Bill.....Your comments on Asher made me chuckle. When he first approached my table we were talking about 1975 Minis. He knew quite a bit of the nuances of the set (size variances, miscuts,etc) and he reminded me of myself at that time. Ironically I was 13 when the Minis came out, and had the same drive at the time as Asher does today, at the same age.... For those who go to show looking for brass tacks, you probably will not find them at the show or Ebay. I just finished up a 3 week, 7000 mile road trip, covering 14 states and seeing literally hundreds of friends, antique shops and looking at millions of items (beyond what I saw at the National). During this trip , I did not pick up a SINGLE Zeenut from my wantlist (just resale ones) but still had a great time. If you go to places with a closed mind you will probably not find anything for your collection and walk away disenchanted. If, on the other hand, you just go and check things out, you'll likely walk away with a positive experience. Erik touched on this in his post. Building a network of friends / colleagues to search for items for you is a perfect example of the hidden benefit of attending these types of shows. Its better than sitting at home at 2AM munching on a bag of Cheetos and staring at a screen wearing nothing but..... well, never mind ...that vision of some Net54 members would scare many out of the hobby!!
