Day 23 – Covington

Up early to start getting ready for the first day on the trade floor at the North Kentucky Convention Center. I had some breakfast and needed to sort out some things at reception before I went across to the trade floor. I do not have a table in my name this year as Ray has booked the table for the three of us to share. I will be using it to put items under the table as I am able to get them.

There are more people registered this year than any of the previous three Canvention’s I have been to so there should be plenty of tables to look through to get some interesting items. I had only walked past about ten tables before I was able to purchase a set of four Guinness cans from the USA that were about 5 years old. I have them but this set is bottom opened and the set I originally have is top opened so I should be able to trade them off in the future.

There is a lot of good USA cans available on the tables and a few of the collectors are selling off various parts of their collections to make way for more cans so there are a lot of bargains for the American collectors. At the show there are some dealers that sell at these shows and they also had some good items available and some of them are also at reduced prices so they can move some stock. It seems that there are always collectors selling off good cans to the dealers who are then able to bring them to a lot more shows over a wider area of the USA for sale.

Some lunch was available at the venue and I stopped for a while to sit with some people to eat. After lunch I went back to my room to take some items back for packaging and to pick up some things I had for other collectors that I had forgotten to take over earlier in the day. During the afternoon I continued to walk the floor and by the end of the trading session I still had only seen half of the items displayed.

After we had finished on the trade floor I walked back to my room and dropped off my gains and then went to a meeting of one of the Club Chapters I belong to. At 5pm the Aluminum Bottle Collectors chapter had our meeting. As this chapter consists of members from all around the world it only has a few formal meetings a year where any rule changes can be made. It is also where I can pay my chapter dues without having to worry about sending them off by post. There was a decision made that cause we run a raffle each year and that the monies collected from that raffle exceed the costs of running the chapter that from this year onwards all existing members would pay this year and that would be a lifetime membership payment. Any new members would pay a once off joining fee and then also become lifetime members of the chapter.

This meeting went for about one hour and I stopped off at the bar and had a soda before I had to attend another meeting of the One Can One Country Chapter. This is also a world-wide chapter with more members from overseas than in the USA. This chapter encourages members to get one can from each country that has produced beer cans. There are over 200 listed in the clubs records but I only have about 135 so far. At the end of the meeting there is a lucky door raffle where donated prizes are given away. My number came out quite late in the order and I was able to pick up some bottles and a tee shirt for my prize.

Following on from this meeting there was a function for all members where the committee of the BCCA has arranged for local microbreweries to donate kegs of beer for the members to taste. It is done in a large function area with plenty of seating and people just mingle with each other for a relaxing social evening. It is a great night and I got to talk with many of the various people that are present and we talked late into the night before I headed off to bed.