Orlando Day 4

This morning was the first day for the official trading for the Canvention. I had an early start to the day preparing my boxes of trading items that I had posted over to here before I had left Australia.

After some breakfast Adam and I headed over to the Convention Centre for the 9.00am start. There are over 450 people registered to attend the trading floor.

I was the end table on the row I was situated in so there is plenty of room to spread out my traders. As I was unpacking my cans I had another person come over to look what I was unpacking. He is a collector of old steel beer cans and also was looking for any Guinness cans from obscure countries that you would not think of as brewers of Guinness in beer cans, for example, Togo.

Unfortunately I did not have any he required and even worse news is that some of the cans that I had packed had been dented during postage. I was able to push out some of the minor dents but a few cans were no good. After setting up my table ready for trading I went straight to the shop that is set up for the Canvention and bought the commemorative shirt and a few other items.

It was then time to start walking the floor of the trading room searching for items to add to my collection. All over the room people were setting up their displays and I had a quick scout around all the tables trying to find Guinness items that I might need. Early on I was able to find quite a few beer coasters, both Guinness and some international Fosters coasters. Later one person had a group of Guinness cans for disposal and I was able to pick up 4 that I did not have.

The varying displays on the tables were quite interesting to view. A lot of the displays did not have any cans at all; this is a lot more evident here than with Australian collectors. With some people tending to specialise in a particular product i.e. beer trays, glasses, paper advertising, tap knobs, bottle tops, aluminium bottles etc.

As the day wore on I had gone twice around the displays and picked up a lot of coasters and bottle tops but had not found any more cans to add to the collection.

A lot of people are not able to attend the Canvention for the full three games and some arrived either later in the day or will not be arriving until Friday due to either work commitments or they were still travelling to the show.

A few people had shown interest in the cans I had on display and I was able to do some swaps with other people and sell a couple of items to others. I also arranged with Adam to head back to the reception building to go to the Deli and arrange for some lunch.

Later I was able to get some additional Guinness items including a couple of bottle tops and a Guinness neon light. Brewery collectable dealers are allowed to sell at this show and one person had 8 tables set up with all beer cans to sell to people.

It is very interesting introducing yourself to people, when you say you are from Sydney, Australia, nearly everyone wants to talk to you to listen to your accent, so you end up talking to them for 10 minutes and then have to excuse yourself so you can get moving to look at the next display. Also every second person either knows someone in Australia (my daughter / son / cousin / friend) or they have been to Australia at some time. Everyone loves “Aussies” and we have been trying to encourage them all to come to Australia for a holiday and include a trade meeting or if possible a Canathon, which we keep telling them about.

During the afternoon the BCCA has a board of directors meeting which any member is allowed to attend to be an observer. Myself, Bob and Barry went to the board meeting and it was a long very formal meeting. They had a break during the meeting after an hour and a half and were still in the meeting when I had to leave to attend another meeting for a the One Can / One Country chapter of the BCCA. This group I have been a member of since I joined the BCCA. It is a world wide chapter where you set aside a section of your collection to include one can from each country. Some people in this group have up to 180 different countries in this category. I only have about 85, so I have a lot of catching up to do. The meeting is quick but you have a good chance to win a lucky door prize and I was lucky enough to win a Kaliber can from Belfast, Northern Ireland. (and I mean lucky because Kaliber is brewed by Guinness)

After attending the OC/OC meeting trading for the day had finished so we went back across to the main section of the resort to the bar and had a few drinks and some dinner.

At 8.00 it was time for a hospitality night where the organising chapters for the Canvention had arranged for local micro-breweries to supply (free of charge) their different types of brews. Five local breweries provided 15 different brews for everyone to try. In the mean time I continue to purchase bottles of water to drink!!

Also provided was a range of merchandise from some of the breweries for everyone to buy plus coasters, badges etc so I was able to pick something up from the night. This night went till about 1am so it was very enjoyable to meet a lot of the people and just chat without needing to talk about beer collecting.

I was that busy trying to trade all day that I did not even take my Camera out of my backpack so I will need to get cracking with some photos tomorrow.