Last Saturday, Susan and I filled my van up with tubs full of toys and attended our fourth toy show. So far we’ve done two shows at the OKC Fairgrounds, and this was our second one to do in Del City.

We continue to up our game at each show. Most of these shows have a setup period the night before when most people set up their tables and many set up their entire displays. On the day of the show, doors open to vendors two hours early and up until this show we’ve set up our entire display in that two-hour window. This time, we actually drove out the night before and set up our tables and about 1/2 of our stuff. Saturday morning we brought the rest of our stuff and were much less rushed.

At two of the four shows we’ve attended, vendors who rented space directly next to us did not show up on the day of the show. In both cases we were invited to spread our tables out to fill the empty space. The first time this happened we were unprepared to really take advantage of the additional space. We spread our stuff out, but it was a lot like taking the ingredients of a small pizza and spreading it out to cover a large. This time, we brought additional stuff “just in case” and ended up with enough space to put it all out on display.

While it takes more work up front, we had 80% of our stuff pre-priced. That made setup go fast. Susan brought plenty of cash for making change and printed QR codes for using Venmo and CashApp… and then we had two people want to use PayPal, and a few more wanting to use debit cards. We’ll try to account for that next time.

We sold a lot of items for less than $5 and things priced for $10-$20 sold well, but almost none of my more expensive things sold. I brought two 31″ Jakks Star Wars figures from 2014. I checked eBay and the last two sold for $135 and $112. At the last show two weeks ago, I priced them for $100 each. On Saturday I marked them down to $60 and would have sold the pair for $100. Nobody gave them a second glance. When we get back from vacation I guess I’ll put them on eBay.

These sales are a lot of work, but just like last time we made more money in six hours than we make all month at our toy booth so that makes them worthwhile to do. We’ll keep doing these shows as long as we have inventory to sell, which should be at least 5-10 more years.