Thoughts on CMAS swap

Jep21

Jep21

Well-known member
Just wanna hear what fellow u reefers thought about the cmas swap..

To me this is my second swap i attended and i gotta be honest and say i was a little dissappointed.. Don't get me wrong there was a good amount of vendors with awesome livestock.. Everything seemed very organized, great free food, and it was great seeing everyone and meeting new people. But hearing that this was one of the biggest and most anticipated swaps it didnt really meet up to the hype.. Like last springs maci swap seemed a lot bigger than cmas swap.. The place the swap was at was just too small and everything was crammed in one small building. I thnk if we had a bigger place to hold the swap like similiar to last maci swap i thnk we could have gotten more ppl to come and more vendors.

Dnt get me wrong i enjoyed the swap and got some great livestock and dry goods and met great ppl but i thnk there could have been a significant amount of improvement that could have been done..

lets hear everyone else's thoughts and let the fun begin
 
jeppun21 said:
Just wanna hear what fellow u reefers thought about the cmas swap..

To me this is my second swap i attended and i gotta be honest and say i was a little dissappointed.. Don't get me wrong there was a good amount of vendors with awesome livestock.. Everything seemed very organized, great free food, and it was great seeing everyone and meeting new people. But hearing that this was one of the biggest and most anticipated swaps it didnt really meet up to the hype.. Like last springs maci swap seemed a lot bigger than cmas swap.. The place the swap was at was just too small and everything was crammed in one small building. I thnk if we had a bigger place to hold the swap like similiar to last maci swap i thnk we could have gotten more ppl to come and more vendors.

Dnt get me wrong i enjoyed the swap and got some great livestock and dry goods and met great ppl but i thnk there could have been a significant amount of improvement that could have been done..

lets hear everyone else's thoughts and let the fun begin
Click to expand...

I agree. I was very disappointed by what I found. I mean it was awesome meeting everyone and putting faces to names but it did not match up to what I told it would be.

The venue was small, but I can live with that. They should have had the raffle area smaller and gave the vendor and attendees more space. The prices were offensive and at retail. They ran out of food and that raffle fiasco was madness.
 
I liked it for my first swap but I gotta agree with Walt and jeppun on how small it was. The raffle area was just to big and it blocked people form getting over to the other side where the vendors are at. A lot of the prices where except for the one that my mom went after($5-$10 range) and we did her a lot of cool stuff and a few sps.

Other than that it was fun
 
i didnt go . had to work but even if i didnt have to work dont think i would of went my first thing was maci and that sucked butt for the amount u pay to get in and the prices of stuff it really wasnt any different then a store to me. so it left a bad taste in my mouth and probably wont be going to any swaps. u dont save money at em. ive gone to other swaps reptiles and guns and there worth it u save money . seems like with this hobby thats not the case. jmo. from what ive heard about this last one from friends that went was u walk around pic up some corals and in twenty minutes u were on u way home. sounds boring . i like just doing my buying from people on the forums.
 
Pufferpunk said:
This was supposed to be a much smaller, local swap. MACI was more of a national sort.
Click to expand...

Local doesn't have to mean small venue though. If there was enough foot traffic, then they need a bigger space. However, I thought they were struggling to fill tables?

If they were then maybe this was the right size.
 
There were deals to be had, you just had to look.

Attendance for this swap was much lower than in the past. But this time we were behind a sellers table than a shopper, so we had a different perspective. We had a blast and the 4 hours went by quick! I can't comment on the raffle or other things as I didn't even get to see what was going on we were so busy with our booth! I have been saying for years (even when I was a CMAS member) that a new venue needed to be located due to size and parking of the VFW couldn't handle the crowds in the past. The raffle has always been an issue with people slamming it with $100s of tickets and always win. What I saw in the past (can't say for this one) is that they wouldn't mix the tickets up so people would wait right before the raffle closed, slam a bunch of tickets on top and they'd always win.
 
yogoshio said:
Local doesn't have to mean small venue though. If there was enough foot traffic, then they need a bigger space. However, I thought they were struggling to fill tables?

If they were then maybe this was the right size.
Click to expand...

It was crowded and you couldn't get to the tanks because when you bent over your cakes were in someone's crotch. It was a very tight fit in there and the layout was horrible.
 
I have to agree that the prices were higher than any other swap meet I went to while I lived in Iowa/went to school there. I don't know who had all their corals in separate plastic containers but their prices made my jaw drop.
 
poidog said:
There were deals to be had, you just had to look.

Attendance for this swap was much lower than in the past. But this time we were behind a sellers table than a shopper, so we had a different perspective. We had a blast and the 4 hours went by quick! I can't comment on the raffle or other things as I didn't even get to see what was going on we were so busy with our booth! I have been saying for years (even when I was a CMAS member) that a new venue needed to be located due to size and parking of the VFW couldn't handle the crowds in the past. The raffle has always been an issue with people slamming it with $100s of tickets and always win. What I saw in the past (can't say for this one) is that they wouldn't mix the tickets up so people would wait right before the raffle closed, slam a bunch of tickets on top and they'd always win.
Click to expand...

u right about the raffles i wasnt at this one but the maci they just shaked the box twice and picked and that was in the beginning after so many boxes they just reached in and grabbed one watched em the whole time . i was that bored lol.
 
PsychedelicNano. said:
I have to agree that the prices were higher than any other swap meet I went to while I lived in Iowa/went to school there. I don't know who had all their corals in separate plastic containers but their prices made my jaw drop.
Click to expand...

I was told that prices at the swap were better than at MACI. I didn't see that. The Asian Dude with the plastic cups lost his mind. Wasn't he half of the Koral Kings? He was at the Bloomington Swap too.
 
It was my first swap and i enjoyed it. My only complaints were that like everyone else said to small. The back area where Erics booth was was way to packed. I had to keep going back onto that area when ever i would see a booth that wasn't filled with people so i could finally see the table.

The raffle i didn't really like. I was expecting a random raffle where u put your tickets in and u get what ever prize was up next. With this raffle yeah u might win what u want but at least with a random raffle u might win something. Instead of who ever has the most money to buy tickets has a 90% chance to win the 1 item.

me being new to this whole thing gives me a great chance to greatly over pay for something not knowing If the prices are good or not. Talking with some others with some others on here they mentioned some common things were normal or even higher then retail. There was a reason i didn't buy any live stock and that was because i didn't know if i was getting a good deal or not.
 
As far as prices go, I did walk around and see some insanely high prices... not to be named. But being on the business end of the hobby now, I can tell you that wholesale coral prices have increased quite a bit from last year. You will see this increase in prices now.
 
Too small, pricing not great

Need more local peeps with small tables - maybe cheap 1/2 table for local folks so someone like me could bring frags too. Added pricing and availability might bring down big vendor prices.

That said, I got some cool a$$ stuff, hope to grow it out and frag :)
 
my second swap and compared to the first i thought the prices were really good i have a list of what i wanted and how much it cost so i know i saved a bunch of money. definitly was packed and really hard to get around from table to table. only thing that pissed me off was the way they allowed entry into the swap. but i got what i wanted so no biggie in the end.
 
yea i get it club event but if it were stated like that was how it was gonna be before i went id be ok then to ask if id like to become a member and still keep my place which i figured why not. only five more dollars.. then to see a line of people still get in before some of us that were there early ..and be told sorry its fair ...
 
It was one of the worst turn outs in recent history,i personally did great,but overall attendace was down.
 
i have to agree that some of the prices were a little high but there were also some great deals and hidden gems.. You just had to walk around the crowed booths.lol but for me.. i was just happy i got my juvi platinum clown :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top