Just gone to the press - yesterday, that is... Here's what you can expect for the 4-16 issue...

Howdy folks. We made it through Day One of the March 2008 Atlantique City Antiques Show and, if I may speak for the staff and crew of Atlantique City - and I reckon that I can - Day one was pretty fantastic.

By the 9 a.m. early opening we had at least 2000 people lined up outside the door, many of them grabbing copies of Antique Trader and our various publications at the show, and the trafic flow was steady all day. While official numbers aren't available yet, I'd say we had at least 5,000 people come through the convention center and they seemed interesting. Quality is high, and uniform, and we heard some good comments from dealers.

The appraisal event went very well, too, highlighted by a superb Judy Garland dress, straight off the MGM lot, that ended up in - of all places - Milwaukee, WI. We have to wait and see if the pics cvame out, but I'll post them if I will.

At the end of the day we also hosted a gathering to fete Ellen Schroy and thank her for all her hard work - 28 years worth - on the Warman's Price Guide. Nice stuff, and Ellen is a great lady. She'll be missed on Warman's, but it's a good opportunity for Trader to get her byline in the paper, as we did with the 4/9 issue.

Sunday is usually a bit slower at shows, but there can be some serious buying going on, so we're keeping our fingers crossed for our dealers and ourselves, for a good day today, a smooth load-out tonight, and a nice easy flight home tomorrow morning. Last October we got delayed in Philly for 12 hours. Yuck.

Looking forward to getting home, getting back to work and regular blogging, and seeing my family. I love the East Coast, and have a lot of good memories from these shows and my childhood summers spent here, but I want to get back to Stevens Point, WI - wide open spaces, nice people and great beer - and get back in the swing of day-to-day life and work.

See you there.

Howdy!

After a long week of vacation last week - agonizing, as you can imagine, spending so much time with my lovely wife and daughter in Phoenix and Las Vegas - I got into Atlantic City last Wednesday night. Travel was 13 hours from Vegas, with a few nighmarish waits in TSA lines at all airports.

It's time for good antiques and the Atlantique City Antiques Show.

We have spent two exhausting days getting the show ready, but as I write this morning, the show floor at the Atlantic City Convention Center looks beautfiul, there is a crowd of 2000 people waiting outside the door and we are hoping for a good show. We know it looks good, and quality is ubiquitous. Now we are waiting for the buyers.

The weather here is a bit chilly and overcast, which means good weather for antique buying, and the attitude seems to be optimistic, which is half the battle when there are such problems with the economy. I don't, however, have to tell any Trader readers that.

What I can tell you is that I'm excited for the opening of this show, proud of the hard work we've done and ready to see this thing come off a success.

If any of you out there are coming today or tomorrow, or go this weekend and read this later, give me a holler and let me know what you think.

I'll post more later today, hopeufully with some pics, but no promises...

Here's a first look at our March 19 issue, a special for the Atlantique City Antiques Show, which is owned by Trader's parent company, F+W Publications.

It'll be a glossy front with an extra 5,000 copies distributed at AC on March 29-30, 2008 at the Altantic City Convention Center.

I'll be there. If you are around and want to say hi, please do...

I like this story about eBay after Whitman on the Forbes Magazine Web site, even if it is a bit too much re-hash and a bit too much corporate speak.




The writer, from Wharton College, outlines some interesting options that eBay and CEO-elect James Donahoe might take to shore up some of the problems it has right now. The article is, however, stictly from a business perspective and fails to approach the human side of the story, which is what we all know is going to drive the future of the business.

There still seems to be a disconnect between the corporate side of eBay and Wall Street to the nuts and bolts dealers who live and die in the trenches of online auctions.

One of the main thing I took away from the above article was thatr eBay will be looking to make inroads into Asia in order to beef up its revenue and return to the glory days of bazillions of dollars. Interesting philosophy, but if a bucket is leacking water from a hole, and you simply fill it at the same rate, there's certainly no net gain and - eventually - you're going to run out of water.

I have been criticized for reporting the negative before, but I'm a journalist first and the story is the thing. To ignore this news, and not analyze what it might mean for our business, would be irresponsible.

The overall January sales figures, as reported on Yahoo, by Reuters, were not too good.



That includes a lot of factors, especially big box stores like Wal-Mar and Target, and a lot of the items people aren't buying are things that they shouldn't be buying there anyway - art, furniture, etc...

A January lull is no big surprise to the antiques business; after the holidays and the lull in mid-level and flea market shows - a lot of high-end happens in the Winter, and you can't really count the health of The Winter Antiques Show or The American Antiques Show as truly reflective of the real health of the antiques economy - there is a lot of space. General line buyers are going online to auctions, or checking out shops or small shows nearby.

There are schools of thought that will consider an economic slowdown healthy for antiques, and I don't disagree with them. I do also know that when the economy gets bad - remember 2001? - the antiques business is one of the first to feel the lack of discretionary income, and one of the last to benefit when people come out of the stupor.

The above report, along a reported and well-documented contraction of the jobs market last month, don't add up to prosperity. No one wants to say recession, but the laws of economics are fairly immutable.