swap meet vs ebay pricing

[ezdays]

As a train of thought.

Unlike train shows there is no real overhead for e-bay stores..The investment a dealer makes before the show opens gives him a poor start.He may have $300.00 already wrapped up in tables,motel room,food and transportation.A bad attended show or attendees with billfolds in locked pockets can result in the dealer loosing his investment monies and for a 6 hour show the high risk may not be worth it and some dealers has turned to e-Bay.

The cost of attending these shows along with near MSRP may kill these shows in the future.

There are "train shows" and there are "swap meets". I'm assuming that you're talking about some like "The Worlds Greatest Hobby on Tour" or "Greenberg's" train shows. It's hard for me to comment on these shows since they haven't stopped by here in at least the last seven years. The last one they held was up in north Scottsdale in the middle of the summer when it was only 110+ out and they wondered why they had a poor showing. Besides, they fell far short of the "100+ vendors" that they said in their ads. You are probably right about the expense of showing there, but I'd expect to see a few major manufacturers show up, that's all part of their budgets, but at the one I went to, there were no manufacturers or major dealers. The shows that I'm talking about are the local "Swap Meets" where you can get a table for $25. There are those vendors that show up at every one of them, some taking two or three tables and are inflexible with their high prices, and there are the individuals that want to get rid of part or all of their collections. Those are the ones where you can get deals at, although there aren't that many of them there.