Sellersville Gun Show (Forrest Road, Sellersville, $6): February 18th, 2012

[abner13]

I stopped by yesterday , looked into the show area , turned around and left. The 6 bucks was better spent on beer.

[paul641]

Early bird gets the worm,,,,,went early Sat. found a nice NPM M1 carbine,,75% correct,flat bolt,NPM clip,43 ser# and good 43 underwood barrel.Inport mark but I wanted a shooter,,went to Branch Valley and shot Tula ammo and got a nice 5 in. group at 50'yards. Works for me.

[abner13]

Originally Posted by paul641

Early bird gets the worm,,,,,went early Sat. found a nice NPM M1 carbine,,75% correct,flat bolt,NPM clip,43 ser# and good 43 underwood barrel.Inport mark but I wanted a shooter,,went to Branch Valley and shot Tula ammo and got a nice 5 in. group at 50'yards. Works for me.

Good for you. At least someone found a deal.

Gotta admit that show was pretty poor.

BTW , I've been a BV member for 13yrs.

[Bob0217]

Some of you guys are tough! The Sellersville show is in a small venue. They can't fit that many vendors or people. Also, there were two other shows (Bloomsburg and Lancaster) that weekend, spreading the vendors a little thin. It seems as though you will gripe when there's not a crowd, gripe when there is a crowd, gripe when the show is small, gripe when the show is big. You're not doing the rest of us any favors here.

You want shows to succeed? Help them out ... set up and sell stuff if you have stuff to sell. Attend to see what's there and bring some guns to sell or trade.

The vendors that were there offered some pretty good stuff. Between my father and I, we sold eleven out of the fifty guns we brought; also sold a few scopes and some miscellaneous stuff (ammo, parts,...). That's pretty good for a small time vendor. The crowd was better than in the past, fairly busy Saturday morning, and with relatively consistent flow through the entire show. The promoter, Commonwealth Target Company, has been increasing his advertising efforts, and it's paying off.

Seriously, consider what you can do to make the shows better, and if you can't do anything, please don't try to make it worse for those who are trying.

[SPEEDGUNNER]

This used to be a rockin' show back in the day, what happened? There were vendors on the stage, out in the hall, and the rows were full of guys selling new and used stuff. I think there were a hundred plus tables, where did they go? This little show was a favorite...

[GunLawyer001]

Originally Posted by Bob0217

Some of you guys are tough! The Sellersville show is in a small venue. They can't fit that many vendors or people. Also, there were two other shows (Bloomsburg and Lancaster) that weekend, spreading the vendors a little thin. It seems as though you will gripe when there's not a crowd, gripe when there is a crowd, gripe when the show is small, gripe when the show is big. You're not doing the rest of us any favors here.

You want shows to succeed? Help them out ... set up and sell stuff if you have stuff to sell. Attend to see what's there and bring some guns to sell or trade.

The vendors that were there offered some pretty good stuff. Between my father and I, we sold eleven out of the fifty guns we brought; also sold a few scopes and some miscellaneous stuff (ammo, parts,...). That's pretty good for a small time vendor. The crowd was better than in the past, fairly busy Saturday morning, and with relatively consistent flow through the entire show. The promoter, Commonwealth Target Company, has been increasing his advertising efforts, and it's paying off.

Seriously, consider what you can do to make the shows better, and if you can't do anything, please don't try to make it worse for those who are trying.

It is a small venue, it may have been a busy weekend for other shows, but the fact is that other people like to hear the truth about shows. I don't think that we're obliged to spin it as bigger than it was.

Yes, we complain about narrow aisles and unruly crowds, and we complain about sparse tables with disinterested sellers. That leaves a lot of other options that we would like, such as wide aisles, lots of motivated sellers, good prices and such.

The small size of the venue means that there will always be fewer vendors, and that really should be reflected in the admission price. For around 6 bucks I can either patronize a convention hall with hundreds of sellers, or a small venue with a dozen sellers. Guess which one seems like the better deal?

I'm not running the business model of the facility or the promoter, but I'd think that the draw to vendors is the customer flow. Even with just 3 dozen vendors or so, you could charge the vendors enough to have free admission and still pay for the hall and promotion, and for free you'd have thousands of customers willing to show up on both days, for the price of gas. Vendors should be willing to pay for that. But for $6 you just have to think about the fact that you can buy almost anything online and have it shipped for less.

We'd all like to see well-attended gun shows with plenty of vendors. That doesn't mean we have to pretend that this was one. It's been declining for years, I too remember sellers spilling over to the stage at this venue, back when I had to drive an hour to get there. This Sunday at 9:00 AM I was the sole person waiting in line (and the ticket lady made me wait 3 minutes anyway, but that's OK, 9 is 9, not 8:57). I'm curious, what was the exact number of different vendors? Not the number of tables, the number of sellers signed up? About 10-12?

[abner13]

Yes , it's a small venue , and probably over half the tables were empty. How would you like to drive to a show that advertised 75 tables , and 50 were empty?

I've been going to this show for many years. Most of the sellers there seem more interested with talking to each other than being at their tables. I've seen partial boxes of slightly oldammo , not collectibles mind you , priced higher than new stuff.

Old single shot shotguns for $195?!

Say what ya will , but when it takes longer to walk in from the parking lot than to walk thru the show , it's not worth $6. People walking out even tell ya, "don't bother!".