Swap Meet?

[prowler4]

A buddy of mine and I were talking this morning and were thinking:

Would a "swap meet" room at Nationals be a viable idea. Think about how many times we have stuff we want to trade because we lose interest/room/motivation/etc. And how often those kits end up in a FT area.

I know it's WAAAAAY too late for this year, but has the "swap meet" concept ever been tried?

Is this a viable concept?

I know it works at bicycle shows and ski events. Why not scale models?

[crazydon]

Depends on if your talking 1-2 kits or ALLOT more. If just a couple kits I would tuck them under your arm and see if you can trade them.

More than that you can't do unless you have a fixed location.....aka a vendor table. That means space the host club has to pay for and that means passing that cost on.

I would also suggest NOT bringing a shopping cart full of kits into to sell or trade in the vendor rooms. I've seen it tried before and it leaves a bad taste in the host clubs mouth and po's vendors paying for space. Couple years ago I had 1 guy park a pick-up truck full of stuff in front of the venue I use for my local show doing that....and I asked him to leave (which he did). It was VERY uncool to use a event run and being paid for by another group like that.

I'm sure you'll get people disagreeing with this but they've never run a event like this before....and the Nats is the most costly type model contest to run

[thegoodsgt]

Prowler, how dare you think outside the box!

But what a great idea. I'd suggest contacting someone involved in the Phoenix Nats next year to brainstorm and see how a swap meet could be done. Heck, all you really need is one or two hotel rooms!

[MikeB]

I recall many years ago attending Nationals and Regionals where people would set up swap/vending in their private hotel rooms. They would post room numbers on a bulletin board in the contest area. I don't know why the practise ended, because I haven't seen it lately.