Chopperlumps

two major shows in one month, one week apart… the Dallas safari club show this year was titled, Drumbeats. this club puts on what is arguably the finest shooting/hunting show in the united states. these guys are always well organized and the show reflects that. they do a lot of show prep that goes a long way to making the back end of the show navigable for the exibitors. the staff are generally very well informed and helpful. these are volunteers from the club, i.e. professional people that expedite well. the paid staff are the best club staff that i have encountered. this show seemed well attended. i had plenty of traffic at my booth and sales were good. if the economy has had any affect on this event, i would say that the lookie lous have been faxed out. i did not encounter near the number of “no gun is worth that” and ” does that shoot dinosauers?” as in years past… i had a great time at this years’ show.

on to vegas… this show was expensive and awful… this is a legendary old show and deserves much credit. wally beinfeld works very hard at the show and his staff is super nice… i have heard that this show used to be way better when the s.c.i. show was held in conjunction. two years ago the shot show was going on at the same time and it seemed that the traffic was much better. one of the biggest detrements to this show is the casino where the show is held. the riviera casino is basically a “teardown” at this point… the staff for this place is rude and seem to be on liquidation mode. there are no resturants in this casino that are edible… the food court is shut down and staff members did not, in some cases, know that it existed. the casino did not see fit to set up a concession stand anywhere near the show. the only resturant in easy walking distance was staffed by one person and the food was expensive. this led to a half hour wait for a coke… luckily, you were only competing with other dealers for this food…there was no public at this show. this was especially true on the sporting arms side of the show. for those who have not attended this show, there are two large exibit rooms that are 200×100 yards long. they are separated by a distance of 500 yards from entrance to entrance. you cannot see the entrance to the sporting arms show from the antique arms entrance. between the two entrances is a door to the outside. it is possible to enter and never see one or the other show. the tickets are sold at a window that is past both shows… in other words you must pass both entrances to get a ticket to both shows… the trouble is that many people i encountered thought that the sporting arms side was just the custom knife show. in the large room that holds the sporting arms show and the knife show there is a large empty space meant to separate the two shows… from the door this is what you see… talking with my fellow exibitors, i found that the general consensus was that all of the people who went to the sporting arms side, also went over to the antique arms room. the opposite was not true… a factor may be that there was a good selection of sporting arms to be had in the antique side. i am not sure that over half of the antique side was not sporting arms. most of the dealers on the antique side had a pretty nice selection of both collectable and useable sporting arms, so that for a user or a collector, the antique side was a must see… the ephemera on the antique side was much cooler than on the sporting side. this is still one of the all time great shows… biggest factor… the economy. end of story, vegas was empty, and in years past the collateral benifits of a show in Las Vegas were a big pull. who really wants to go spend a big bunch of money in vegas with the world coming to an end? the dedication it takes to put on a show like vegas is enormous. i do thank the staff of the las vegas show, they are wonderful folks!