Jeff,
When you brought up the "hawks" coming over and trying to cut in on your buying of a collection at your table, at least they were other dealers who paid for the right to buy someone's collection. I certainly agree that this is very poor etiquette and is disgraceful if you are a fellow dealer doing this to another dealer, but I got a beef with what I consider is a worse situation.
I did a show in Ohio last month where everytime someone would come in to sell to the dealers set up, a customer who was at the show hanging around for about 4 hours was "Hawking". The moment he saw someone selling stuff, even though they just got there and only one dealer had a crack at the stuff, he would wait until after they were done at their first table and then corral them over to a vacant table and go through their stuff and offer to buy them as if he were a dealer who paid to set up there. I told the show promoter that this was BS and was going to piss alot of dealers off who pay to set up and pay for the right to buy collections at a show. If I was the promoter, I would have told him to stop or get out, or better yet, pay your money and set up a table!
. Now, if none of the dealers wanted to buy the stuff and he wanted to buy them in the parking lot or in the lobby of the hotel, so be it, you can't control that, but dealers pay for the right to have first cracks at a seller's collection at a show in my opinion.
Tim