I will be hosting a Gun, Sword and Knife Collectors show Jan 12, and 13 at the TVSA range in Fairbanks. Tables will be free, but I am excepting collections only! No T shirts, baked goods, buying or selling. This is an opportunity to show off your collection and inform the public. As far as I know, Fairbanks has never had a collectors show, so this is the first. I need to have an Org meeting soon, so please contact me ASAP if your interested. Use this site or call 907-488-7662.

Thanks for the offer but no way! We are wintering in Arizona, instead of Haines, where the shooting is more comfortable and the gun shows more frequent. It looks like we did bring some snow to Southern AZ with us though.

JS

We had the Gun collectors show. It had been warm all week, and was warm again the day after the show. Warm being -15 or so. The day of the show it was of course -40F. It did effect attendance. If it is, has been, and is going to be cold for a while, then Fairbanks folks go about business as usual. But when it is a short cold spell, we tend to just hunker down by the wood stove. This was a short cold spell.
This was the First collectors show in the interior of AK.  I did it out of pocket as we have no local collectors association. There is what is called a State Association in Anchorage, but they are really an Anchorage Association. It is 360 miles from FBKS to Anchorage. And Anchorageites think we should come down just any weekend for any event they are hosting.But it is 5,000 miles from Anchorage to FBKS. And as much crap as they wolf about being Alaskans you can't drag one of them up here in the winter. Scares the hell out of them. 
Anyway it was a small show, with 6 collections shown. There would have been 8, but one man had a bad set of frozen pipes, and my Son who collects Case knives was called to work on the North Slope. We had 20 paying customers.(I have yet to figure out the advertising angle, I used the news paper with is expensive, and only read by old Democrats, and I used the radio with is free on certain shows, but again the audience is small. A working man doesn't have his ear tuned to a radio. I know Facebook is the way to go, but that is all I know about Face Book. That and the owner is a commie pinko.) The folks who did come spent a lot of time at the show, many spent an hour or longer, touching, feeling, talking, and learning. It was good. We built some enthusiasm for gun collecting. The exhibitors all had a great time and promised to do it again. Timing is an issue. There is always a gun show in April and another in Oct. I thought Jan. cuz there is nothing else to do in the cold and dark. Of course it could get really cold, and some folks Snow Bird. Come March or May the weather gets beautiful and everybody is out of doors enjoying the snow. Those are the challenges. I'll figure it out and we will do it again next year. Thanks for the interest.

Glad to hear you're trying this for the gun collecting community up there! Maybe try to move it to a warmer month next year, and you'll have much more success.
We started our collector club's show about a decade ago. Lost money for the club for 3 years, but the show was such a hit with people that we continued. Now it's over 200 tables, with over 30 displays. We make a little money for the club, but still not much. But we consider it a huge success because table holders and collectors love it!
As long as we at least break even or make a little money, we'll continue to provide it as a service to the local collectors.

That's actually a bonus to have the extra tourist crowd during your gun show. Tourists are always looking for more things to do, and will boost the number of people through the doors. Plus collectors also appreciate the added traffic and will be more likely to set up if they expect bigger crowds.