Pomona Swap Meet: Cars, Parts, And Early Mornings In Southern California

I bought my first car when I was 14 years old, and over the years more than 50 cars, bikes, and scooters followed me home to the old farm. Naturally, all those projects left behind parts.

My father and I had accumulated everything from Triumph GT6 disc brakes to vintage Ford power-steering pumps. Shelves, boxes, corners of barns, and sections of the garage had slowly filled with pieces that were far too good to throw away but apparently not important enough to actually use. It was finally time to thin the collection.

An Early Morning at the Pomona Swap Meet

I stopped at a donut shop a few blocks away from my parents’ house, one of the only businesses open at 4:30 on a Sunday morning. I dragged myself through the door like a zombie in search of coffee and carbohydrates, which, at that hour, was more or less accurate. A few minutes later, I pulled into my parents’ driveway. Dad was already putting the last few items into the truck. I handed him a coffee, loaded the parts I had brought from my garage, and we headed for Pomona.

I had not been to a swap meet to sell car parts in nearly 10 years. After one morning of doing it again, I am not sure how anyone makes a living this way. The Pomona Swap Meet is one of the largest automotive swap meets on the West Coast. Even on what regular vendors consider a slow weekend, thousands of cars, vendors, parts, and shoppers descend on the L.A. County Fairgrounds in Pomona.

People come looking for everything from complete project cars to that one impossible-to-find piece of trim. There is also a significant international crowd. Buyers from Australia, Europe, Japan, and elsewhere regularly walk the rows searching for American cars and parts worth shipping back home We arrived at the fairgrounds around 5:15 a.m. It was still completely dark and unusually cold.

We found our space, set up the EZ-Ups, unloaded the truck, and prepared ourselves for the next eight to ten hours of haggling, automotive stories, unsolicited advice from self-appointed experts, and hopefully selling some of the parts that had been occupying my parents’ barns and garage for years.

Selling Old Car Parts at Pomona

Our first sale of the day was an old Triumph or BSA motorcycle gas tank that my grandfather had modified sometime in the 1970s. “Modified” may be a generous word. He had reshaped it using what appeared to be several hundred pounds of body filler. The finished tank probably weighed close to 20 pounds. It was painted bright yellow with green flames and looked exactly like the sort of thing somebody would have created in a garage during the 1970s.

A guy walked up, saw it, and immediately had to have it. That is the beauty of a swap meet. One man’s questionable fiberglass and body-filler experiment is another man’s treasure. The rest of the morning remained fairly steady. People bought rusty motorcycle wheels, old hardware, miscellaneous car parts, and eventually an extra set of truck wheels.

Slowly, the pile started getting smaller. Eventually, I decided to leave Dad in charge and walk around the Pomona Swap Meet for a while. That is where things really get interesting.

You Can Find Almost Anything at the Pomona Swap Meet

Some vendors seem to haul things to Pomona that I would have assumed were destined for the trash. More surprising is that somebody usually buys them. Apparently, those people are far more ambitious than I am. Despite signs explaining that the Pomona Swap Meet is supposed to be limited to automotive-related merchandise, the definition of “automotive-related” becomes remarkably flexible once you get a few rows into the swap meet.

You can find vintage soda machines, old advertising signs, shirts, hats, books, artwork, tools, toys, memorabilia, and assorted pieces of Americana. And if none of that interests you, there always seems to be somebody selling a collection of questionable “vintage” magazines out of the back of a van. Pomona has something for everyone. The cars for sale are another major attraction.

Walking through the car corral is essentially attending one enormous Southern California car show where almost everything has a price written on the windshield. Whether those prices have any relationship to reality is another question.

Cars for Sale at Pomona

The Pomona Swap Meet is not necessarily the first place I would go hunting for a bargain on a classic car. Some sellers appear to believe that simply driving through the gates at Pomona automatically increases the value of their car by 50 percent. Take, for example, a 1968 Ford Mustang convertible I found for sale.

In photographs, the Mustang did not look terrible. In person, it clearly needed significant restoration work. The body was covered with chips, dents, and other damage. The driver’s door looked like every car that had ever parked beside it had opened its door with maximum possible force. Under the hood was a C-code 289 V8. It had drum brakes and a manual transmission, which at least made things more interesting, but the interior also needed considerable work. The asking price? $18,500.

Elsewhere at the Pomona Swap Meet, another seller had a 1955 Ford Thunderbird in need of a complete frame-off restoration with an asking price of $16,500. Meanwhile, respectable driver-quality Thunderbirds could be found for somewhere around $25,000 to $30,000. That is one of the strange things about shopping at Pomona. The difference between a project car and a finished car is sometimes much smaller than the cost of actually restoring one. Then there was a 1994 Mini Cooper priced at $10,500.

The same basic car could be purchased overseas for around $2,000 and shipped to the United States. This particular Mini was also in exactly the sort of condition you would expect from a used 1994 car. Still, somebody was apparently optimistic. Very optimistic.

The Legend of the Overseas Buyer

Spend enough time talking with sellers at the Pomona Swap Meet and eventually someone will bring up the mythical overseas buyer. Usually, he is from Japan or Australia. According to Pomona folklore, these mysterious international collectors wander the swap meet paying outrageous prices for cars simply because they have to have them.

Almost every seller seems to know somebody who knows somebody who once sold a $5,000 car to a foreign buyer for $10,000. This legend may explain some of the asking prices. European and Japanese vehicles seem especially susceptible to optimistic valuations. One example was a 1951 Vespa 150 scooter. It was undeniably cool, particularly with its early handlebar design, but restored examples generally sell somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000. The seller at Pomona wanted $18,000. His explanation was simple: “It’s hard to find an old one.”

Perhaps. But a quick search online produced several available around the country for considerably less money. That does not mean somebody will not eventually buy it. This is Pomona, after all.

Why the Pomona Swap Meet Is Worth Visiting

By the end of the day, we had sold roughly half of what we brought with us.

The remaining parts will probably find their way onto eBay, where selling them does not require waking up at 4:00 in the morning or sitting in a folding chair at the fairgrounds all day. Still, the Pomona Swap Meet was worth the early alarm.

It is difficult to find another automotive event where such a strange and varied collection of cars, motorcycles, parts, tools, signs, memorabilia, and people all come together in one place.

You might find the rare part you have been searching for. You might find your next project car. You might find a beautifully restored classic. Or you might find a 20-pound Triumph gas tank covered in body filler, painted yellow with green flames. Somebody did.

For anyone interested in classic cars, hot rods, motorcycles, restoration projects, or old automotive parts, the Pomona Swap Meet deserves a spot on the Southern California automotive calendar. Just bring cash, comfortable shoes, and coffee. Lots of coffee.

The Pomona Swap Meet is held at the L.A. County Fairgrounds in Pomona, California, with events taking place throughout the year. Dates and additional information can be found at PomonaSwapMeet.com.