Catnap 

I was at Kutztown on Saturday from around 9:30am until 3pm. My friends and I stopped at Trexlertown first, only to find three vendors and no buyers. Having never attended a swap outside of NYC, I was pretty worried until we rolled into the Kutztown campground and saw a full parking lot and many vendors.

From an inventory perspective, Kutztown was 70% Schwinns & American muscle bikes / balloon tire bikes and about 30% 1960s-1990s road stuff. There were only three vendors (including myself) who sold exclusively road and track stuff; a few others had a mix of things with road & track parts in their bins if you took the time to look. Overall, the vibe was great - very friendly and welcoming from the moment I drove up. Good food at very reasonable prices (I had breakfast and lunch for about $10 total). I'd say the only downside was very few buyers who weren't also vendors. There just wasn't a lot of foot traffic, which made sense since the venue is pretty far out in a lovely campground. Casual cyclists aren't going to stumble onto it the way say, the Brooklyn Bike Jumble usually has all kinds of random people. I did enough in sales to justify the trip, and had a lot of fun conversations with the other vendors. There were a lot of good deals and finds to be had as well. I would have bought a lot more stuff but I'm trying to be as disciplined as possible about selling and not buying. I did score a titanium bottom bracket and a Shimano 7400 NJS track bottom bracket for $40 total, and each is worth several times that amount.

There was a lot of scuttlebutt going around regarding the two competing swaps. As an outsider / first timer, my observation was that I hope the two groups can work things out ahead of next year, as keeping it to one venue in a more accessible place would be to everyone's benefit. Kutztown had all the action, but after over a decade hearing about the Trexlertown swap, I can't help but think there might have been a larger buying crowd if there weren't competing swaps on the same day.