A Perfect Antique Show

For the past couple of years, Husbola and I travel in late winter to central Illinois to an itty bitty town near Champaign to attend The Perfect Antique Show. Last weekend was just such a trip.
The town is in the middle of Illinois Amish Country and the show is actually held in a building the Amish folks built and rent out to various groups throughout the year.

This antique show has the perfect number of dealers--at the perfect time of year when everyone has cabin fever--in a quirky little town--with good antiques and well priced affordable merchandise. And it is out of our usual shopping area. It is a good thing to attend an auction, show or flea market where you do not recognize every other buyer. This allows us to buy items that may sell to our retail customers back home--but may also be bought by other of our dealer acquaintances.

Why is this show so great? First--they open the show at 8am. Antiquers are not folks who sleep in. It is a one day show which equals PERFECT in our book--and it only runs till 3 in the afternoon. If you see something to buy at a one day show--you better grab it--as you will not be able to think about it overnight and go back. The show is well lit--the booths are spacious--and they have opened two additional areas to accommodate more dealers. 40 dealers equals perfect size.

We were in line early--about 7:15am. This makes Husbola nuts as he just hates to stand in line for anything. But we have traveled all that way--and th show gets so crowded so fast--I want to be in the first handful of people in the door. Before they opened the door--there were easily 200 people in the line that was snaking into the road.

This show has no crafts and repro stuff. None. They do allow dealers to use a bit of seasonal decoration--but that is not the focus. No "My Grandma is My Favorite Antique" pillows from China allowed. No booths of kitchie candles or bags of potourri. All old stuff. And well displayed.

Good bathroms and good food round out the show. This year they had warm" baked in a church kitchen" cinnamon rolls that came out of those old big pre-crockpot Nesco brand cookers. One of those and cup of coffee and a chair helped to fortify us for another go-round on the selling floor. This is a show like yesteryear--and hour into it--the building is jammed with patrons and you sometimes are shuffling in the aisles to move to another booth. What recession?

We bought well this year. That means we found interesting things--priced so we can turn around and make a profit when we sell them in our antique shows in the upper midwest this spring and summer. We'll go back next year--if for nothing else than one of those cinnamon rolls.