Klein’s Korner: A Return To Hobby Positivity – As always, thank you for reading these columns. We’re always grateful to our readers and I’m especially appreciative of those who reached out to me to give advice or share various stories. I promised the next column would be a return to normal hobby topics and thankfully this one is going to be fairly positive. Since we’re in a good mood, how about this photo of a young man selling cards as a fund-raiser to beat cancer.
There is something relevant about a photo such as this because the hotel I’ve been working with for the past few years has had some turnover in their employees. Normally, this sounds ominous but for me this is actually a return back to where we were before this year began. You see, about one year ago, the Comfort Inn and Suites Plano East hired a new sales manager who had come from working at the Plano Centre and their prices and habits were pretty much set in stone. Because they were used to being able to say their price the person came in and 
attempted to double our price for the room we rented. Thankfully, with the help of fellow local show promoter Kyle Robertson, we were able to get through the first few months of the year at about the level he pays for his Frisco card show. Frankly, without what Kyle did for us, we probably would not have had any shows in 2018.
The good news as I mentioned is the new “sales manager” is also the Assistant General Manager and we’ve been very pleased to work with her since we had an unfortunate situation where the roof leaked and one of our dealers merchandise got damaged. She worked with us to help both us and our dealer and everyone walked away reasonably satisfied with how hard she stood up on behalf of us to her owner.
The reason I mention all this is there is an occasional poster on Net 54 named Tony Gordon who has had pretty much the same issues where he runs shows in the Midwest. Both Tony and I realize we run reasonably easy events for the hotel to maintain and I’m happy to work with them as much as possible because the venue I use is less than 10 minutes from my house and has really good employees who care about all our events. That goes from the AGM to the wonderful people who set up the room to even the front desk clerks. And yes, those front-desk personnel don’t always have such an easy position either. But the best part about working with the AGM is she understands the way our shows are set up. Getting money in advance is problematic because I don’t usually collect my dealer’s money until the day of the event. Yes, sometimes I do receive money early but for the most part I’d rather someone pay the day of the show. I have had only one person skip out without sending me money afterwards. Which in nearly five full years of running shows, is not a bad average. She also understood that one of the biggest benefits we provided was 12-16 dates in a year and a constant flow of income. When we’re ready, we’ll set up for 2019 and we were able to add Sunday to our November show because the great Roger Neufeldt will be coming down to display his wares and he needs two-day shows for those purposes. So come by on either Saturday November 10th or Sunday November 11th.
For more from Rich Klein, follow him on Twitter @sabrgeek.
Klein’s Korner: A Return To Hobby Positivity
- Klein’s Korner: The World is Not Ending - December 8, 2021
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- Klein’s Korner: Record hobby history - April 6, 2021