High demand, low supply inflates price of Confederate gear

PICKENS – It's been a busy week for Lee Chase, part-time roadside retailer and flea market entrepreneur.

The Greenville man drove 1,000 miles -- to Lexington, North Carolina; Johnsonville, Tennessee; and Atlanta -- to buy Confederate flags on the wholesale market.

Then he, his uncle and a partner parked on the sides of roads across the Upstate and waited for the business to roll in.

They had racked up $7,300 in sales in a week's time, selling flags for $20 that, before the current controversy, were going for $3.

"They are highly in demand," Chase said.

And short in supply.

He got the last ones in the warehouse in Atlanta, and all the other suppliers are drying up as well, he said.

It's boom time for dealers in Confederate merchandise, but Chase doesn't expect it to last long.

"They're gonna get so high you can't buy them," he said.

Never mind that these banners, embraced by many as symbols of Southern history and heritage, are made in China. They're still much easier to move than the American flag, which Chase was offering for $8 at his stand at the Pickens County Flea Market on Wednesday.

A customer walks by and enquires about the cost of the U.S. flags, and begins to move away after he tells her.

"I'll tell you what, if you want one, I've got three left, five bucks," he says. "You can't beat the price."

Still, no sale.

Another shopper ambles by Chase's tables, which are laden with everything from jumper cables to sling shots, fly swatters and back scratchers. He observes that the politicians in Columbia moving to take the battle flag of the Old South down from the Statehouse grounds have lost their minds.

"We're living under communism," the man says.

Chase won't agree with that, but he fears what may happen when the flag comes down. He said he's already seen violence.

"I've already had bricks throwed at me one time on the side of the road because I was selling these flags," he said, avowing that he is not a racist. His partner in the flag-selling business is a black man, he says.

"But there are a lot of people taking it for the wrong reasons," he says. "And a lot of people fly them on their trucks for the wrong reason -- the young people -- because they don't know what it even stands for."

Just down the lane here at the one-day-a-week commercial hub of Pickens County, Frisco Brown of Lenior, North Carolina, is selling a wide variety of modified Confederate flags for $20. He had been selling them for $6.

"They're very hard to get hold of, and I'm from North Carolina," he says.

Roy Melton of Bull's Gap, Tennessee, had jacked the price on his Confederate flags up to $30. He wasn't expecting a lot of sales.

"If they want one bad enough, they'll buy it," he said. "If they don't, I'll keep them."

Even with the highest price on the lot, he had only a few left.

"Yeah they're hard to get," he said. "You can find them if you know the right places. They're getting harder and harder to get."

He had bought a batch of flags at a flea market in Hickory, North Carolina, last week for $8 that were selling for $3 "before the big ruckus."

Confederate flag entrepreneurship has popped up as a sideline to regular businesses in some places.

Junior Shove, a native of New Jersey who says he had ancestors who fought on both sides of the Civil War, added a line of "Confederate gear" at his shop on U.S. 123 in Easley where he sells and installs car stereos and equipment for off-road vehicles.

He picked up a load about a week and a half ago and put up a big Confederate flag on a military truck out front to advertise the new venture.

He had sold all his flags and had only a few small items like flag-bedecked caps left by late Tuesday, although he said he had another shipment on the way.

"We were able to get the order in before they took it all off the market," he said. "I'm glad we were able to do it."

He said he's "very disappointed" with the Legislature for moving to take down the flag in Columbia and said in his opinion, the banner "has absolutely nothing to do with racism."

"They should think how many men and women lost their lives back in the day," he said. "They need to think of the people who were involved in the Confederacy. Not just whites. There were black soldiers as well on both sides."