Hamfest 2019!

By Larry KAØFTO

Ok did you miss it?  Why should you have attended?

Reason 1   To sell/buy treasures.

Reason 2   Purchase a table and let everyone walk by so you can see/meet folks that you barely see once a year.

Reason #2 was just as important as Reason #1 this year.  I missed last year so was fun even with the strange weather.   Unloading Friday afternoon I barely started and 2 folks came to help and again when I left Saturday afternoon. Ok I did come home with more $ than I started with.  When I loaded up to go home it was difficult to see less treasures than I brought.  It did seem to take less time carrying my unsold Treasures back downstairs to my Ham Shack.  Because I have many treasures already I did not dare walk around or I would have surely picked up some more.  I find more items, in my shack, each time I look that I had forgotten about.

Hamfest are always a good place to pick up some items that are not readily available.  A problem we always have is you see and item that you want but you want to check to see if someone has it cheaper!  Watch out as someone else may have wanted it and now it is gone.  Ok as a seller you price something and someone just walks up and hands over the cash so quick you wonder “Did I price that to low?”  There were dealers with one having many new Radios, Associated Radio, and the other, D and L Antenna, having more parts than even I have and I may have missed another dealer.

Friday evening I visited D&L and said if he did not have it I probably did not need it!!

What have I picked up at Hamfest over the years?  My first Digital Radio an IC-740,  my first 8080 computer with dual 5 ¼” floppy disk, a 3219 2 meter beam, many IC’s in tubes, and the biggey at St Paul Min a box full of boxes that contained many many transistors,  Oh yes a CD-45 Rotor that sells for 4 times, now, what I paid in 1980, and later I sold for 2 ½ times what I paid after using it 3 years.  Out of those 100’s of Transistors I have at least used 20.   HMMM   There is a pattern there!

Two Items not selling well are computer books over 2 years old and Serial/Parallel cables for Modems and old Printers!  Small spools of copper insulated wire all sold out.  Oh yes Double A Alkaline batteries sold out plus the container!

A BIG ITEM, BEING AN OLD TIMER IT IS SAD TO SEE VERY FEW FOLKS BUYING PARTS TO BUILD SOMETHING!  I STOPPED BRINGING MY ASSORTMENT YEARS AGO OF RESISTORS AND CAPACITORS AS NO ONE WAS BUYING.

Will we see a day that a repairman is called as a customer reports their refrigerator will not make ice?  The repairmen plugs the power cord back in and the customer is amazed!!

But of course one photo to show the gathering of my treasures before loading them up.

Till next year 73, de KAØFTO.