AMPS Central SC "Stuff I Don't Need Anymore" (SIDNA) Sale and Show :: RESCHEDULED 04 APR 26

Clubs & Groups
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If you live in or around the SC, NC, GA, TN region, you might be interested in this event. Vendors will be selling all model genre kits and supplies, and the VERY LARGE raffle will also be offering kits and supplies for all genres. The SIDNA sale is not limited to just armor modeling stuff!

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED TO: SATURDAY, 04 APR 2026. Same location and same times -

SC Scale Model Mega Show :: AMPS Central SC 2026 S.I.D.N.A. Sale and Show

Rescheduled SIDNA Sale Poster
Rescheduled SIDNA Sale Poster1280×720 98.5 KB

If you’re interested in vending to unload some “stuff you don’t need,” then act quickly! Table reservations are still available, but they won’t last long!

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I live in Chapin abd I understand there will not be a contest this year?

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No contest this year. Unfortunately, when we announced our contest this year (actually was scheduled last year, 2025) we got an… underwhelming… response from potential attendees and vendors. When vendors don’t buy or reserve tables, and we don’t get any enthusiasm from past and future potential attendees / patrons, then hosting a show is not economically viable.

Things become even worse when there is active opposition and negative criticism from other scale modeling clubs, both from their formal and informal leaders. These folks will come to our shows, and go through the vendor area like locusts, but then they don’t enter the show or buy raffle tickets. They love to hate us, and they are perfectly happy to take what they can get, but aside from making some of the vendors happy, they do very little else to support the show. They actively boycott the model exhibition and show and refuse to buy raffle tickets. They will line up to get in, shop the vendors, and then give us the metaphorical one-finger salute on their way back out the door.

A lot of our exhibitor / entrant growth over the past couple of years has been from modelers who are not affiliated with regular clubs (since so many of the “traditional” modeling crowd have boycotted our show), however, these attendees don’t give us any usable feedback or promotion. Without their feedback, we have no way to judge or predict entrant participation.

So, we were forced to make a decision to pull the plug on the 2025 contest because vendors were not buying tables, and we couldn’t get any handle on what we might get for patronage. There is a go / no-go cutoff date based on the number of tables sold vs. how many are left. If you can imagine grafting these numbers on a timeline, then what you get is a prediction of how many tables will be sold by the date of the contest. You know how many you have to sell by the day of, and if you’re on track to fall short… So, when you reach that decision date, you have to make the call to go on with the show or cancel in time to get your venue deposit back. We didn’t want to, but the numbers just were not lining up for us.

Contests are funded by a combination of proceeds from vendor table sales, raffle ticket sales and registration fees. Each revenue source has to meet a predicted gross (which we base on our historical records of past shows and event growth). The total gross has to meet or exceed the expenses. It’s that simple. We are perfectly happy to run our shows on a “break even” basis and have done so in the past. We do like to make some small profit to cover us for inflation cost increases for the next year, but we cannot be good stewards of our club’s resources if we have reason to believe that we will probably be in the red.

So, we canceled out 2025 show and reschedule and replanned with the venue for the 2026 S.I.D.N.A. Sale, Show and Raffle. The sale is a reduced vendor event. The show portion is mostly a public display opportunity for club members, although, we’ll have some limited space available for others (on a first come, first served basis). The raffle will be as large as what we would have had with our regular (if we had held it). It will be REALLY LARGE with a LOT of prizes. (We generally run very large raffles, year after year.)

We really felt that we owed it to the many manufacturers and others who had donated prizes for our regular show raffle (many manufacturers look at such donations as advertising / promotion expenses and have a reasonable expectation of a promotion return on that expense).

The top prize for the raffle will be a Foredom Flexi Tool (~$500 value!). There are also a large number of other new, premium scale model kits along with modeling supplies. The kits cover the whole range of scale modeling genres, so there’re prizes for every scale modeling taste.

So… For everyone who’s got this far with this post, do yourself a favor. If you enjoy going to model shows, be sure to let your hosts know that you’ve had a good time and want to do it again the next year. Tell your friends and everyone else (the owners of your LHS and / or gaming store, too). When you’re shopping the vendors at a show, talk to them. Tell them you appreciate that they’re at the show (and buy something!). Be positive and enthusiastic with the vendors about the show. Tell them how much you enjoy it and how much you look forward to it each year. To be brutally honest, vendor table sales are what mostly pay for the venue. No vendors = no show.

(If you’re a vendor, realize that your table purchase is an investment in not only your current product sales but also an investment in having a venue to sell at next year. If the costs of tables has gone up because of inflation, understand that no one in the hosting model club is making any money off of that. We don’t like it any more than you do, but we can’t host shows by paying for them out of our own pockets. We balance the prices for all of the revenue streams to keep the patron and vendor costs as low as possible for everyone. However, when the venue raises their rental prices, we have to raise what we’re asking, too.)

While you’re at it, buy a few raffle tickets. If you don’t want to hang around for the raffle draws, finds some kid or junior modeler in the venue and give him or her your unwanted tickets. If you get a raffle prize you don’t want, give it away to some kid and make his or her day! Make your own investment for the future of the hobby

If you find that you get bored sitting around the venue waiting for the awards ceremony, get involved. Volunteer to help with the judging. If you don’t feel confident judging, ask if you can join a judging team to watch and learn how it’s done. You might find that it’s actually pretty easy and educational and after a watching a few models being judged, maybe you’ll feel up to it. There are NEVER enough judges, and the speed that the judging gets done depends on how many people are involved. Consider that most model clubs only have a dozen or so members. Look around and count the heads of the people working the show and what’s left are the ones trying to do all the judging. The best way to speed things up and get the awards ceremony started quicker is to HELP JUDGE. Every modeler sitting in the peanut gallery twiddling his or her thumbs waiting on the awards is one more modeler who could be helping with the judging.

Understand that model shows and exhibitions are a lot of hard work and expense for the hosting club. It might be fun for you to attend, but for the folks putting it on, a lot of times there’s no chance to shop the vendors or play in the raffle. It’s a largely thankless job. We do it because we love the hobby and want to give back to the modeling community, but we’re never too proud to gladly accept some help.

If you think that something could be done better, don’t just complain to your mates and then talk the show down on social media. Find someone in the hosting club and talk to them about the problem. Offer some ideas or solutions.

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Sad to hear your show was cancelled Mike. Any reason why other clubs are actively boycotting your show? Is this an on-going thing? Different judging philosophies?

( The two clubs I’m in on Ling Island both host a show at the same venue; one in March, the other in November. I’m very involved with helping at both shows be it registration, judging, awards etc. and have been for 25 years or so. I can understand how much of a balancing act it can be financially to run a show even though I’m not the treasurer or anything.)

There also was a huge difference of opinion with respect to the judging systems in the plastic club. The figure club had always used Gold,Silver,Bronze.

The Aircraft modelers in our club despised the medal system , not sure why. Mostly it was old timers I think, many of whom are gone and we now have a different leadership group. They always wanted 1,2 and 3. That’s changing now where as all models in all categories will be G, S, B at our next show going forward I think.

Hopefully it can get worked out and your show can go on in the future.

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The SIDNA sale, raffle and show has been postponed because of the forecasted ice storm.

Although the forecast for Columbia doesn’t have the worst of the weather starting until in the afternoon on Saturday, it is anticipated to start much earlier for folks living to north. Our concern is for guys who might be traveling down to Columbia and then having to head back home later.

We are already working with the venue to reschedule the date and will publicize that as soon as we can. Until then, for everyone in the region, stay safe and warm!

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Yea, Richard, it was fundamentally because the clubs in that “other scale modeling society” (in our region!) have decided that AMPS, and pretty much any local or regional club associated with AMPS, is somehow a threat to their own existence. This resistance started the moment we organized our local AMPS chapter and has continued for more than a decade.

The leadership of local “other society” club (which I had been a member of since the early 1970s!) immediately began its insurgent attack on our AMPS chapter the very day that I announced we were starting up an AMPS chapter, and that resistance has only ever hardened. The initial rational was that the AMPS chapter would “take members away from” the other club. This was, of course, total BS, and in fact, the AMPS chapter encouraged new members to attend and join that other club, especially if those new members also had interests in other modeling genres. And, indeed, over the years that other club actually GAINED several new members who first started in the AMPS chapter.

We in the AMPS chapter attempted to invite that other club to co-host shows with us, and the couple of times that we were able to get them onboard, the old-guard in that group did everything possible to make the experience as unpleasant as possible (for instance, never assisting on the day-of, bad mouthing the event behind the scenes, etc.). The only reason why these co-events ever happened was because of the number of modelers who were in BOTH clubs voting during that other club’s meeting to accept the AMPS club invitations.

After our last co-hosted event, that other club accused a couple of us who were in both clubs and on the joint contest committee of lying to and actually stealing money from that other club (by way of not sharing the net profit fairly - the details of this would take forever to explain, but the accusation was totally baseless and easily documented through records and receipts for expenses and incomes). The other club’s leadership then used these accusations as a rational to change their by-laws so that any modeler who was in both clubs could no longer debate or vote on matters of operation of that other club.

Note that this final break took a number of years to reach that point, when it happened (about 3 years ago), most of us “dual members” did finally leave that other club (and also dropped our membership in that other society, including myself whose membership number was 24124 which is an indication of how long I had been a member). So, the other club’s leadership did, in fact, create a self-fulfilling prophecy. It did actually lose members…

All this while, the membership of that other club (both the formal and informal leaders) were instrumental in building resistance to AMPS and our local club among the other chapters of that society in the region. This was largely possible because of the nature of the leadership life-cycle that exists in most model clubs. The formal leaders are very often in their positions for years and years if not decades and decades. Most club members are perfectly happy to let someone else run things (for many various reasons), so local clubs tend to reflect the personalities of their long-standing leaders (for good or bad).

The most egregious thing that we in the AMPS chapter did, though, was to start to use a modified version of the AMPS registration and scoring system that could be applied to ALL genres of scale models and figures and not just to armor. That is, we started judging, scoring and providing written, AMPS-style feedback for all models while also opening up our registration and categories to include all scale models. This was, of course, a heretical break from the doctrine and dogma of that other scale modeling society. It was worse than just going to a GSB rather than a 1-2-3 form of awards. Once we did this, “the gloves came off,” so to speak, and the resistance to what we were doing became open and much more than just verbal.

We are still convinced that the “AMPS Way” of judging and providing skill-level appropriate and genre-specific feedback does help modelers to learn and improve their skills, knowledge and ability. We’ve watched that in action with modelers who get that have very steep learning curves, developing very quickly as modelers rather than stagnating, becoming frustrated and never being able to “crack the code” on their own. We’ve never suggested or promoted this method as something that must replace straight up, head-to-head competition. For those modelers who want that, by all means, go enter a model “competition.” However, there are also many, many other modelers in our community who don’t thrive on that kind of competition and who want other opportunities, like public exhibition in a more social setting and with neutral judges who will give them their honest opinions and suggestions for personal improvement.

So, we will continue to do our own thing and host our shows using the exhibition and judging formats that we believe can satisfy the needs of those modelers who want something other than straight up comparative competition.

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I have passed the word. It should be interesting this weekend.

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We’ll announce a new date pretty soon. It looks like we already have a fairly solid consensus from the dates that are available from the venue, so all that is lacking is the official decision.

Call me skeptical about the weather forecast. I can appreciate the early notice, however, the hyperbole from the news and weather media reporting has grown ever more outrageous over the past years, while the accuracy of their predictions seems to lag behind.

As you say, it should be an interesting weekend. Stay safe and warm!

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Reading this thread was interesting. Our club used to run a show so I’m far too familiar with all the issues mentioned! One thing we discovered early on was the financial success of any show depended on who controlled the catering - the lion’s-share of our profit came not from entrance fees, but rather from the sale of bacon sandwiches!

Hope the weather improves and you can fix a new date.

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PATHETIC!

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The shows I attend here locally, we just order about 20 pizzas for the staff and judges. Some guys do go out on their own after the judging is completed and get something.

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There seems to be several modeling shows that have been canceled or postponed this year. Seattle IPMS Spring Show had to cancel and find a new venue.

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Thanks, Tom! I think we’ll have a new date to announce in a few days.

For those who don’t run shows or might be considering hosting one in the future:

Most of the venues that we’ve used for shows over the past decade or so have all had kitchen facilities that were either included in the rental or could be added to the rental. In the early days, we did offer a limited menu of food to keep patrons at the show (which improved vendor sales, raffle ticket sales, and encouraged folks to volunteer to help with judging). However, the money return on the labor “costs” wasn’t worth it. We had to allocate club members to “kitchen duty” (even with help from our “auxiliary” members - i.e. the wives!) with took them away from essential show duties, and afterwards, the cleanup was usually very time consuming. We always made a bit of additional profit, but the net return after the expenses (purchasing the food and serving supplies and adding the extra rental cost - if not included) wasn’t ever enough to make a huge difference to the overall event net profit. We really look at the finances on a “break even” basis. As long as we make enough to cover the costs of hosting the show, we consider that a financial success. Profit is nice, but only a factor to cover inflation and possible plans for expansion of the show. We only ever consider expanding the size of the show when we’ve sold ALL of the vendor space available. We’ll keep adding more and more vendor tables, show to show, until we run out of room in the venue. (We won’t raise table rates for the vendors during these multi-year evolutions unless the table rental company raises their rates. More vendors are worth more than adding a little bit extra to the net profit.)

What we’ve found to work much better is to organize a number of food trucks and set aside space in the parking lot for them. This seems to add to the “festive” quality of the event. This does depend on the nature of the venue, since some places won’t allow non-venue food sales (and sometimes not even allow “bring in” food which is a deal-breaker for us).

Coordinating with the food trucks is its own “thing,” too. They’re businesses in their own right. Their first question will be, “How many people?” and their next question will be, “How many other food vendors?” For the second question, we’re always upfront and tell them how many spaces we’ll have set aside in the parking lot (usually no more than three).

For the first question, it’s important to be able to give them honest estimates on likely show participation: club members + vendors and helpers + registrants and guests + general admission. So, capturing those numbers and then keeping accurate records to predict future participation is a really important show function that shouldn’t be ignored. Our experience is that charging for both registration and general admission coupled with using either wrist bands or hand stamps and then monitoring the entry door to the display / vendor area has been the best way to capture these numbers. We also issue wrist bands to the vendors, their helpers, club members and volunteers.

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Venue costs have significantly increased since COVID. One reason why we went back so far with our own show patronage is that we had to find a new venue after the one we used for years essentially doubled its prices. A new venue meant that we had to also change the time of year that we held our show, and that upset a lot of the vendors, who like routine - same shows, same dates, same places, year after year after year.

Couple that with what I described in my earlier post, and… a canceled show that does no one any good - not the vendors and not the model builders in the region - except those folks who got the satisfaction of being able to tell themselves that they finally “killed that annoying AMPS chapter’s contest.”

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There are those in bureaucracies that can get too wrapped up in the minutia and can’t see the forest for the trees. It’s modeling, should be enjoyable. We are getting older, fewer young people seem to attend our events. Animosity can only speed the decline.

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There are some people who should never ever under no circumstances whatsoever be allowed anywhere near a position of power …

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The irony is that we were seeing the majority of our show patronage growth (that is, modelers who were registering for the exhibition and not just the GA shopping the vendors) from non-affiliated modelers. These were folks who don’t (most never had) belonged to a formal model club or one of the modeling societies.

Our problem was in reaching these modelers to promote the show and encourage even greater participation. It’s very hard to find these modelers and to keep them in the loop. We didn’t get much feedback from them after each show, but their numbers were growing, albeit slowly.

These unaffiliated modelers presented an opportunity for recruiting by any and all of the other modeling clubs in the region (especially those “other society” chapters). Our show actually offered them a chance to add to their own membership rather than being a threat to them. One of the things we offered in registration were “club tables” which could be used to group all of that club’s members in a single location in the display area and which they could also set up banners, put up club displays, hand out flyers, etc. The only thing we would not allow was kit sales from these club tables (which would compete with the regular vendors). These clubs could sell tee shirts and other club kitsch, if they wanted.

However, rather than take the opportunity to promote their own clubs and invite new members, they all chose to sabotage and subvert. What could be a “win-win” for everyone is seen as a zero-sum competition. No one else can be successful since they believe that other success somehow takes away from (what could be) their own success. Short sighted and mean-spirited for no other reason than they can be.

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The joys of running a show and clubs.

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If at all possible, quietly chat with some of the opposition. A reasonable win/win conversation will not change things quickly, but will put the thought in play at their meetings. The reason the current president does not want fraternizing to happen is because he fears change. Some of his members may like your ideas and want to modify what they do. Politics, who would have thought….

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Oh, we’re years and years past that. We’ve tried pretty much any way possible to pour oil on those troubled waters. Every effort to extend an olive branch has been rebuffed, and anyone who has been willing to work with us has also been tarred with the same brush. (That’s the main reason why the local “other society” chapter codified in their by-laws - enacted, BTW without any input from the general membership - that no one who is a member of another model club could vote or discuss or bring up new business. This means that no one who dares to try to speak up has any voice and is also subject to de facto expulsion.)

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