ANTIQUE SHOW ATTENDANCE

Recently I drove about 50 miles and paid about $10 for round trip tolls to attend an antique radio show. The admittance fee for two was $10.00. Add in $20.00 for gasoling round trip and the total could cover the cost of another collectible that could have been purchased over the internet. The show was held in a large building which gave me some hope that there would be a healthy supply of dealers with a good number of radio related objects for sale. The show had about 20 dealers of which a few were selling non-antique radio items, such as toys or computer accessories. There were no major tube, knob, or catalin radio sellers as was common in the past. Some dealers were selling test equipment and radio magazines. This is good, except that the overall dealers selling radios was so limited that I now need to consider whether it is worth attending anymore of these shows. They are becoming quite disappointing to me. However, the real blame for a lack of a large numbers of dealers is the internet. It seems most of us who buy and restore these items are buying and selling over the internet. I have also noticed a much smaller attendance when visiting antique paper and book shows, too. Sometimes, I count the dealers and the customers and find that there are obviously more dealers that buyers. Interestingly, when I attend these shows I often buy an item that I may not have purchased if I was home browsing over the internet. Why is that?