This is a new card game from the inventor of Bohnanza and like that game it has introduced some new concepts into card play. The game is themed on Boot Fairs (garage sales) where you collect all manner of junk, sometimes including what you want, at other times a pile of rubbish.

Each player receives a set of cards which are numbered from 1-9 in 6 suits. There are two of each set and two super trumps which win all tricks, making a deck of 110 cards in all. Having looked at your hand, you have to decide which card to collect, and this is done simultaneously, so more than one player may try to collect the same number. You collect cards by winning tricks, but as in many other games, you end up with cards that you don't want as well.

Tricks are quite cleverly handled. The leader to a trick plays a card. The next person then has a decision to take if they cannot follow suit. The game allows a player to treat that card as a discard or as a trump, unless someone else has done this earlier in the round. This leads to some intriguing choices. Do you trump early and hope to get a card of the type you are collecting? Doesn't tend to happen and players tend to throw away cards of different values. Alternatively, you may choose to treat your card as a discard, but then you need to check that no-one else in the round might be collecting that card.

The reason all this matters is because of the scoring system. At the end of the game, which is at least 3 rounds, but depends on the number of players, you get one point for cards you declared you are collecting and lose one point for all other cards that you gathered when winning tricks. You may ask how you end up with a positive score, because you will mainly take tricks with cards that you don't want. This is where the second clever mechanism comes in. At the conclusion of the 7 or 8 tricks in each round you can discard a set of cards from your rubbish collection pile. This is two or three cards, and again depends on the number of players but in each round you can discard one set. These cards are reshuffled into the bottom of the draw deck. If you have more than the requisite number of discards in your set, such as 5 or 6 cards then the excess are treated as scoring points for you. Not only that they now become the new card you are trying to collect, replacing the earlier card.

Finally, at the end of each game you can discard two sets rather than one set.

The tactics of the game seem to revolve around taking cards that you already have in order to score a large set. You can refer to the cards you have collected already -- this isn't that kind of memory game -- but you should try to avoid getting cards of every denomination. That's ok for your tactics, but what about everyone else? Well, you should be trying to minimise the benefits you give your opponents, so if one person has been squirrelling away 5's, you'd be best not to use a 5 as a discard. Of course as the round progresses your options become more limited, and then there is the matter of card play, referred to earlier.

The super trumps are guaranteed winners of a trick. The last twist in this card game comes from when a person plays the identical card to one used earlier in a trick. The device used is that the second player can choose that it is just a dot higher or lower than the earlier card and thus might be able to capture or avoid taking a trick. I thought this was one of the best ideas to emerge from this game.

My reaction to the game is that is does feel like a boot fair -- the collection of junk certainly happens. Reaction of other players has been more mixed -- it feels like lots of things are going on and you cannot focus on so many of these aspects at once. I did not find this a problem, because I decided not to concentrate on all areas, but to focus on my own collection goals. The game has some good new ideas, so for that reason alone I believe the designer should be commended. Like so many games at the moment, unless it gets a universal hit amongst your game group you may play a game less often than it deserves. Schnäppchen Jagd may fall into this category, which is a pity because given a longer run at this game, I think it could turn into a hit as big as Bohnanza.