield market on July 9. If you fancy a stall, contact Andy on 07587 103047.