Pacificon 2026 Swap Meet After-Action Report (AAR) - 1/2
The Northern California & Nevada region’s ham radio convention was last weekend, and their swap meet was Sunday morning. This was my second time as a seller, but have attended the swap meet multiple times in past years. It is a good complement to the Electronics Flea Market (EFM) as it has different sellers who bring different things, and different buyers that don’t make the drive to the south bay for EFM or are conference attendees.
I showed up & was in line by 0520 with the lucky number seven to get into the parking area; and took the same spots I was in last year. Unfortunately, this was a detriment to me, as I was so far down the parking lot and they did not have the same number of sellers as last year. So, by the time the sellers’ placements got to my part of the parking lot it was almost 0800; and many early attendees did not know there was the pocket of us sellers farther down.
I took this spot again so my back is not against the interstate (and the drone of road noise), there are some streetlights for visibility while still dark, and there are some nice shade trees above with the sun facing us upon sunrise.
I would venture to guess there were 20-25 less sellers than last year.
Seller wise, I made twice what I made last year. Mostly small items, any of the larger big ticket items came home with me. If I had brought the power supplies for the Thinkpads I may have sold those. None of the networking gear sold (routers, WiFi APs, switches), nor the speakers or audio gear.
I did sell: a Cisco IP phone, an industrial laser, bunch of DVDs & a DVD player (with HDMI out), handful of the SATA to USB 3.0 Enclosures, a Knee Deep Brewing beer tap handle, Panasonic Walkman, couple of watches, some Fitbit parts, a Radio Shack handheld scanner, and a bunch of other stuff that I don’t recall.
Starting at 0600 to around 0900 there was a steady crowd and flow of buyers. After that to around 1130 it dwindled at times. I was the second to last seller to pack up & leave as I had one buyer that came back multiple times purchasing more items there at the end.
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