Barboursville, W.Va. meet, September 29, 2007

For some reason, there doesn't seem to be much of a license plate collectors' presence in West Virginia. Although it's hard to dispute that the plates of the state are more interesting than those of the states that surround it, collectors here tend to be few and dispersed. A regional association like the MLPCA wouldn't exactly be likely to sustain itself here. Heck, even a plate meet in West Virginia isn't exactly a common affair. So, when news came up about a new meet at a city park in Barboursville...a city just east of Huntington...my senses were definitely stimulated.

Having graduated from college four months earlier, this was the first meet that I travelled to alone. After backing my car out of the driveway around 6 a.m., I neared Barboursville two hours later, where I spent over twenty minutes straight trying to find the place. The instructions printed in the Plates newsletter seem clear enough now in retrospect, aside from the "Continue to Main Street and turn left" line that didn't exactly mesh with the actual street grid.

But find I did, and to my delight there were others in attendance. As anticipated there were fewer people in attendance than at most of the other regional meets I had been to before; however, collectors from as far away as Michigan and Missouri were there. Furthermore, the trade boxes this day yielded a good "signal to noise" ratio: While I didn't fill in any real holes for the birthyear run, I did find quite a few other interesting plates from West Virginia and abroad: A handicapped plate, a 1985 Kentucky "Limited" plate, a Virginia Independence Bicentennial with an even more recent validation sticker, and Wisconsin and West Virginia tags bearing my initials. One guy had boxes upon boxes of West Virginia non-passenger types (mainly Apportioned) from the 1980s and 1990s, of which I plucked a number of things out.

This was the first meet in which I splurged for a table of my own. After placing my sign in a prominent position, I took the liberty of spreading much of my trading stock out for the taking and making myself visible. A shrewd tactic: I ended up selling a few plates more than I usually do (which is zero), including my illustrious 50¢ Pennsylvania.

Overall I had a fine time, and Josh Husiar (the eccentric guy behind the meet) did a good job putting it together. The only thing I regret doing is not taking cutoff-point notes for West Virginia non-passenger plates while I was there. Some thoughts:

• Although it was a bit hard to get there, the venue...at a covered picnic shelter at a park by railroad tracks and water...was perfect. It was a bit windy, but otherwise I don't have anything to reasonably fault.
• As mentioned before, the meet started at 8 a.m. and ended scarcely four hours later. I think it would be more practical to have it slightly later in the day. I've never grasped the early-to-rise "flea market" mentality that a lot of older collectors seem to have.
• A donation auction would have been fun to have. Although the idea was tossed around at the meet, it ultimately didn't happen. Planning an auction ahead of time; leaving a designated table for donations, and mentioning it in the ALPCA magazine would have made the idea work out a lot better. Of course, auctions also work best when there are a lot of people in attendance, so it might not have been practical for a new meet anyway.

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©2007 Andrew Turnbull.
Last update October 3, 2007.