I was very tempted to go round introducing myself as Yippee yesterday... Don't worry, you were the talk of the show...
next time a larger space would be better, it felt more like a dinner party, two tables of people seated in a small room, there was very little opportunity to mingle - there was very little room to even move. I don't think i met anybody i didn't already know, rocked up late on a few hours sleep due to finishing work at 5am to find 2 tables of people seated and engaged in deep conversation. Spoke to maybe 2 people seated next to me but i have no idea who they are. Had a bag full of stuff to trade, didn't even end up opening it. Went and got some fresh air on the balcony, spoke to Kram for 10 mins went back inside and everyone had left. I'm all for the idea of a separate private space to have the meet, but having everybody seated at separate tables is counter productive to the concept of everyone mingling and meeting each other.
LOL - what stopped ya? were you afraid you may be tarred and feathered??? :lol: Come on ... dont tease me like that!! I'm sure i hardly made a mention ...
Great afternoon Pikey! The venue was adequate for a first meet but will need to be larger as I suspect interest will grow from here. The food was certainly different and I was a fan! BTW I loved the pikey hat with feather, I was tempted to try to out Pikey the pikey you out of it but though better of it. Nice to see a pikey wearing short sleeves also Matrix was there with a stash of Opals, he has wet my appetite. If I was hanging around this great country of ours for longer, he would have got some fiat out of me yesterday (I have too many unfinished projects on the go right now to start another hobbie). If you haven't met Matrix when you do you may notice he is missing a chomper or two. This signalled an instant sign of respect from me like when you enter a pub the last bloke you stir up is the guy with the cauliflower ears....... Don't mess with the bloke missing a tooth or two at a silver swap meet.(You know he has bitten down on a bit of metal or two in his time Everyone there was very polite and friendly and I never saw anyone trying to gouge anyone else on a deal. Thanks to the member that sold me the 2011 Andean Cat, he will remain anonymous for the time being..... It will be my new lucky poker coin and when I win the World Series of Poker there will be a nice little kick back in it for ya YKY, a few people asked was I you (had their fists clenched) I told them I had already met you and that you were a wanker so I told you that the swap meet was at the Beat night club in the valley..... So thats what the young kids are calling "family matters" now days Don't worry mate your secret is safe with me I will keep it on the down lo for ya! Cheers Chris
I say next time sticky paper double name tags mandatory on everyone next time. Real name SS username I discussed stuff with heaps of people and it would be much easier with the name tags. By the way - Did anyone notice the large collection of banknotes and coins behind the counter at the place ?! It was all pretty much newish stuff ( world banknotes from maybe the 1960 upwards but nothing major ) and around 200 coins ( coppernickel circulating stuff ) I played with the idea of donating to them the old large Russian 100 Rouble banknote ( as i have 2 ) [imgz=http://forums.silverstackers.com/uploads/531_p212101_02-11-10.jpg][/imgz] but than i thought - nah theyd need to donate to me 3 coffees at least.
They actually have an English tenner on the wall there - I keep eyeing it up as I know I could get nearly 20 bucks for that
Venue was friendly but a bit pokey Pikey. Seating was great but I never saw any of the show and tell items from the other table and only met about half the group, I was locked into one of the benches on the far wall and needed to shift 5 people either side to get out, which I did anyway. Nice and informal, one thing we do at our coin club is have a table with the show and tell items on it, we call the meeting to order and then someone gets up and talks about their items. We don't do any trading over this time and we try and cut the conversations down to a minimum. I know that as contrarians this may go against the grain but we tried many ways to run it before this, this works best, everyone gets to see the items before and after S&T plus they get to ask questions etc. Only downside for this mob would be the $20,000 worth of items sitting unattended on the table (if the table could take the weight). Mind you, I handed around a fair few items and as far as I know they all came back. The food I wasn't that fussed about, but that's just me, having oily finger food and coins isn't a great match, particularly for the numis. As for the timing, once a month is OK for small groups but if you are trying to get a large group together once a quarter is better. Basically people don't try as hard to get to a monthly meeting because if they miss it they can always go to the next one. A quarterly meet tends to get more attendance as it is more of an event and if you miss it it will be 6 months between meetings. I would probably try and get to most of the meetings if they were monthly but if I saw only 6 people or so had shown any interest I probably wouldn't make the hour journey to attend. If I know 20 + people will be there I would make sure I was there and I would probably bring some items to trade, I wouldn't lug kilos of silver around on the off chance that one of the few people present would want it. I wouldn't feel left out if you guys had regular mini trade-meets without me as I don't do much trading anyway, I just came along to meet up with like mined individuals. I will make my own name badge for the next one and if anyone else wants to all is good, if others aren't so keen then there is no problem, I generally forget names anyway so name badges don't work long term for me but they are handy when you are chatting and it saves us all going around the table introducing ourselves, particularly for the late comers. Well done again for arranging it, nice to see cider on tap too.
