The New Jersey Antique Bottle Club hosted the annual Batsto Antique and Bottle Show on September 30, 2012 at Batsto Village in Wharton State Forest, Hammonton, NJ. Paul DelGuercio and I were show Chairmen. It was a beautiful sunny day with no wind, just perfect for an early Fall outdoor event in the Southern New Jersey Pinelands. Rob Auermuller, Superintendent of New Jersey's Wharton State Forest, estimated the attendance at 6,000 people for this one day event. When I asked Rob what his margin of error was he replied: If you said there were 5-7,000 people here today you would be accurate. The Park Staff uses a formula based on parking lot capacity and rotation of vehicles, within select parking spaces, to calculate the approximate number of visitors to the Village which could be as high as 25-30,000 for the weekend of the Country Living fair. Rob also mentioned that at one point at about 11:30 a.m., there were over 1,000 people, at the same time, in the area of Village where the show was being held. There may be bottle shows that are larger than Batsto, but I can't think of any that come close to 6,000 for the day with over 1,000 in attendance at one time. The result is that customers shopping all day long, right until the 4 p.m. show closing time. As the NJ State Facility Use Permit holder for this event, it is my obligation to remain on the grounds until all dealers and non-Park personnel have left for the day. I can honestly tell you there were people shopping and buying until 5:25 p.m. when the final dealer packed up and left. If you are curious, that last sale was for a handful of vintage jewelry purchased by a young couple.
Paul DelGuercio has been the show chairman for all 27 years the show has been held. Paul gets the show signs out on Route 30 in late July because people want to mark their calendars with this can't miss Fall event. It is because of Paul's dedication and determination that this event has survived for so many years. Paul keeps telling me that his days as show chairman are numbered. I'm here to tell you that I will do what is necessary to keep him from retiring from this duty any time soon. Last year's show was cancelled because Hurricane Irene created flooding that washed out the bridges on both sides of Route 542, Pleasant Mills Road, leading to Batsto Village. There was no way in or out of the Village. Paul was inundated with calls as to why the show was not being held. He reassured the public that once the bridges and roads were repaired we would continue to host the annual event. Before that flooding, the show was held in the actual Village in and around the Mansion. This was a great location but very hard for our club to park dealers safely due to the large amount of trees, buildings, roads, septic fields etc. Park policy required the dealers to move their vehicles from the Village in order to portray and accurate historical representation of the site. Therefore, most of the bottle dealers or about half our vendors needed to unload their merchandise and move their vehicles before set up. This, coupled with the desire of uncontrolled early shoppers and the amount of unregistered dealers in line, created the unsafe situation of pedestrians not paying attention and motor vehicles moving in all directions. The remaining half of our vendors, mostly local antique dealers, were permitted to park in the adjacent orchard and were allowed to keep their vehicle in their sales space since this was technically not a part of the historic village. After the flood, Wharton State Forest personnel Rob Auermuller and Terry Schmidt, worked with our Club to create a safer and more practical alternative to the set up scenario which had evolved over the years. We did not want to lose the beauty of the location, but no matter what we tried our set ups were much too chaotic. After some meeting and discussion, both parties agreed to move the show location out of the Village proper and into the area of the Lower Village where the glass house once stood. Several major advantages were quickly apparent. The size of dealer spaces was standardized and larger than before, dealers were quickly and easily parked in long rows with no confusion or argument, all dealers were allowed to keep their vehicles within their sales spaces, shoppers could easily navigate long straight rows instead of a variety of dead legs and loops, the local Boy Scout troop that provides refreshment had plenty of room to set up and serve homemade breakfast and lunch. Finally, all of our vendors could park, unload and sell without having to move their vehicles or move their stock to the show area. The disadvantage to the new show area was that some customers had to walk a distance of about 400 yards from the parking lot to the show grounds and that could be an issue for the elderly or the handicapped.
