The 16th Annual Show on September 27th, 2003 was another capital success for the ElC! As in the past several years, we joined forces with the New Mexico Historical Bottle Society to pull this event off. This year we returned to our favorite venue, Chapman Hall of St. Paul's United Methodist Church in NE Albuquerque. We had 48 sales tables (33 insulators and 15 bottles & other collectibles). Many of the traditional dealers were in attendance and a few new folks as well. We had dealer representation from CA, AZ, CO, TX, MA, KS, NV and TN - not to mention the NM crowd. The walk-in traffic was pretty intense most of the day on Saturday - sometimes it was pretty difficult to maneuver around the hall, and we had a number of paid early-bird buyers during the Friday PM setup period. The buyers came from even more states than the dealers - we had a great National representation.

A trademark of the EIC shows, the exhibits were again outstanding and rivaled many recent NIA Regional shows in quantity and quality. This is always one of the high points of the show. There were 11 displays covering many aspects of the hobby. I think this was the first year that we had three junior exhibits, and each of these was a fine display. Seven of the exhibits were insulator related, two were displays of marbles, and two were bottle exhibits. Tom Katonak did well with his exhibit on the Ohio Valley Glass Company by receiving the EIC Best of Show award, the People's Choice ribbon and the Crown Jewels of the Wire ribbon for the most educational exhibit. Eloise Haltman, a frequent exhibitor at the EIC shows, won the NIA "best display" award and the EIC Second Place ribbon for her artistic collection of clear glass insulators entitled "Clearly Beautiful". EIC Charter Member Duane Davenport won the NMHBS Best Bottle Display and Most Educational awards for his awesome collection of soda siphon bottles. Alex Havener got the ElC Best Junior Display award, and Mike Miller received the ElC Honorable Mention ribbon for great display of Denver toll and AMTEL toll mold types. Greg and Marsha Hoglin received the EIC "Best Non-insulator/Non-bottle Exhibit" award, and Larry Jones was the winner of the NMHBS "Best Bottle Related Exhibit". There were several other exhibits that were of such high quality that they deserve mention here. Rick Bentley had a great display on Russian insulators and Russian signs, and his daughter Judith put together a wonderful exhibit of marbles. Steve Kelly and his son Dave put up a beautiful joint exhibit of porcelain insulators and barbwire. And Roger Nagel had a spectacular display of colored glass!

Tom Katonak's Award Winning Exhibit of Ohio Valley Glass

Bill and Jill Meier sort through their dealer stock

Over all, dealers reported good sales - though still not like the "pre-911 days". Foreign items, particularly Ukrainian glass, and North American colored glass moved briskly. The EIC Show has a reputation for a place to make great trades, and this year was no exception. One dealer was reported to have traded 60 WGM tolls for a fine selection of pre-historic Indian pottery! Also this year, we had a fine selection of relics and artifacts on various dealers' tables. This seemed to be a big draw for walk-through traffic.

Eloise Haltman wins NIA Best of Show Award

Charter EIC Members Lynda Katonak and 
Marilyn Seamons discuss show details

One of our stalwart attendees from Grapevine Texas, Wade Howard, was recuperating from a stroke and could not attend this year. We passed a card around the show-hall for all to sign wishing Wade a speedy recovery. Activity pretty well tailed off by 3:30 p.m. and some of the dealers packed up their wares. Those spending the night in Albuquerque were able to attend the annual open house at the Katonak's place in Corrales on Sunday morning. This turned out to be a great event: A picture perfect fall day in New Mexico, a wonderful brunch compliments of Lynda, a house-full of collectors telling the best tales they could muster, and a bit of trading going on the side - you couldn't ask for much more!

EIC President Mike Gay with Duane Davenport at dealer table

People often ask why this event seems so well organized! I sat down and put a list together of "who did what to  make the show successful"... turns out that it took about 25 dedicated people - in addition to the dealers and exhibitors - to pull this off. My personal thanks to all of you volunteers, to the dealers, and to the exhibitors: Without you, there would be no show.

Mark and Cane Becher shop for glass

Duane Davenport's Colorful Soda Siphon Exhibit

Insulator Historian Mike Miller Adjusts Denver Exhibit