Scarborough Merchant's Flea Market — Attraction in Toronto

One thing to know about this Flea Market is to make sure you have cash as (most?) merchants won't accept Interac.

Love this place. It's one of the existing flea markets from way back when these things were cool and is still around. Last time I visited before Feb 12 2022 was in summer of 2019, BC (BeforeCovid 😳).

Parking is known to be bad, I've noticed. But we always are lucky. But it's always easy to say this when I'm not the one driving, lol. Overall, depending on time of day, parking can be challenging.

Lots of handbag and jewellery vendors. I was primarily interested in the handbags, but looked around and browsed for other items. Visited the bird store. Always loved the bird store.

Visited 3 handbag booths before settling on one seller, based on what I was looking for. The handbag guy at the entrance near the Thrift Store had excellent customer service and merchandise, but the messenger-like purse I liked was a bit too small, tho he had a good variety overall and had a good attitude. The lady at isle A1 (no name identifiable) was awesome, too -- good prices and nice stylish bags and purses, good prices, and awesome friendly and very helpful. There was one other handbag vendor that lacked customer service, so I went back to the Indian lady at A1 isle vendor. She was very helpful and great attitude.

Bought two Tshirts in the store connected to the market, with Thrift Store next door, that sold outerwear apparel to shoes and in between. Not sure if they were the owners, but the two guys there were super helpful and excellent customer service. Great prices and merchandise. But I only needed 1 plain white inexpensive t-shirts. Ended up buying 2, an amazing sale price. I was surprised to see a winter coat for the most unreal low price, but it too too big. Too bad. Great...

Not going to lie. We actually stumbled on this place. We - my partner and myself live in the beaches and it’s a quick drive to Warden and Eglinton. To say we were pleasantly surprised would be an understatement. This place is huge, like a small mall. There was hundreds of different business. Everything from jewelry - there is a lot of that but like gold and diamond businesses. To food and vintage. It took about an hour and a half to get though it. It’s very eclectic. You have booths with tools, hair salons, tailors, massages, food, dvds, electronics and a whole bunch of other kinds of booth I couldn’t even keep track. It feels like a world market and the diversity is amazing to see. Now it is a bit run down and some of it may be a little too eclectic for some but overall I’m impressed at the variety. The businesses themselves were so friendly, one helped us with our lost bell box remote. We did accidentally get lost a number of times because well it’s sort of a “find your own way” space. It’s so big and has so many corridors that you have to be comfortable with not knowing where you are going. This was one of the cooler spaces I have visited and if you get past the eclectic and at times foreign feeling of it. It’s delightful and a great way to spend the afternoon. I would suggest the market invest some better signage to help people get around and a better online presence to bring folks in, something to consider. This is a true merchant market and I applaud them keeping this kind of alternative business space alive...

Place is dirty, moldy, dusty, and smells 'stale'. Eating the food there means all those particles mentioned above are in your food. Mostly cheap garbage. And cheap in a bad sense, not "great value" cheap. Brings the wrong crowd, increase chance of getting shot while being there.

What they need to do, a) clean up the whole area, I get it, its going to cost, but it feels like im in a 3rd world corrupted country.

b) better and higher quality of goods, audit a lot of suppliers/merchants, way too much cheap garbage. Its like a trinket store, no real value stuff.

Some stores are great, though the majority are bottom of the barrel.

c) get rid of the jewellery section, i don't even see the point of having 20 different jewellers crammed in one spots. Seems saturated. Replace it with more merchants offering quality goods, diversity.

d) better presentation of booths plus better lighting. Place is dark, cold, and stale. A lot of booths look like poverty ville. Put more money back into renovations.

I could see more people coming and spending more money if they...