[vcf-midatlantic] The Swap Meet was great!

[Jeffrey Brace]

The swap meet went wonderfully well. It was a lot of work for us to plan
and prepare and on the day of. We had a great turnout in terms of both
vendors and buyers. The weather was great so that was a plus. I personally
scheduled the good weather with the National Weather Service. It was less
expensive that you might think. I got a lot of positive feedback from many
people. It was a mini reunion of sorts because we haven't seen many people
due to Covid times so it was great to see those we haven't seen for over a
year, in one case 2 years, another case it was 4 years. We had added ham
radio, tv, antique radios to this swap meet which was different than the
last one. That helped to increase turnout. A member of CDL (Makerspace at
InfoAge) named Martin is helpful to our cause and is a member of ARRL. So
he posted to their site our event. So we started to get Ham Radio guys as
well as general electronic parts guys coming to the event. We want to
continue getting these cross interest groups coming to our event and
advertising to their websites.
I will have to look at the numbers, but it seems to be 3 times the number
of our first swap meet in terms of vendors and people. It's impossible to
determine how many general public buyers came, but definitely a lot more.
There were spurts  of people coming in the front entrance and the back
entrance. I was focused on keeping the front gate organized taking money
from vendors, from selling our surplus and selling our swag. We were happy
to have sold a lot of our surplus inventory helping it find a good home.
Dr. Manhattan took care of making sure everyone wore a mask and keeping the
giant squid away from our event.
We also had the benefit of there being a furniture sale by Selective
Seconds (http://www.monmouthresourcenet.org/search/selective-seconds/)
right across from us. So there were a lot of people parking in the dirt
parking lot directly across from InfoAge, but a little down the road from
our parking lot event, then seeing us, walking over to us on the grass
field, etc. We are hoping to get in touch with the organizers of that event
to do it at the same time.
We made a lot of good decisions about the organization of the event that
worked out much better than the first time including traffic flow and
volunteer coordination. So I will think about and ask for feedback to
further improve. In a lot of cases there were people that weren't sure of
who we were and if we would have a successful event. This happened with our
first swap meet, so many of the skeptics came this time. So in other words
each successful event will help spread the word and have a lot of repeat
vendors and buyers come as they see how successful it is all-around. There
were some new skeptics, but I think they are convinced now.
The follow up event, the repair workshop after the swap meet went very
well. Most of the usual suspects and some new ones came. They greatly
enjoyed working their recent purchases right away instead of putting them
away until they had time. We did the usual go out to dinner Saturday night.
Sunday another day of repair workshop, bagel, donuts and coffee, WaWa for
lunch. Lots of people doing stuff for repairs, also in the museum and
warehouse. Plus lots of conversations with people about different things.
Also lots of visitors in the museum Saturday (too many for Dylan to count)
and a dozen or more on Sunday because I had put a mention of visiting our
museum after the swap meet in the advertising. I had done a lot more
extensive and different advertising than the first time, so there was a lot
of interest. Also I got interviewed by The Coast Star which is a local
paper.

Thank you everyone who volunteered especially Bill Inderrieden (putting up
signs, directing vendors, buyers, packing up, many many other things), Alex
Jacocks (great idea about getting the trailer and lots of help with hauling
and selling), Jonathan Sturges (also help with hauling and selling), Ben
(help at the front desk and gate), Corey (helpful in many ways), Laura help
at the front desk and packing up), Dylan (many hours filtering people at
the gate), Adam (help with the surplus pile), Andy, Dean for labeling and
sorting the surplus. There are more that I forgot to mention, but it's when
it becomes a team effort that everything goes smoothly and we are
successful.

We aren't sure when the next swap meet will be. We are thinking about what
will work best with our schedule.

VCF East is October 8, 9, 10 and the website will be updated within the
next two weeks and ready for registration, etc.


On Sat, Apr 24, 2021 at 6:37 PM Bob Applegate via vcf-midatlantic <
vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

> I was only there for a few hours, but it was so nice seeing people in
> person again!  I wasn’t a big buyer but did snag a couple things that I had
> not expected to find, and found homes for some items I brought with me, so
> I came home quite happy.
>
> The weather was perfect, of course.  There were enough vendors so the
> buyers could spend time looking for treasures, and I heard from multiple
> vendors that they were happy with their sales.
>
> An excellent day, indeed!
>
> Thanks to everyone who volunteered and worked so hard to make it a success!
>
> Bob
>
>