It's not all about making a huge profit, we fully expected to take a loss the first time out the door. It's just that the size loss that we took is way bigger than we can handle. That being said if we had eliminated the autographs we would have been somewhere around break even which would have been fine.
My motives were threefold.
One, to fix the problems that I consistently see at shows. basically to promote a show the way I feel it should be promoted and correct the practices I see that, as a dealer at a show, make me less than thrilled.
Two, to give back. We were hooked up with the Jim Thorpe Area Sports Hall of Fame. The non profit that cares for the Jim Thorpe Memorial Park and Mausoleum. They are working on adding a third life-sized statue to the park and I wanted to be a part of that.
Three, hey who wouldn't like to make a buck? But again we didn't expect to make anything this time out.
As for the admission, I do another one day show at a location that has a lot of built in foot traffic. They pack the place, and each subsequent show there have been more people and less sales. I wanted to do a show for actual collectors, not bystanders and onlookers. As a way of paying them back we did drawings and contests for over $100 in "Dealer Bucks."
Never did I think of this as a get rich quick scheme. If that was my attitude I wouldn't have worked so hard and certainly wouldn't have spent so much. I want to build something for the future, and with the right tweaks I don't think, despite the huge losses, that it's out of the question.
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