I had a strange experience at the Legionary show in Exeter yesterday. During the week I decided to "weed" my 1/600 ACW collection and sell of some of the duplicate models that I have acquired. I was helping to run the "Wings of Glory" game at Legionary and thought it would be good to put the models on the Bring and Buy.
I had 20 ships in total. Each one individually recorded on the two record sheets that I was given by the staff. Each model was individually labelled with a reference number and a price, and they were in a box that was marked "£10 each". So all seemed OK.
Around lunchtime I noticed the box and models wasn't on the B&B any more, and around abut 2pm I asked the staff how the sales had gone. at that point I was told "one sold". So where were the others? Turns out they had sold ALL of them in a single lot for £10. Nice. So despite them being individually recorded they'd sold the lot for the price of one model. At this point I'm quite adamant that they owe me £200 so they then discover that they know who the models were sold to. The call him and the guy says "but they were in a box marked "£10", and there were no labels, they must have fallen off". SO I explained that it said "£10 each" but the guy was adamant that wasn't the case. Anyway, he then admits there must have been a "mistake" and says "I'll post them back to you". No way that's happening, so I ask him to return them. Long story short, he's at a pub 20 miles away so off I went to collect them. And lo and behold, all the ships have labels, and the box very clearly says "£10 each".
Now I'm obviously not saying there was anything dodgy going on (although some of my friends were convinced it was deliberate), but you have to be some kind of special stupid (or something else not right-minded) to think that it was £10 for the lot. And you have to be some kind of incompetent B&B staffer to not follow the VERY SIMPLE process they had in place to record sales. Especially as there were plenty of other boxes of multiple items, individually recorded, on the tables.
The good news is that the senior guy on the B&B did manage to find out who had my models and was VERY apologetic for the obvious errors. I'm sure the club would have been very happy as well since it saved them £200 of expense.
I was happy to get my models back unscathed, but decidedly not impressed that this had happened. It was the first time I'd put things on a B&B for some time after previous bad experiences (notably when I'd had stuff stolen off the B&B at a show, and then when all the items I put on a B&B at a show in the West Country got immediately sold to a dealer mate of the organisers for the "deal" price I'd listed, before they'd even got on the tables), and nothing yesterday convinced me that I will want to risk it again in the future. It also ruined what was up until that time a veery enjoyable day. They say that the last 5% of an activity is the bit you'll remember for ever. My lasting memory of Legionary will therefore not be a good one.
In happier news though, I had a table at the Lincombe Barn Tabletop sale today, sold a pile of stuff, bought a few nice things and caught up with many old friends. A much nicer day :)
