Medal News
May 09
Vol 47 No.5
You are not alone…
FIRST things first — a big thank you to all dealers and collectors who made it to a very successful inaugural MEDAL NEWS Britannia show on March 29. We had over 300 people there throughout the day and I think everyone who attended were pleased with the result. We’ve already had a raft of bookings for the next fair (November 22) both from dealers who came along this time and others who hadn’t stalled out but were keen to “get in on the action” next time around. Comments from attendees such as “just like the good old days” and “I haven’t been elbowed like that since the 80s” show that the collectors were impressed too!
That all said the point of this Comment isn’t just one of self-praise — yes, the fair was a great success, yes, we’ll be doing it again and yes, we are very glad that we have been instrumental in keeping a medal fair in the Capital — especially now the OMRS Convention has taken a different route and the “public” per se won’t be able to attend (see MEDAL NEWS, April 2009 for more details of that). However, there was more to Britannia than simply a very good medal fair — indeed a number of the most positive comments have come not from dealers or successful buyers (although both groups also declared themselves well satisfied) but rather from collectors who actually didn’t buy very much at all — if anything. It seemed that those who came to look, to chat to fellow collectors to be “part of something” enjoyed the day just as much as those who walked away with a treasured addition to their collection and the acquisition of yet another group was not the sole motivation behind attending.
One thing those of us who attend the fairs regularly tend to forget is that for many this hobby is a solitary one, we aren’t part of a team, we don’t attend huge “swap meets”, don’t share our passion with our mates down the pub and don’t tend to share our interests that much with our families. The reasons for all this are obvious — there simply aren’t that many collectors around for huge meetings to ever happen, we don’t want to start talking about our expensive collections to all and sundry (who knows who may be listening) and let’s be honest we’d be horrified if our better halves did take too much of an interest — they’d know how much we were spending then! (more…)