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Convention Diary
Nashville Convention 2007
In 2005 Bill Combs told you all about his attendance at the Springtime in Atlanta Convention. This year Catalina Oyler, an intern for The Coca-Cola Company Archives, provides her thoughts about the convention as a first-time attendee.
Do you remember your first convention? The anticipation, excitement, and nervousness you felt? Well, this is my first convention. And on this page you'll get to read all about what a convention is like for a new attendee. Having heard about the practice of "room hopping," read about the amazing items (and prices) seen at these conventions, and having been warned to wear comfy shoes and lots of red, I think I’m ready.
I'm not a collector myself. I'm actually an archivist, or soon will be after I finish school. This summer I'm lucky enough to be interning at The Coca-Cola Company Archives. It's one of the world's best corporate archives with over a hundred years of history and the legendary Phil Mooney for a boss -- who could ask for a better summer job? Plus I get to enjoy all the Atlanta heat and humidity I want (coming from Northern Michigan it's certainly a change). And now I get a chance to see a Collectors Convention up close and personal. While I'm there I'll be helping out the Archives team as well as writing my reactions to the convention's happenings which will be posted here after the event.
I'll be packing my bags and heading out soon.
The 2007 Nashville Convention has come and gone and as promised here are my thoughts on the experience.
Tuesday July 3rd
Day 1: Bring on the collectibles
Today began my first Coca-Cola Collectors Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, after a short drive up from Atlanta.  The board did a great job in selecting the Gaylord Opryland Resort Hotel and Convention Center as the location for this year’s national convention. Getting lost (twice) while trying to find my room gave me a pretty thorough tour of the complex including its three indoor gardens. (I didn’t think my room was in the garden either, but at the time that seemed to be the way the map was pointing.) The club had an entire wing booked to accommodate the over 1,200 collectors who came from across the nation and world to attend the convention. Lucky for me our large numbers meant that no matter what part of the hotel I wandered into, I could always find someone with a nametag like mine to ask for directions.
After check-in and lunch the first event was the business meeting where I got an introduction to the board and learned how much effort goes into planning these gatherings. A Country Music Hall of Fame legend also made a special appearance for the club, fitting with the convention’s theme “Gone Country.” Western shirts and cowboy hats (often in red) were not uncommon sights and even at this meeting a few board members were already dressed to make sure nobody forgot where we were.
 After the business meeting we boarded buses to head out to the Wildhorse Saloon for dinner and a chance to see some of downtown Nashville. I also got the chance to do some kicking and stomping during a line dancing lesson, which most of the collectors wisely chose just to watch. The trip downtown also taught me another important lesson about collectors: they’re really good at lining up. Coming from a college environment where everyone is running late, I appreciated the collectors’ choice to form an orderly line before the buses even arrived. Standing in line was also a great place to meet other conference attendees. I got to talk to one who had come all the way from Austria to attend the convention and another from my home state of Michigan. It was amazing to see the great diversity of people who share the same interest of collecting and it was nice to know I wasn’t the only one a little out of place with the country music and cowboy boots.
 In the evening I got my first taste of the great variety of collectibles with a visit to the selling rooms. Smaller conference rooms had been transformed into mini antique stores with their usual drab business walls covered in shinny red signs, beautifully mounted calendars, and bright cutouts. The variety of items up for sale mirrored the number of items available for collecting, everything from antique calendars selling in the hundreds to new magnets going for a buck each. (Being a student I went with a magnet and left the calendars for another year.)
Wednesday July 4th
Day 2: Putting some blue with that red and white
 I knew today was the Fourth of July by the accents of blue that adorned the usual red and white outfits of the collectors. You have to appreciate the unofficial dress code of the collectors in a big hotel like ours; even by the pool you could recognize fellow Coke enthusiasts by their red bathing suits. My morning began with a new attendees’ seminar in which long-time members Bill Combs and Ron Antonio tried to warn me and a few other newbies about what to expect and what to wear (red t-shirts are good anytime, even at the banquet). They also talked about how the club is like a family and how they want us to feel at home. Over the week I came to see how true this is; everyone was always willing to talk to me or explain what was going on, and I really was made to feel that I belonged in the club. Whenever I asked anyone why they came to conventions, the answer always included the great people they meet and keeping up with friends they met at earlier conventions.
 After the newbies’ seminar the silent auction began. We filled an entire ballroom with hundreds of items and almost every conference attendee at some point. The silent auction let me really see how passionate some of the collectors are about what they do; there was a lot of excitement about a few items and when it got near to closing time, some bidding wars got underway as collectors vied for particularly desired items.
Thursday July 5th
Day 3: Doin’ some hopping, finally
 A 9-hour auction pretty much filled everyone’s Thursday, including mine. The bidding began at 10 a.m. with a six-pack carrier selling for $60, and didn’t conclude until near 7 p.m. with the 437th item. The prices on some of the items were truly impressive with bids getting into the thousands on a few rare items and into the hundreds frequently. Of course, this put the auction items well out of what I could afford. Even the starter kits, boxes with an assortment of collectibles that can get a new collector going, went for $30 and $140. Some of the items were very neat and would have looked great on my walls at home, but paying for school needs to come before collecting (though I know not everyone agrees with my priorities).
Luckily room hopping in the evening provided more items in my price range (one dollar or less). Not being a serious room hopper, I didn’t map out where I was going or make plans to visit every room, let alone visit every room twice which most of the collectors did. Instead I only wandered down my hall, which took over an hour as it was.
 Even only going to a few rooms and with my limited budget, room hopping was still a unique experience and a ton of fun. As you walk down the hallway almost half the doors are open many with signs or light-up objects to let hoppers know to stop there. Everyone used their bed as a display area and some sellers had walls, counters and folding tables covered with items as well. I learned that the pricey antiques aren’t limited to the auction, as historic trays, toys, signs and other items, carefully laid out on top of bedspreads and pillows, were often in the hundreds. However, a few rooms offered items I could afford, such as pens and Coca Cola Beanie Babies which were priced at three for a dollar (just what I was looking for). As we walked through, everyone was very friendly and happy to talk about the items they were offering or just gab about anything. I suspect this is what slowed me down so much that I had to turn in after only a few dozen rooms.
Friday July 6th
Day 4: Bottles and Banquets
 Friday opened with a series of fascinating seminars. “What’s it Worth” had a line up of experts estimate the value of various collectibles. Phil Mooney, director of The Coca Cola Company Archives and my boss, resigned himself to last place when their estimates for a mounted set of three commemorative bottles from the convention were put up against an on-the-spot auction of the item. But I’m with him, I had no idea anyone would pay that much for Coke bottles. The Coca-ColaStore.com also gave a presentation and Doug McCoy, an Atlanta Chapter member and long-time bottle hunter, hosted a session. In “Digging with Doug” he talked about his experience digging for old bottles and offered advice to anyone looking to get into the field. I guess if people are willing to pay the prices I saw, it might be a good hobby to take up.
 The seminars concluded with a great session called Coca-Cola Jeopardy. Bill Bateman and Randy Schaeffer, long-time collectors known for having one of the most extensive and historic collections, created a computer program that resembles the popular game show, but has every field filled with Coke trivia. Five teams got to show off how much they knew, or at least how good they were at guessing, in various categories including famous people from the company, collecting-related acronyms and choosing which item from two collectibles was produced first. Who knew SOGT stands for “Sign of Good Taste,” and how does one tell which tray came out earlier than the other? It was certainly interesting to watch, though I’m happy no one thought it’d be fun to put the intern up to see how little she really knows.
The not-quite-closing banquet was later Friday afternoon. Phil Mooney gave an interesting speech about the New World of Coke but was followed by an impersonator so good she didn’t even need a PowerPoint presentation. After a loud “How-deeee” she had the crowd laughing louder than Phil, and she sings better than him too.
Saturday July 7th
Day 5: Good-bye to red cowboy boots
 My final day at the convention began with the swap meet. We had a large ballroom filled with tables that collectors covered with the items they really didn’t want to take back home. Despite the title of “swap,” mostly what was going on was selling, with the full range of items and prices always seen. This really is a hobby for anyone, the serious collectors who can invest thousands down to me, the newbie college student who again picked up a couple pins for less than a dollar.
Our last evening in Nashville was spent at the Grande Ole Opry, a Nashville tradition. Our group didn’t entirely fill the theater, but we were definitely the loudest when our name was called.
 That was the close of the convention. Room hoping was over as most attendees had already packed their cars with new finds and things that didn’t sell. (It’s pretty amusing to watch bellboys struggle with oversized metal signs and boxes full of bottles.) Any goodbyes that hadn’t been said in the afternoon were offered now as most people had early flights or needed to start their long drives home. It was a little sad, but I’m glad I got to go both for the unique experience and the chance to meet some really great people.
What's it like at a Collectors Club convention?
Springtime in Atlanta Diary 2005
See prices realized at Collectors Club convention auctions.
Ever wonder what it's like to go to a Collectors Club convention? Webmaster Bill Combs tells you his experiences during the Springtime in Atlanta convention held in March 2005. Springtime is a large convention run by the Atlanta Chapter, held each year at Easter.
Well it's our 16th trip to Atlanta for "Springtime in Atlanta." This is an event that we never miss. It's the perfect start of spring for those of us in the Northeast. Atlanta is always a few weeks ahead of us and we'll jump at any reason to get away from a snow-filled winter. Add to an early burst of sunshine the chance to find great new pieces for your Coca-Cola collection, and you've got a collector's dream vacation.
It's not like a good Coke collector can just jump into the car and head off to Atlanta. We've done weeks of ground work heading into this trip. For the first time we're going to give one of the big "selling rooms" a shot. For those of you who haven't hit a local or national event, a "selling room" is one of the larger rooms devoted purely to sales. Most members - including us for 15 years - use their hotel room to eat, sleep and sell out of. This year we've got one room to sleep in and a room near registration to sell from. At least this year we won't have to clear tons of trays, signs and neon lights off of our beds before going to sleep at night.
For the new folks, one of the main attractions during any Coca-Cola Collectors event is "room hopping." That's where collectors from all over the world show up at a hotel, fill their rooms up with items for sale or trade, and then open their doors up for anyone else in the hotel to wander through. Members looking to buy or trade walk from floor to floor going in and out of those rooms to find their dream item -- that last piece they need to complete a part of their collection. To be honest with you, what usually happens is that you find something to start a whole new set and you're off searching for your original item and more. We have a game we play on the way to these events. In the car or plane we'll say "OK what are we finding this year?" Then all of us will take a crack at what we are going to find. Over the past 15 years we've been right maybe once or twice. And that was in the early years of collecting, for us, when it was pretty easy to find what we needed. We needed just about everything. Now we've narrowed our choices down so the picking is a bit slimmer. Not that we don't find something - it's just usually something unexpected.
We had a friend who early on gave us advice on collecting at these events. We went to one or two conventions and came home with an assortment of "minor" collectibles. Little inexpensive to moderately expensive items purchased to fill up our walls. He told us that he did that in the beginning as well. Now he had a new rule that worked pretty well. He said that he would come home with one item that he was proud of from each event. He'd save the money that he was spending on those $5 or $10 items and put them towards a bigger item. He figured he'd rather have one old $100 sign than ten $10 key chains or toys. That made sense to us and we've looked for one great reminder from each event ever since then. Sort of a Coca-Cola souvenir from each event and area we've visited. There are times when we've come close to finding nothing - heading home empty-handed. Those times right when I was ready to give up and save that cash to go for something even better next year, that great souvenir turned up at the auction or swap meet.
So back to Springtime in Atlanta 2005. Like I said, our groundwork started months ago. We're in the process of moving so we've decided to sell off a few of our items. We just don't have the space to store or display everything in the new house so it's time to sell off a few big things and put that cash into smaller items that we have room for. We had a bottle collection of a few thousand bottles. We've taken that down to a few dozen. We had about 350 toy trucks. That's now down to about a dozen of our best trucks. We've kept the bulk of the collection, but it's time to thin things out. A selling room at Springtime is the perfect spot to move those items. So we box up Coke stuff for weeks, load up the trailer and van with just enough room for our clothing and a six-year-old and off we go to Atlanta.
We spend the first night in Atlanta at our best friend's house and move into the Springtime convention hotel on Sunday afternoon. The week starts off with a volunteer work party. Again - for the newbie - EVERYTHING the club does is done using volunteers. The Executive Board, the local Chairpersons right down to the person who takes your ticket at an event or stuffs that bag full of goodies that you get at registration -- they are all volunteers. About 30 of those volunteers showed up on a beautiful Sunday afternoon to get things ready for Springtime. A line formed and each volunteer filled bags for each event. First the gifts were filled for the women's registration packet, then the men's. The children's Easter buckets were filled next and then the gifts for some of the parties were assembled. Within two hours packets were filled for about 700 adults, 100 kids and hundreds of party guests. These guys have this down to a science. I guess after over 25 years of Springtime in Atlanta events, they know what they're doing.
We check into the hotel Sunday afternoon and leave the trailer and van full. We get our selling room tomorrow. We get a surprise call late Sunday night telling us that the room is ready. If we want to start unloading now, we can. It's been a long weekend so far so we opt for getting into the room tomorrow.
It's 6:30 Monday morning and I'm ready to unload. After nine or ten trips to the trailer and back, we've got the room full of boxes. I haven't emptied the boxes - I just got them into the room. I leave the emptying for my wife Cathy. The first few years that we set up we'd work together emptying the car and setting up the displays. We realized that vacationing like this was either going to lead to divorce or the untimely death of one or the other of us. We then realized that I'm good at the grunt work and Cathy is good at the display work. The marriage and our health are surviving this new arrangement. After five hours of work Cathy has the room ready to open. The room is so big that we've asked our friends from North Carolina - Grady and Barbara - to join us and set up their items in the same room. This is an idea that other collectors should consider. If you don't have enough to fill a room, share with a friend. We can cover the room while others room hop, and it's always better to have four workers rather than two. They also bring more quality items into the room that will attract more customers. This works out for everyone involved. By late Monday night we're open and selling out of the room. Now we've only had about 10 customers but we're ready for the rush of collectors.
Monday night Sara, our six-year-old, and I started room hopping. Before the night is over we'll go from the 14th floor to the lobby seven times. We ride up to the 14th, walk from one end of the floor to the other then walk down the steps to the next floor. We repeat that until we hit the lobby. Now Sara wants me to stop in the health club and work out. I use this simple explanation for her. I ask "what do people do on a treadmill?" Her answer: "pretend they're walking somewhere." Next question "what do people do on a stepper?" Her answer: "pretend they're walking up stairs." I then asked her what we just did seven times? "Walked the floors and climbed the stairs." Even at six she got the connection. Room hopping is pretty good exercise and we've got a week of room hopping left to go.
Tuesday morning and I'm in the selling room by 8 a.m. One full day into the event and I've already reached one of our goals. Remember the "always come home with one great piece" rule? Well I've already found it. Yesterday afternoon when Grady was unloading his boxes he pulled out a clock that fit the bill. A small rare piece that we never expected to own - that meets all of the requirements for a great find. Now just because we've found that one doesn't mean that we're giving up the search. It's just going to be a successful Springtime this year - no matter what happens over the next five or six days.
There are quite a few family traditions that come out of events like this. We've got quite a few friends we will only see at Springtime each year. Many lunches and dinners have already been planned well in advance. Some are just understood. At one point we'll be having Mexican with one group and Chinese with another. Plans will never really be firmed up - at one point we'll just go. We've have to - it's "Springtime."
The selling rooms here are a good mix this year. Two of the biggest and well known bottle collectors and dealers have rooms setup. More bottles than you can imagine in one place. The other four selling room - including us - have a wide mix of items. You can find items from 1910 right up to items made last week -- all within a few feet of each other. There's a great selection of foreign items displayed this year as well. It's fun to see how Coca-Cola is marketed in other countries and foreign items make nice additions to any collection. I could see where you could get all of your items right here and never have to room hop. But just think of what you might miss out on.
A quick lunch at the mall across the street will hold us over until dinner, now back to room hopping. I didn't expect much this early in the week, especially at lunch time, but I was surprised to find four or five new rooms open. It looks like it's going to be a good night - we saw lots of members moving in with tons of boxes. The hotel is starting to get pretty active.
Well it's now 10 p.m. and we're still going. Many rooms have opened up and room hopping is getting good. Just in the last round we've seen one room FULL of mint-condition tin signs and another room with a near mint condition 1905 Vienna Art Plate. Not a bad run. Add to those lots of bottle dealers and more new collectibles than you can count, and we're doing pretty well. Early registration ran tonight and quite a few members got a jump start on the event. Tonight we'll close up early with a planned visit to The Coca-Cola Company in the morning.
Forget about keeping up with the week. It's just not possible. This is where the event becomes a collector's blur. That's a good thing. Over the past few days we've done a few months worth of Coca-Cola collecting. We've had a great visit to The Coca-Cola Company courtesy of the Atlanta Chapter and the Company's Archives, room hopped for three straight days, bought and sold tons of great - and not so great - items, attended and worked an auction with over 500 Coca-Cola collectibles, and went to a swap meet with 150 tables - many of which we had not seen all week. Wow - it's hard to keep up.
Now it's Saturday and the swap meet is winding down. Everyone is tired. Some folks will take off for home immediately after the swap meet and others will hit the farewell banquet. For me there's one more stop before the banquet. The Atlanta Chapter has always done a great job of remembering the kids in the group. Ten years ago I walked past the Easter egg hunt and thought - cute. Then moved on. Now I've got a six-year-old who WILL NOT miss out on the hunt. A new event has been added to my week -- one that I did not attend for years, and now haven't missed for the last six years. She decorated cookies, played games, found new and old friends, met the Easter Bunny and Coca-Cola Polar Bear and, oh yeah, found eggs as well. I was thinking about her Easter. While most kids find their Easter basket at home, Sara thinks that Easter tradition includes getting up at 4 a.m. and driving back 12 hours to Maryland. I guess we all celebrate a little differently.
Now we load up the trailer between the egg hunt and the banquet. When I talk to the bellmen at the hotel at the beginning of the week they all laugh and say "well at least we won't have to handle this big load when you leave" - really. Remember 90% of what is bought and sold here is done between collectors, so while you may not load it back into my trailer, you'll be putting it into someone else's. So I load the trailer - I mean LOAD the trailer - and then shower up and prepare for the banquet. I've volunteered to help with the presentation and John will be waiting. He is one of the best speakers I've seen. He can really work a crowd and it's a real pleasure to work with him.
That's it. Months of getting ready and a week of fun. Springtime is over. The banquet went really well and it's a great way to have one last meal with your friends until next year. Now we hit the sack and prepare for a long ride home. We've had some fun, we've bought some great Coke items and sold a ton. We're already planning next year's trip and will not miss it.
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