Pen Show Review
 

The 2014 San Francisco Pen Show

 

 

By Rick Propas

Those of you who have paid attention will recall that the San Francisco Pen show has a fairly long, but discontinuous history. Begun about fifteen years ago by three local collectors, Greg Clark, Mike Jennings and Saul Kitchener, the show has gone through the hands of several different proprietors before coming into the hands of the current organizers, Ricky Chau, Todd Eberspacher and Syd Saperstein, the Wahlnut and proprietor of the modern Wahl-Eversharp company. At each juncture, the show has stopped, sometimes for a few years, seemingly dead, but in reality just resting. And over the years, the show has also gone through a series of locations from downtown Oakland, to suburban Alameda County, to the San Francisco Peninsula.

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All of this as prelude to the fact that wherever it has been held, whenever it has been held, whoever the organizer and whatever the problems that have prevented it from becoming a regular fixture on the show circuit, the San Francisco Show, like The Dude, abides.

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So why does this show persist? Quite simply because San Francisco is a great venue for a pen show. Not only is this a fine travel destination, but there is a good, strong pen community that has been built up over the decades.

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And that brings us to this year’s show, held at the Sofitel Hotel in Redwood City, a fine, central location with easy access to various sites throughout the region. Because I travel a lot, one of the main attractions of this show is to sleep in my own bed, but from what I saw and heard the hotel was just fine. They appear to have liked hosting us and the organizers seemed happy to be dealing with them.

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But at the end of the day, the measure of success for any show is the opportunity to see friends and to buy and sell and trade pens. And here this show shone. Despite the fact that this is, essentially, a first year, regional show and it came just two weeks after the DC Show, there were a wide range of sellers set up who spanned the continent, including Paul Erano and Mario Campa from New York, Susan Wirth from the midwest, Lee Chait’s from the southeast and even Andy Lambrou from England. They were complemented by a range of regional collectors and dealers, including Bittner from Carmel, Arizona Pens, Stuart Hawkinson from Portland and nibmeisters Mike Masuyama, Greg Minuskin and John Mottishaw from LA. These visitors were complemented by a wide range of local collector/dealers including Roger Cromwell’s Penopoly, Terri Morris’ Peyton Street Pens and too many others to list here. Finally, weekend traders came from across the continent, drawn not only by the show, but by ties to the area. In short, there was everything and everyone present to make up a “real” show.

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Andy Lambrou

But, I have seen shows where everyone was dressed up and no one went to the ball. Not so here. Despite problems with publicity the customers came. But then clientele has never been a problem for this show. In the past I have both bought and seld well and this year was no exception. As in the past, my sales for the show were surprisingly comparable to the earlier and much larger Washington DC show and I was not the only one. The vast majority of dealers with whom I spoke were more than pleased with the commercial results and the organizers did their best to provide amentiies, from a Friday night social, to food for dealers and clients alike and onsite security so that we had to set up only once.

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In sum, this was a fine and a successful show and certainly one that warrants consideration from those who may not have come this year. The only question is “will there be a next year?” Even before the show ended, the organizers seem to have reached agreement with the hotel for next year.

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So one can only hope to see more people at the same site for more fun next year, and even if this show were not local, I would be putting it on my calendar.


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© 2014 Rick Propas - all rights reserved
 
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