Ayrshire Card Show was a bit of an experiment for me.
It was the first dedicated card show I’ve traded at, I hadn’t worked with the organisers before, and I had no idea whether the stuff I sell would actually work there.
The organisers were great from the start. They were flexible with invoices, communication before the event was clear, and on the day they actually looked after the traders. Water, snacks, checking if anyone needed anything. Simple stuff, but it makes a difference.
Setup was a little awkward because the tables were packed in tightly and I couldn’t use my usual layout. They shuffled things around enough to give me a small gap at the end, and after that I just had to work with the space I had.
Which, annoyingly, turned out to be useful.
I didn’t have room for all the usual shelving or bigger stock, so the stall ended up much simpler than normal. One trolley, the strongest products, and everything easy to see. Nothing clever, nothing snazzy.
And actually, it worked really well.
Once the doors opened, it was immediately obvious I was the odd one out. Most stalls were binders full of cards, graded cards and display cases.
Then there was me with dice, ID cards, miniatures and tabletop stuff.
There were plenty of people there, but most of them had come for cards, which is probably fair enough at a card show.
At times it was a bit disheartening watching the stalls either side look constantly busy while mine was empty, but the more I watched, the more I realised it was just a completely different kind of shopping.
Someone can spend fifteen minutes flicking through a binder and buy nothing. My stall is designed so people can see what they want quickly, buy it, and move on.
One customer actually said they preferred that because some of the other stalls felt like too much to look through, which was nice to hear.
There were a few other good moments too. A couple of people said they hadn’t expected to find D&D dice at a card show but were glad they had, and one guy stopped at the miniatures with a massive childlike grin on his face.
Being the odd one out wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
I also finally sold an old binder of 2016 Zelda trading cards that had been sitting in storage for about ten years.
Could I have made more by splitting them, researching every card and getting some graded? Almost certainly.
Was I ever actually going to do that? Absolutely not.
Someone else can do the work. I got rid of something that had been gathering dust for a decade and gained some space back in the storeroom.
That’ll do me.
Overall, sales were encouraging. Not amazing, not terrible, but good enough to make the day worthwhile, especially with the event being so local.
The stripped-back stand also meant pack-down was ridiculously quick, which might be one of the biggest lessons I took from the day.
I really don’t need to take everything to every event.
Apparently I’m capable of learning.
As for doing another card show, I’ve already applied for the next Ayrshire Card Show in February 2027.
So hopefully I’ll be back there, once again waving the tabletop flag in a room full of Pokémon cards.