Predictions for 2011 Bloomington Gold?
 

Will this years show be better for parts and cars?
The economy.
Ebay is shorting the swap meets.
I have been going over 20 years. Love it. Carlisle is the KING. Too stinkin far away for us. I hope Bloomington Gold will get better. They have been scaling back. I hope the cigars and sunglass vendors stay off the swap area. If they don't have vette parts, then place them together in their own group. IMHO
DG

Don't know what to expect. Been to 2 other Mecum auctions this year and cars that should go for big bucks don't while some average cars go for bigger bucks. I've seen some 1 man auctions where the price gets bid up too high, so that explains some of it. Some people are in dire straights and have to dump their cars which is too bad. Wish the market would hurry up and bottom out like housing, so we can head back up.

The Mecum auction at BG was absolutley terrible last year. It was not held inside the convention building as in prior years (where the Fall Classic auction is held every September), but instead under a dimly lit tent on muddy ground. Very amateur in appearance. I was at Spring Mecum and several Corvette owners I talked to had the same complaint, said they elected to take their cars to Indy rather than run them through the BG auction. I was going to sell mine there but thought better of it. Will probably run it through Ebay instead or wait until the fall auction (Pheasant Run is about 10 minutes from home for me so it's very convenienent to sell a car there).

i can remember only one year recently that the bloomington gold auction was held inside and it was the worst auction. too small a area! i enjoy watching and viewing the cars from outside the tent till i am ready to bid and then i head into the tent area which is easy to access. indoors, one had to struggle to get decent position to bid on a car. for a 55 owner the bloomington show is the show to go to! consistantly bloomington will have more 55 cars than any other car show.

How will the swap meet area be? Better than last year?

The swap meet will never be like it was in its glory years or like carlisle but is still a great event. You get to see the best cars on the judging field, auction cars, swap meet and catch up with friends or make new ones. For me it's an escape from the real world.

Carlisle may be the King but it isn't what it use to be. The same problem too many vendors selling non automotive stuff. The net has really hurt the swap meet business. I can remember a time when every Corvette Catalog vendor in the country would have a booth selling their goods at Carlisle. Last year was the worst I have ever seen it.

Here is the problem with Carlisle if you live with in driving distance say 500 miles. The cost of a room for 3 nights, food, fuel, road tolls and the cost of admission for two people sharing the costs you are down $600+ before you buy one part. The hotels in the area jack up the rooms on Carlisle events weeks. If you go up the road to Harrisburg you may get a better rate, but there is now a Casino in the area so you people coming to it.

The vendors costs for the spaces, hotel rooms and food for their employees have gotten to be too much for them so less and less come back.

Corvettes@Carlisle is something to see for every Corvette owner and there is more to it that just parts vendors.

Carlisle other events such as Spring and Fall have gone down hill over the last five years. There is no doubt about the fact the Web & e-bay have hurt them big time!!!!

:iagree: I have been going there since 1982:thumbs:

:iagree: I went to my first Carlisle event in 1975 with my dad.We would go to Hershey the next week so we just stayed in the area.Pops and I still go as many times as we can.

Pretty good topic for C1/2 General.

Bloomington is tops for seeing a lot of remarkable restored cars in a beautiful setting. The car auction is also interesting. There are a lot of good vendors, but way too many that have nothing to do with Vettes.

Carisle is tops for vendors. There are not a lot of NCRS type cars, but there are hundreds of modifird and customized Vettes. It is huge and many many sights to see. In going there for 2 years, and spending 2 days each time, I think I have only been to 50% of what is present.

This will be our 38th year. I missed the 1st one. Its the only swap meet that I set up at.:D We go mostly for the fun and partying with old friends. The cost of going as a vendor is getting out of control:crazy2:
This year the total cost for me and my wife will be close to 2G's:crazy:
Kind of expensive for 4 days of fun mixed in with a lot of work! We bought a guy out so we will have a little more stuff that we normally have. Most of it is small, but hard to find things. We have mostly C2 stuff with some C1 & C3 parts.
Stop by H100-102 and say Hi! Its always neat to put a face to a name?
Bill & Dian
http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t...ictures060.jpg

Thanks for supporting!
Guy
B Gold

I am in WITHDRAWL TONIGHT
 

I have attended every year since 1998 (except 2008 when I was hospitalized with a bad gall bladder). The early events at NORMAL and SPRINGFIELD were fun, but I was a ''working stiff'' in those days and I made only 5 of those events.

This year, I am going to miss. Sorry guys, but economically it just is not in the cards. The fact that NCRS NATIONAL is JUNE 29-JULY 4 in San Diego only 100 miles south had influenced my decision as well.

I wish all the GREAT HALL INDUCTEES my congrats. And also the show participants as well. It takes tons of effort and $$$ to bring a car and parts. Bill, tell all my friends I miss them and will ''be there'' in 2013. THE ECONOMY WILL GET BETTER AFTER NOVEMBER. I FEEL IT IN MY BONES.

I think that last year was an anomaly at Carlisle, a lot of the vendors stayed away because of the Tropical storm.

I think (with one exception) they are all telling you the BG swap meet is DEAD, someone said it had one foot in the grave, I think it`s more like nine toes, and has been for years. In another thread I asked how many years BG was in St Charles? I asked because I sold there the first three years, first year in one spot I sold about $5500, the next year in two spots about $3000 and the third year in three spots around $2200...see a trend here? so did I, and that was that the focus at BG is definitely not the swap meet. For Mecum it was the auction, ok thats his business, God only knows about David Burroughs, what can you say about a guy who had an L-88 with 12 miles on it? me I would have been beating the sh*t out of that car all day every day, and with a huge smile on my face. as my soon to be 87yr old father likes to say "nothing lasts forever".

My buddies and I are BG veterans, having missed just two years since the show started in 1973. We realize the event has changed over the years, but it's still a fine event for us. We are traditionalists and miss the memories from the event's years in Bloomington/Normal. For instance: burnouts in the Chi Chi's parking lot; talking with other owners well into the night in the dorm parking lots; visiting endless parts vendors in the livestock buildings at the old McLean County Fairgrounds, catching breakfast at Bob Evans before heading out of town Sunday morning; and the road tour through the rural Illinois countryside with farm families in their lawn chairs waving flags and kids holding signs reading "light 'em up," or "roast 'em". What memories. What fun.

And how about the ''BURN-OUTS'' in front of the Holiday Inn, with the flat bed trailer ''WET T-SHIRT'' contests, Rock bands and dancing until the cops shut us down. No, we never drank a beer and never had any fun. And then we would drag our bodies back to swap another $8000 a day of parts, cars and meet more great lifetime friends.

BG started dying when the show moved from the McLean County Fairgrounds.:thumbs: