Weekend at a local games con

This weekend, me and the girlfriend went to a local games con, as exhibitors, sellers and enthusiasts. We had a great time, met lots of great people, sold some stuff, talked old toys, and saw a bunch of really amazing collectibles.

My booth the first day

Read on for a short report and tons of pictures!

The convention was specifically geared towards vintage games and consoles, but the staff had every console on display, ready to be played in the center of the hall. In the far end, several cabinets hold various gaming treasures, and up against the walls were various sellers and other exhibitors - among them me and the girlfriend playing "shop". 

Over the course of two days, I assume roughly thousand unique visitors attended the con. Not jam-packed, but more than enough to create that special con-feeling. 

There wasn't any options of choosing games with the playable consoles, but the staff had made rather conscious choices of what games to show off. Additionally, they swapped games for day two. For instance, one of the SNES played F-Zero the first day, and Turtles IV the second. I barely recognize any of the consoles, but had a blast playing Pinball Fantasy on Amiga CD32. 

Projected on the wall, various consoles were being played competitively. Difficult to get good shots of, but the image was decent. The crowd went wild during the Street Fighter 2 competition. 

When it came to the sellers, our stand turned out ok. I wanted initially to just show off some of my vintage toys, but the idea came up to unload some of my extras, and some of the stuff I had lying around in the closets. Where I feared this would end up bearing no fruit at all, the fact was I actually ended up selling quite a few toys. 

We also had many visitors who stopped by just to get a nostalgic rush from seeing figures they had as kids. Of course, this being a game convention, we may not have been as relevant as some of the other sellers and exhibitors, but I believe people enjoyed our stand. 

The best part was of course the people who came over to chat toys, and it dawned on me that I really like toys. 

Our stand. For day two, we also put up some t-shirts on the back wall. 

Two glass cabinets showed off a tiny, but good representation of my collection.

Top part of the cabinets had some robots. I transformed the cassette decks for the second day. 

My vintage MOTU collection is sadly tiny, but we were able to really show off the difference between MOTU and MOTUC. 

Bottom section had various toys. G.I. Joe, M.A.S.K., Thundercats, my two Jetfires and some smaller Transformers. 

Sold some of my extra MOTUCs, and lots of people gazed upon the monumental Masterpiece Optimus Prime. 

A selection of vintage MOCs. 

We had a box of re-issue Vipers, and sold them cheap to the kids, and let them pick a free accessory. This was a huge hit among the young attendees. Star Wars figures, on the other hand, were not that popular, for some reason.

Sold quite a few of my extra Joes. 

Bottom, my bootleg Metrotitan with tons of minibots. Above, some Joes. 

Day two, we moved Scorponok to the table and let the kids play with him.

Girlfriend and her little brother working the shop for day two.

One of our customers, a toy collector himself, came back the second day and brought some interesting toys for us to discuss. One of them were this 1976 handheld gaming device from Mattel. Extremely crude, yet astonishing in it's simplicity. 

Other exhibitors and sellers included a cool dude showing off his home made card/strategy game, a girl selling some home made, video game inspired pearler beads, a guy demonstrating the Oculus Rift, and of course shops selling old video games. 

 Finally, the exhibition of various console rarities, and complete collections. This part I really enjoyed. I can't recognize too much of these objects, but I love the way they're presented. 

A great weekend, and we're already looking forward to next year at this convention.