Feb. 2008

Pack Your Next Hamfest With Good Stuff To Buy

The following is an observation regarding the last few hamfests I've attended. Plenty of people were in attendance, but there were many, many more potential buyers than there were practical items to buy.

At one of these hamfests I noticed that half of the room was not being used. Tables were set up, but they were empty. At the other event, a full 75% of the room was unused.

Here's my idea. Designate these empty tables as "community" tables and allow any Ham who has purchased a ticket to bring two items to be displayed at one of the tables at no additional charge. The items must be strictly Amateur Radio related. No decorative iron or dog food like I've seen at some hamfests.

I'm betting that most hams in attendance have one or two good quality items that they wouldn't mind converting to cash, but don't want to rent a table to do so. Also, they don't want to have to "stand guard" over just one or two items and miss out on the rest of the hamfest. And they don't want to be forced out on the parking lot to "tail gate" with two items, either.

As for "standing guard", the sponsoring club should assign this detail to a volunteering member or two. Hams leaving equipment can put an index card or similar note on their items with the price and their call sign. If they are not at the table when someone needs info on an item, they can be paged.

If the hams who are displaying their one or two items want to volunteer to do a half-hour shift of guard duty at the "community" tables, that would be nice. However, I wouldn't require it of non-members as this might put a dent in participation and, after all, full tables are the object of this idea.

As an alternative to "free" tables for this operation, you might try charging $1. This doesn't sound unreasonable to me and might still generate a lot of interest.

73,

WF5TX