"Any good finds at Historicon" Topic

Anyone find anything interesting at the dealer hall or flea market?

As a day tripper, I think this has been one of the worst years ever. From the low invemtories, I get the sense that a lot of vendors are just going through the motions. Out of stock or we didnt bring that this tine was a near constant refrain. My shopping list went mostly unffilled. I don't think I've ever spent less than I did today and what I bought I didn't come for.

Everyone really insists on ordering online but that kind of defeats the purpose of me suffering on the 95 for hours, spending $25 USD bucks to get in and the being told to order online is not something I'll do indefinitely.

But on the other hand the games have never looked better. I don't recall any old school games on billiard table green cloth. Folks have really stepped up on making sure their offerings were visually attractive.

Maybe that's the point, that the gaming should be better than the shoppimg. That appeared to be the case for me.

The harrowing drive has made me cranky. Grumle grumble.

I was debating whether to go or not Saturday. Glad I didn't after hearing what you said about the dealer hall. I would have gone mostly to shop, but if their inventories were so low that they were already sold out on Saturday, I'm glad I saved the money.

Found some really good deals in the flea market Thursday and Friday. Seems Saturday afternoon was a bit sparse – noticed a considerable amount of empty tables compared to last year.

~iPaint

I got the two new packs of chaos demons from Eureka. I'm very happy with them. I also bought the new Deluge book for With Fire and Sword as well as 10 packs of casualty figures and farm from them.

Tomorrow, if there are any left, I'll get some of the Croc Games Automatons. If he sells them all before the end of the day tomorrow then I'll just order them.

I thought there were a bunch of neat things there. The new moderns from MBA look like they are going to be really cool. The 15mm versions look like some of the best 15mm figures I've ever seen.

They aren't out yet or I would have snapped a bunch of them up.

I do need to stop at Alien Dungeon and get one of those mouth terrain things tomorrow too.

I think one of the problems with keeping stock on hand is knowing what to bring. There were some of the Pulp packs that I had that no one touched at Cold Wars and Williamsburg Muster and I thought I had enough of them. Then at Historicon they were the thing that everyone wanted while some of the stuff that was hot at Cold Wars didn't sell that well at Historicon. It is my first year with the stuff so maybe a trend will develop.

However after 15 years of selling painted figures I've never noticed one. Two years ago I could have brought $10,000 USD in painted 15mm ACW and sold it all. This year I have four boxes of it that only one person even looked at.

Demand is an odd thing and there are many shows where I get asked for Vikings or Romans and sell all I have but no interest in the next 6 shows for them.

I have no idea what causes these surges in popularity. This show it was English Civil War stuff. I had none of it in stock. You just carry as much as you can and with lead prices being as high as they are it gets expensive to stock everything.

Ipaint, I saw that, too. The vendor and the flea markets areas felt sparse compared to previous years. That said, I did find a bit of what I happened to be looking for. 95 was a nightmare Saturday morning, but that has gotten to be a bit typical for that highway.

I do understand the issue as a dealer on what to bring and what not to bring. You only have so much room in the van or trailer and then only so much room at the show. And as Pictor said, sometimes people want something at one convention and at the next you just get a polite look and they walk on.

I go to shop. While I could buy it on line, I like seeing in person.

Did the guy who purchased all the molds from Crescent Root for the 28mm Sudan buildings have a table at the dealres hall?

I am glad to hear and see via the pictures how games have improved. For me, this is a visual hobby and I love a nice looking table.

Matthew

The dealer hall was certainly not what it was several years ago: no On Military Matter, no Last Square, no War Store, no Wargamers, no 19th Century Miniatures, etc. And many that do come only bring a small set of their products.

However, I did find a new dealer that had the complete line of Essex ancients! They are C&B Miniatures. Their web site is CBMinis.com I was able to pick up a lot of minis I needed.

Mark

Mark: Do the 15mm Essex packs still have the old contents of 4 mounted or 3 mounted command or 8 foot or 6 command per pack? I notice that C&B does not state pack content numbers.

Did Pendragon or Kalistra have a presence there? Specifically, 10mm WWI ranges?

Tom

Mark – those dealers haven't been at Historicon in Fredericksburg and some haven't been to HMGSE cons in quite some time.

We at BrigadeGames take almost everything we have (4,000+ products) until space runs out. We were surprised that even with some expected popular items stocked in depth that we ran out of a few items. However, that was a very rare issue for us. I can say that some items that we did not have had nothing to do with the convention or prep for it but with mfr/supplier issues.

One set of products I stocked up on 3 weeks before the show (taking almost all of the suppliers production) got hit with an abnormal level of orders before the convention and we arrived with low levels. Those sold out by Friday.

There is another issue at play here as well I think. I stopped going to the east coast shows years ago. Simply put, I didn't make any money. My hope was customers there would become mail order customers, but it was just the reverse. A lot of my con customers were existing mail order customers.

To get to the show (from Chicago) I have to load and pack and drive Wednesday. Set up Thursday and then sell for the first half day. Sell Sat and Sun, then pack Sunday and drive home. The unload Monday and clean up. Lots and lots and lots of work. For which I usually made 0 profit or lost money.

Meanwhile, since then I stopped going to shows at all and my sales dropped….not one bit.

Plus, when I'm there as a dealer I don't get to see the games or play. And at night I'm too tired to do anything but go to bed after a nice meal out.

A very prominent UK dealer I know had the same experience. Stopped going to shows and sales dropped….not one bit.

It ain't just the gamers getting older, us dealers are getting older too!

Curiious to know if the noise was any lower this year than in past years.

I was not there for Saturday, so I can't speak to his bad it got then, but on Friday the noise, while still an issue, wasn't quite as bad as I remembered. This year they had the main room partitioned off using thin fabric drapes like last year. These helped some. This year they also had the entire front half of the hall carpeted. IIRC, last year they had only parts of the front carpeted. It was noisier than the Distelfink room, but not all that much. I did not see anyone cupping their hand behind their ear as was so much in evidence in years past.

I went to the dealer hall with my son in tow. He is only 7 and was not interested in shopping. So, I picked up my pre-order from Good Ground and and never saw the dealer area that day again.

I am not sure the hall was so empty. It is probably a somewhat bigger area than the tennis barn. So with roughly the same amount of dealers, I suspect it only seemed somewhat empty. Again, I did not really do much in the way of shopping.

In the old days the dealer hall in the Tennis barn had 90+ dealers. This without the commercial things like Costco and alcohol merchants is about 60. I would say that is not the same amount of dealers.

I would say that is not the same amount of dealers.

It did feel like I flew through the lanes quickly. I chalked it up to the fact that my son kept saying, "I'm bored." Now I REALLY know why!

Hey Tom,

C&B Minis uses the same old packaging … same number of figs, same small plastic bags, same blue labels.

Mark

Yes, my son loves to play, but shopping is not fun to him. Maybe he does not suffer from, "ooooo, shiny!" Yet.

I love the dealer's hall. The one booth, I don't know who the guy is, but I love looking at all the large painted soldiers. These are 60mm,

But every stand has cool stuff to look at and I want it all. I just don't have the money or space:-) Does anyone else have this problem? ;-)

Hey Lon,

My comments were certainly not directed at Brigade Games. You guys … along with Old Glory, Battle Front, Age of Glory, etc. are the 'anchor stores' now for HMGS cons.

And there were some new names like Pico Armor and IELLO.

BUT, you are not the norm. I wanted to get a copy of a new set of Sailing rules that were released at the con… they were even advertised in the Convention Book. Nope, they were sold out. They said they only brought a few copies, but they indicated I could order on line "#@$%?? Stupid is as stupid does.

Mark

I picked up a few things. Not nearly as much as last year. If I were evaluating the con solely based on what I was able to buy, I would have done much better staying at home and taking advantage of some of the pre-Historicon sales. In part it was because unlike prior years, this year I showed up with a specific shopping list, so it is more on me than the vendors.

One question though: Why do some vendors not post the price of items?

For me it's not worth the entrance expense and traffic hassle to do a day trip just to shop. Years past I stayed in Lancaster the entire weekend.

My first Historicon since 1996. I was very happy to attend and enjoy the eye candy and see old friends and to make new ones. Good times. The shopping experience was very successful, even though the dealer hall was not as I remember it from years past. I did get…

two Zvezda 1/144 aircraft kits
By Fire & Sword scenery and some Ottoman command tokens
A Flames of War artillery blister out of the flea market
the latest issue of Wargames Illustrated
Old Glory/Command Decision Spw 222 armored cars and German casualty set
Paper Terrain 15mm train kit
Static grass tufts
and the official Historicon t-shirt

All from a very disciplined and executed shopping list for myself and a buddy who could not make it the trip… The strength required to resist the "OOOOH, shiny!" syndrome is immense.

Mike

I found pretty much everything on my shopping list, other than a few items from Acheson (not in attendance) and some VBCW stuff from Footsore. (American half of that company does not yet manufacture interwar pieces.) Managed to pick up a good amount of Old Glory 25s for Plains Wars. But the real star of the vendor hall was By Fire And Sword. Their booth was packed all day Friday and Saturday (only two days I attended) and they were mostly sold out of skirmish sets, dice, certain blisters, very nice mats, etc, by Saturday evening. I hope they take the hint and bring more stock and reserve more space next year!

Brigade Games – please please please put price tags on your books next year or at least make up one of your price sheets for the book table (you guys only had an Empire of the Dead price list on that table). There were many books I wanted but the person I asked did not know the price and it took about 10 minutes to find someone who did … rather than spend the next 40 minutes asking about the other 8-10 titles I was interested in, I decided to move on …

I picked up some LotR deals in the flea market but honestly it seemed like a lot of folks there were asking very near to retail, which is somewhat delusional in an age of online shopping. The second session on Saturday was pretty poorly attended with about 1/4 of the tables unmanned. Still, there were deals to be found for the eagle-eyed traders.

Got everything I need and then some…Steve, Lon and the Eureka guys never disappoint. And of course Rick the "Flag Dude"…thanks fellas.

This was my second trip to Historicon, my first being last year. I had an excellent time at both, but I certainly noticed the vendor inventory was lacking by the end of Friday.

The second flea market session on Saturday is often rather light. Once you sell your stuff, there is no reason to hang around when you can go gaming.

My big "find" was some hedges from a company I hadn't previously known existed: Nerd Herd Wargaming (www.nerdherdwargaming.com). They produce some nice terrain pieces at a reasonable cost.

Mark – I didn't take it that way. Thanks for the complement. I was just relaying my experience.

Manchu, you are absolutely right. My apologies.

Unfortunately, our prep time before HCon was very limited this year. Our sales in June were up 80% over our average the past 6 months. This had us doing other things to get prepared for opening at the convention that we normally would have completed before arriving. And I was one staff member short due to a job change.
We will try harder next time.

45th Div -Did the guy who purchased all the molds from Crescent Root for the 28mm Sudan buildings have a table at the dealres hall?

I didn't have a booth at Historicon, my son and grandsons come with me every year so I want to spend the time gaming with them instead of running a booth.

However Phalanx Consortium was selling my stuff out of their booth (and pretty much sold everything they had!!).

I plan on running a booth at Fall-In and Cold Wars but PC will be attending other conventions and will be carrying my stuff (15mm and 28mm). But of course you can always just order from my website

theartofwargaming.com

Brigade Games – I am very pleased to hear about that sales increase! It is always good to hear about that sort of thing in this hobby. I'm sure I'll nab the books I missed last weekend from you before the next H-con rolls around. I'll be watching for your next sale!

Since I have been going to shows since 1983, I have been through many of the experiences that have been cited here. I went to 19 straight Historicons and many Cold Wars, Little Wars and Fall Ins too.
However those years were before manufacturers and distributors began attending conventions. Sales were great and much higher than the last decade or so. With the 'big boys' attending shows, it squeezed out the small store such as me.
Historicon has never been one of my top 10 net shows due to expenses of going 13 hours there and back again plus booth and other sales cost including the 40% or more restock costs.

5 shermans, two planes, a pack of 7.5 cm le.GebIG 18 artillery by mistake needed regular Herr, some 15mm HYW figures, some mounted dark age warriors, all from the flea market at great prices, made up for the drive on 95 south!

I found more than my shopping list ;<) Glad Bill M. brought his excellent Good Ground shop up from Atlanta which took my pocket book by storm. He also ran a great Pea ridge game.

I am thinking that the internet and dealer/manufacture retirements are beginning to make their presence known in the dealer hall. However I saw some excellent games and had a great time.

I had a very successful flea market. I was there at the Friday PM and the Saturday AM sessions, both times at table 15. I sold about 98% of the "stuff" I brought with me. Friday was WWII tanks and planes and Saturday mostly Viet Nam. Thanks to all the buyers and then I ran as fast as I could to the Old Glory stand!!

I found Legion of Honor for less than half price in the flea market, so that was a good thing.

Amazingly enough, found pretty much all that was on my list:

A whole bunch of Foundry Darkest Africa , a variety of 28mm post apoc, pulp, fantasy and medieval non-combatants/villagers, assorted Wargods of Aegyptus, barnyard animals, and the new FrostGrave rulebook.

Prices ranged from $5 USD for larger Wargods creatures, to 14 cents (!) for Eureka kung fu schoolgirls and karate masters. Great majority of figs were in the 75 cents to a dollar range.

In the dealers hall, picked up the new Bob Murch woodland indians range, some terror birds and raptors from Iron Wind, assorted african wildlife from Irregular, and the Chain of Command rulebook.

Frederick: Now THAT's the kind of feedback I like to see! I'm glad things went so well--makes the effort on our end worthwhile.

Chris Johnson

I got thrown up on in the flea market. :/

Um, that feedback (get it, feedBACK) is not quite so welcome. Especially since no one even told us about it until at least one poor slob stepped in it and slid.