Gaelcon Review

[gothwalk]

inannajones and I, assisted by giftederic, and bluedevi and Dan-who-has-no-LJ on Saturday, ran a bring-and-buy stall at Gaelcon this year.

The deal was that we'd sell the stuff we got from people, keep 20% for the Gaelcon/IGA charity fund, and give them back the rest. Some people opted to give more to charity than 20% - as much as 100% in some cases. We had some stuff going in, culled from my collection, giftederic's, mr_wombat's, puritybrown's, and dualpurpose's. We got a few extra bits on the day, and then this one guy arrived in with SEVEN SUITCASES of books, plus three large shopping bags more. So all in all, we took in more than €3500 over the three days, of which something over €1700 has gone (or in some special deal cases, will go) to the charity fund. There was some slight worry that the other traders (who couldn't possibly match our prices) would meet us outside with pitchforks and torches, but the stock overlap was very small, and any I spoke to seemed fine - and indeed, some of them bought stuff. It remains to be seen if they growl at the convention organisers, but I hope they don't do so - aside from not wanting to annoy people, I'd like to run the stand again next year.

I didn't get to see a lot of the rest of the convention, but it seemed good for most folk. I did wander by some of the "real" traders, and we went to the charity auction. I had diverted a limited edition Game of Thrones RPG from the B&B supply to the auction, because it was far too nice to just sell at the table, and then spent €400 getting it back for myself. It's a very nice book indeed, and the money is all going to the charity fund. The auction itself came in at over €20,000 for the fund.

I bought some of the D&D Miniatures game minis from other stands, and from the stuff coming in to ours, I bought the Game of Thrones board game, ARIA, Nobilis (and a supplement for it), Sorcerer, and some other odds and ends. inannajones got real (as in not pre-painted) miniatures, and a castle from the auction for them to live in. One of the nice things about running the stand is that I effectively got first refusal on all the goodies coming in, and I think I was remarkably restrained.

I really, really enjoyed running the stand, and I'll be looking forward to doing it again next year, with some optimised organisation. And special thanks are due to inannajones, who put up with this as she does with all my other schemes, and did a LOT of driving and hauling over and above the stand-standing, and to giftederic, who gave lots of good advice, and helped immensely, especially on the boardgames end.