Sigh!

Could only dream

Mind you, Marco's second picture would send me bankrupt right there......

I want that box on the left ... and the right ... and the top ... etc.
The fun I could have there !!
Thanks for the pictures.

Yeah, it’s a little bit cruel showing pictures like that

How are the prices?

Lots of good offers, or average Ebay or Catawiki prices??

This event looks like an ocean of trains!

Well, I hopped on the shuttle bus of the event, to go back to the train station in Houten.
And most of my fellow passengers had bags and suitcases full of mrr purchases and talked enthusiastic in the bus about the good deals and such.

There were 2 different sellers with a lot of Faller AMS (the Faller H0 slotcars of the 60s) both with prices way lower than on german ebay and catawiki. I bought a mint Faller AMS 4858 Mercedes 300 SE Coupe in original box for € 35,= in Houten, a normal catawiki or ebay.de price for this car is € 55 - € 60

And there were a million Faller, Kibri, Vollmer, Auhagen etcetera kits for sale with the regular pricetags on the box, but the sellers had these papersigns saying there was a 20% discount on these prices on the boxes. Same for the Faller car system items.
I bought a new Faller gas station kit 191784 (which is new in the Faller program since December 2022) for € 38,40 and that kit has a normal retail price of € 49,99. So this was a really good deal. And even more so because the kit is new in the Faller program.
Most of these model kit sellers were German by the way (and on my gas station kit was also a german price tag of € 47,99).

I can't say much about the prices of marklin, because I didn't pay much attention to Marklin because I'm a Trix Express user.
But I will take some photos of the Marklin prices on my next visit in May.

But what I do know is that this Houten swap meet exist since the (mid ?) 80s.
It first started in the Flint in Amersfoort but gained so much popularity that the location was getting to small, so the event moved to a bigger location in Nieuwegein, but that was soon to small too. The event moved to Houten in the early 90s where there was much more free parking space and such. The event is known for its low prices and attracts buyers from Belgium, Germany, France etcetera. My wild guess is that last saturday 60% of the sellers were Dutch and 40% were from Germany. Could also be 70/30 or 50/50, hard to say.

Edited by user 29 March 2023 09:43:37(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

You mentioned Eurospoor. I attended in 2021, they had just opened up following covid lockdown. Very impressive. My first visit to Utrecht - what a beautiful city.
A recent visit to the Eurospoor website indicated they were closing - no event in 2023. Reading between the lines it looks like a portion of the event venue is being converted to housing? I'm sure their cash flow/business model got hammered during covid. I had trouble understanding their website.

Dear Lord I would be in HEAVEN!