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I'm not sure where to put this on the forum - but is Thursday Night Swap Meet still going to be badgeless?

Seconding this question, as I'm kinda curious and don't recall seeing anything posted on this one way or another.  For buyers, of course.  I know we'll need our badge to get in to sell.

Seriously, I think you're kinda barking up the wrong tree here.  Or at the very least, the wrong board.

Three things you can do that I can think of off the top of my head, other than ebay:
1) Start a thread in the Buy/Sell/Trade board.  http://forums.fanime.com/index.php/board,52.0.html  Maybe someone going to Fanime will be interested and would be willing to conduct the sale there.
2) It might not make much sense if you've only got the one comic to sell, but you could probably still register for a space at swap meet and try to sell it that way.
3) Stop by Lee's Comics in Mountain View.  They're easy to get to from the convention.  Just head north up 101 for a bit.  They buy comics there.

As Firefury mentioned, any vendors in the dealers hall are much more interested in selling their own merchandise rather than picking up things themselves.  Assuming they're even attending this year, there's only been one vendor that really seems to do anything with American, but I don't remember their name.  More than likely you're going to be stuck holding on to it while wandering around a crowded con.  Even if you've got it slabbed by CGC, I wouldn't even want to risk damaging or losing it.

I've got a couple of questions that don't seem to have been brought up yet:

I know the rules on this aren't likely to differ from last year, but since I don't see it mentioned anywhere, have there been any changes regarding how we transport our items into swap meet?  I'm assuming hand trucks and the like are not allowed per the usual Union rules, but if I were to have a platform of some variety with wheels or casters on it, would I be able to push my items in on that?  I didn't realize how much stuff I've accumulated and I could really do with the freed up space and cash, but I'm a little concerned with how I'm going to get it all in.  I can probably manhandle it with a couple of trips, but I won't have any friends available to help out and I'd rather work smarter than harder, ya know?

What exactly is the restroom situation like for South Hall?  I remember seeing a sign towards the back of the hall that said RESTROOMS with an arrow to the side, but when I looked over in the direction it was indicating it was pointing to a door that was blocked off by trash cans.  I'm guessing there aren't any restrooms actually in the South Hall since it's basically a big tent.  If we have to step out of Swap Meet for a minute to head over to the actual convention center, is there a quick and easy way we'd be able to get back in?  Is there a way we can identify ourselves as sellers to skip any line of buyers to get back in to our spot?

What about auction-style sales? I.e. I put a piece of paper in front of some kind of item and people write down bids, with the highest bid winning the item at the end? I figure this might be a bit less dodgy than the raffles since no money exchanges hands until the end.

I don't know if this is something that would be allowed or not, but speaking as someone who's both sold and bought at swap meet, I probably wouldn't recommend it.

People often take multiple laps around, for various reasons, and you'll more than likely see someone who stopped by at the beginning of swap meet come back around a little later.  What you're not likely to find are all the same people who came at 7:30 come back at midnight just to see if their bid won.  I'd imagine most of the bids would come towards the end of the evening, which means not many people bumping the bids up.  Or, anyone who may have bid earlier would forget about it and wind up not coming back to pick their items up and, more importantly, pay.

If you're trying to get the most out of your sales by having a competitive bid, why not just price your stuff slightly higher than what you'd ask for, then allow people to haggle you down?  If you wanted to create a more dynamic experience with the bids, well, that's not exactly what swap meet is for.  Usually just chatting about the various stuff you're selling and the series they're from creates enough of a back-and-forth between you and anyone who might be interested in buying something from you.

These are just my opinions.  Depending on what swap meet and the city of San Jose allow, it may be a non-issue if it's not allowed in the first place.

Could anybody confirm if we need to send digital copies of the swap meet agreement and BOE forms to the swapmeet@fanime email, or if we just bring these forms with us when we go to swap meet at con? I remember the latter being the case based on last year, but the instructions on the swap meet registration form were a bit ambiguous so I wanted to make sure.

Thanks!

Print them, sign them, and bring them in with you.  You turn them in to staff while you're being checked in to your spot.

The room(s) that you actually went in to for registration last year, not the large open hall facing the street where the fantastically short-to non-existent lines were, do have the movable wall partitions.  The Silicon Valley Comic Con had panels set up there earlier this year, which really sucked because their registration was also in that area.

This explains why Fanime's moving reg to the Marriott this year.  I just hope having reg in that already bustling hotel won't affect anyone staying there.  You know, like this guy.  Elevator linecon '16, here I come!

Nice and easy reg again this year.  I got ID 9208.  Guessing I was the 7th or 8th to register?

One thing I noticed was that we would be contacted with our assigned space.  I don't remember that from previous years, aside from the spot where you could put in a special request.  Are the spaces going to be planned and assigned ahead of time?  I think that would make things a lot easier for us sellers when we get there.

Zelyhon, thanks so much for the update!  I'm sure I speak for everyone that's been posting here in saying we really appreciate you throwing us a bone by giving us a heads up before the info goes up through other channels.  Plus, who knows exactly when that would be anyway.

Thank you for your continued communication in leading up to the con!

I agree with Michi, South Hall (aka the big blue tent) was an excellent location.  Probably second only to being in the convention center itself, which apparently will never happen again.

The year it was at the City National Civic Theater was the worst, location wise.  It was way too small to accommodate even a reasonable number of people at any given time for Swap Meet.  If I recall correctly, I still managed to sell pretty well, but everything I heard from people trying to get in later was that it was a huge headache.  There were definitely a lot fewer people coming in to browse because of the limited capacity, and I also noticed fewer people made multiple laps or return trips throughout the night.  Second worst location was the Fairmont, partially because of the distance from the convention center, but also because of the really confusing way sellers were spread out through multiple ballrooms.

I don't remember when seller signups went up the last couple of years.  It definitely seems like it creeps closer and closer every year, but I didn't think it's been this close to the start of the con before.

As for series, just, a good spread. That was one of the things that contributed to my ditching Anime Expo in favor of the drive north; the AX dealer's hall was all just same handful of things for the same handful of series. (At the time, Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece and good bloody luck finding anything for other series!) Especially if there's a good mix of the new and popular AND the older and more niche.

I don't want to take anything away from the vendors selling at Dealers Hall this year, but it sounds like you should check out Swap Meet, if you don't already.  Especially for runs of manga, if not complete sets, you'd probably make out better buying off other attendees.  I still find some decent deals from Dealers Hall, and if you like stuff from the '70s, '80s and even '90s, Kimono My House is a great booth to check out.  They've been set up on their own near the exit every year I've gone, as far as I can remember.  From personal experience though, if you're looking for things from the mid to late '90s and early '00s, Swap Meet is much more likely to have things you'd be interested in.

I'm sure staff is aware, but there's only 17 days until Day 0.  I don't mean to sound like one of the other posters in the forums counting down the days, every day, but it is getting pretty close.  Especially when you consider Swap Meet has been confirmed for this year, and we're supposed to get at least one day's notice before seller's registration goes up.  Just sayin'.

Did anyone else happen to attend the recent Silicon Valley Comic Con?  It was also held at the SJCC and they had a similar policy where you would tap in/out with their NFC/RFID bracelet to gain access to most of the con.  In fact, when I first read the OP, my immediate thought was that someone from staff had attended and noticed that they didn't need to check badges at every entrance to the panels or Dealers Hall or the like, and thought that it would work well for Fanime too.

It was great in theory.  People would be able to move in and out of the different halls and rooms once they showed proof of registration at a central area.  There were a couple of problems with this, though.  They had a bunch of things going on both upstairs and at the ground floor of the convention center.  Due to their schedule and the different panels I was interested in, there was a lot of tapping in and out to get from one area to another.  The other issue stemmed from the fact that the badge/wristband check was set up basically at the top of the main stairs in front of one of the large halls - I think it was Hall 2 - set roughly where Stage Zero normally is but further back closer to the middle of that area.  While the tap in/out process was very fast, the sheer number of people and the layout of the second floor made that a major bottleneck.  In all they maybe had a couple dozen stations set up, of which only three or four were positioned as an exit.  All of them were in the same general area, so that quickly got clogged with a ton of people trying to work their way both out of the area and further in to where everything was happening.  It didn't help that SVCC apparently drew the largest crowd ever for the convention center, but it really didn't look like there were that many more people than the past few Fanimes.  What SVCC didn't have was anything going on in any of the SJCC side rooms or any of the hotel ballrooms.  Originally I was thinking Fanime would have badge check at the entrances on the main floor, but then I remembered you can access everything by coming in from the hotels, and there are all those entrances from the convention center garage as well.  I'm assuming Fanime is keeping their policy of having those side panel and viewing rooms requiring a badge to get in to, so I guess those locations will still need people checking badges at the door.

I really want this to work out as this would free up a TON of staff and volunteers from having to just sit there for hours checking badges, and I know they could always use that help in some other capacity around the con.  However, knowing how spread out Fanime is and witnessing how poorly it worked for Comic Con I'm just not convinced we'll see a positive outcome.  I'm all for changes to the con with the hopes of improving things for both staff and attendees.  I guess we'll just have to hope there's a good game plan behind all this and see how things wind up. 

Heh, I suppose in an attempt to rub salt into open wounds, I just got an email notifying me that the hotel blocks for Anime Expo are now open.  We still have another two days until we hear when we're able to reg for Fanime's hotels.  So, yeah...

Just wondering if there are any details that can be shared regarding this year's swap meet.  Are there any dates that can be given as to when we'll be able to request a spot?  Will it be back in the South Hall like I'm hoping?  Sizes and prices would be nice to know as well.  Heck, can we even get confirmation that there's going to be a swap meet this year?  I mean, I know the words "swap" and "meet" are up on Fanime's site, but that's almost literally as far as it goes.

[2017]

Wow.  The initial post from FB stating that attendee housing would be opening "soon" was published back on January 20th.  Today, three weeks later, we finally get information on when hotel reg will be opening.  It'll be another week until the booking window emails are sent out, and then an additional week on top of that before people can actually begin to register.

Apparently when they said "soon," they actually meant "in a little more than a month."  At this rate, Fanime 2017 will also be here soon.

Yeah, I'm glad we finally have some decent information to go by, but come on.  You really can't say that it's "better late than never" in this case when you consider what's involved for hopeful attendees.  I mean, unless the blocks of time allotted to each group of people to register for a room is only a couple of hours long - which it better not be - you're almost definitely going to have people who wind up just starting the process of signing up for a room less than three months before the start of the con.  I'm hopeful this new process reduces, if not eliminates, the waitlist this year, but if it doesn't it's going to be really tight for those waiting to see if any rooms free up.  I don't even remember how long a window there is to cancel a reservation, but yikes.  People better plan carefully.

I actually thought rolling out the rooms in blocks based on when people registered was a welcome change.  We won't really know how well it works until housing actually opens, but at least it's an attempt at an improvement rather than sticking with the tried-and-terrible.  Despite that, we really should have been able to book rooms by now.  Teasing us with the promise of progress only to make us wait an additional 35 days before we can actually do anything was just a low blow.

I even double-checked the post to make sure I wasn't being unfair, but no, the second sentence in the post specifically said the actual registration was opening soon:

Hello FanimeCon community!

FanimeCon attendee housing will be opening soon. This year we are implementing a new process to improve the room booking experience. Here are some more details about our new booking process.

Only towards the end does it mention posting date information soon, and now we finally know how look it took to get that out.

At this point there's not much we can do.  I can only hope that the actual registration process works out... and in the mean time add snark to my posts here.  That, and check to see if there's been any updates to other important con information.

Guests: Coming soon
MusicFest: Coming soon
Swap Meet: Coming soon
...
dang.

[2017]

Feel free to answer here or engage in dialogue on Twitter!

I'm actually glad this was posted here, as I was about to start a new thread.  I don't have a twitter account and it's not really worth creating one for the sake of responding to a poll.  First, a question: surely you're gauging the interest for MusicFest 2017, right?  I mean, the con is coming up, in the word of the housing registration post, "soon."  I just hope that this doesn't reflect any specific difficulties regarding this year's 'fest, as it's the concerts and swap meet that primarily keep me interested in Fanime these last few years.

To leave some more constructive comments here, I wouldn't mind seeing local bands appear at Fanime, but I'd rather they get a chance to perform on Stage Zero or at most as an opening act to a headliner from Japan.  They should at least cover popular Japanese songs or sing their own songs in Japanese.  And even then, I'd really hope there's some kind of vetting process used to see if a performer or group are actually capable of putting on a show.  There are plenty of talented musicians who like to play and sing around the con, and there's the usual karaoke scene, but I wouldn't necessarily want to go out of my way to catch them on stage.  I remember from a few years ago seeing Lemon Drop Kick at Fanime.  I had no clue who they were, but they put on a really awesome show.  They may be based in LA, but I'd still consider them a j-rock group and I'm really glad I got a chance to check them out.  They'd be my ideal example of someone "local" coming to perform.

As an even better alternative, I wouldn't mind checking out indie bands from Japan.  There's a certain sense of pride in knowing that it's the Bay Area where a band may have gotten their first taste of the international scene.  Or maybe not, but it's still a cool thought.  I recall reading through that thread detailing one longtime staffer's experiences, and seeing that we were this close to having Babymetal perform here.  You never know who the next big group is going to be or where they're going to come from.

If I was still restricted to the two choices in the poll, though, I think local bands are definitely a second in favor of bands that are actually from Japan, but they don't always have to be a huge marquee headliner.  If staff is able to snag a hugely popular group that performs all the hottest anime op's, well, that'd be dandy too.

I think I still like being in one of the large halls in the actual SJCC better as the location for swap meet, but this year's venue was fantastic!  The floors were filthy so I'm glad I decided to bring tarps this year.  The two biggest benefits for having it in the SJCC proper is it's a lot easier for me to get all my stuff in - I usually park in the garage, so I don't need to deal with crossing streets and deal with curbs and cracks in the sidewalk when I'm already in the same building - and convenience for shoppers who are already milling about and don't need to walk that admittedly short half-block distance to the south hall.  Having the wider spots definitely seemed to make things easier for display and for people to shop without having a huge mob around some places.  I'm not sure the SJCC would allow for those same wide spaces and still be able to accommodate the number of people that were there.  The $40 charge per night was a bit painful, but was manageable and worth all the improvements from the last couple years.  Still, if that price were to go down a little, I sure wouldn't be upset about it.

I don't really have any other negatives for this year other than the mad rush to pack up on Friday, which you've already addressed.  Thursday seemed a little thinner than previous Day 0's, excluding last year, but Friday had an incredible turnout.  And like someone already mentioned, being allowed to set up so early on Friday was great.  I usually get there early, but by the time we're let in I still wind up with a few things left to set up when folks are let in to shop.  On Friday, I was able to get everything laid out and make sure everything was labeled without having to rush.  I was completely set up and still had a few minutes to wander around before the doors opened.  I don't know if it worked better or not for staff, but I hope we're allowed to get in the same way in future swap meets, or at least allow us to start getting in earlier than an hour before things start.

Huge shoutout to this year's staff.  Great job, guys!  This was definitely one of the best run Fanime swap meets, at least from a seller's perspective.

To paraphrase GLaDOS, I think you guys can make a note regarding this year: Huge success!

Besides less competition amongst buyers on Thursday I've also met a few sellers over the years who, for whatever reason, are only selling Thursday and not Friday.  Scheduling-wise, selling Friday instead of Thursday makes more sense to me, and those folks who don't come back on Friday usually have some pretty good stuff.  You gotta get it while you can.

Personally, I'm going to be trying something a bit different this year as a seller.  Most folks will be willing to reduce prices late Friday night so they can sell as much as they can and not have to deal with lugging it all back home.  I'm going to try the opposite.  I'm fairly certain the stuff I'm bringing will sell at or close to the prices I'll be asking.  However, I'm thinking of dropping the prices for my manga and anime on Thursday to sell as much as I can and likewise not have to bring everything back to my hotel room, only to drag it all back again on Friday.  And since there are usually quite a few more attendees on Friday, and thus more buyers than there are on Thursday, I'll have more people willing to pay the higher (ie: normal) price.  And, if my selection is any good, people won't have a chance on Friday night to sleep on the purchase before pulling the trigger.  You have no idea how many times people come up on Thursday to ask if I'll be coming back Friday, and that they'll consider buying something if it's still there the next day.

tl;dr: Come Thursday for better deals (from me at least) and a better chance to scoop up the good stuff.  Come back Friday for a bigger and different assortment of items.  Stick around until close to grab last-minute deals from sellers desperate to get rid of whatever's left. 

I see that sellers will be able to start checking in an hour to an hour and a half before the start of swap meet each night.  I assume we'll be lining up at the main entrance of the South Hall, the one facing South Market Street.

Will there be any particular order that sellers will be checked in, say by their registration number as in years prior, or will it be first come first served like last year?

Mainly though, I'm going to go through the swap meet to /try/ and pick up manga to complete my sets, and if they have figures there that I want. In short, mainly figures and manga to finish my collection.

What series/volumes are you looking for?  I'll be selling at swap meet both nights.  While my manga selection has been whittled down quite a bit from what I brought last year, I may have something you're looking for.

To keep this post relevant, I'll be keeping a closer eye on other swap meet sellers than dealer's hall.  I tend to look for manga or DVDs that are out of print.  Nendos at a good price would be nice, but most of the sellers I've seen the last few years have been priced above import cost.  Also if there's anything unique and/or cheap from G1 Transformers or Gundam - I found these really neat non-transformable vinyl figures of Optimus Prime, Megatron, Starscream and Grimlock from a swap meet seller last year.  I had never seen them before, and I'm pretty sure I got them at a decent price.