Swap Meet . . .

The annual Weatherford AeroModelers Society (aka WAMS) is over. It is held at Shirley Hall Junior High school in Weatherford, the third week of March for one night and one day. We open the doors at 5 PM Friday and close at the end of the auction, about 5 PM Saturday. We have vendors for as far away as California and Minnesota, they travel from swap meet to swap meet, but only attend to the "big ones." And yes, we are now considered big time.

We do pull in folks from across Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. I even sat by a guy at the auction that was from central California. He had gone to the swap meet in Perry, GA, a very famous swap meet and did ours on his return. He said to me that Perry and Weatherford ranked up there with the best. He bought four brand new Magnum 52 four stroke engines for $320, cash, no tax one box to the another box. That's $80 apiece and they sell for about $115 each plus shipping and maybe tax too. He said he was buying the engines for his buddies back at home.

I watched as the old adage about one man's junk is another man's treasure was being conducted in a mad fashion. Cash was following. Things were changing hands. We only provided the location, reputation and good natured help. The food court sold our of food. All tables were rented and some were rented again the next day. The auction starts at noon Saturday and was finished at 4:30 PM. I would estimate about $15,000, in cash, had exchanged hand during that free-for-all.

We gave away a couple of transmitters, nice new Futaba FASST stuff - pricey stuff. That was raffled, some tickets were issued as part of the entrance fee and the rest sold on the floor. A couple of merchants, local hobby shops, gave prises too. They have always supported us. And I guess we are their best customers.

I did not run the food court this year, I did help setting up and sort acted as a floor marshall; we all did that. We wore club furnished bright orange tee shirts and black hats, so we could not be missed.

The weather was balmy spring weather and by midnight Friday, a blue norther blew in, it was brutal outside but toasty warm inside. That help sell everything we had at the food court. No one wanted to go out, even the smokers did not want to go outside. It went from 65 to 32 and snow!

So it is done for a year again. And oh yeah, I was able to get some stuff too. And I had some stuff acutioned off. Did I break even, no, but I did walk away with some green stuff in my back pocket. The auction was good to me!