More than 23,000 people visited New York City this May 28-June 4 for the highly acclaimed international stamp show and exhibition organized under the patronage of the Fédération Internationale de Philatélie (FIP).
The show featured more than 200 dealers and postal administrations—including Canadian dealers as well as Canada Post—buying and selling all kinds of philatelic material. There were also nearly 4,150 frames of competitive exhibits as well as a Court of Honour and Invited Exhibits displaying priceless stamp rarities such as the unique 1856 British Guiana one-cent magenta, which was purchased by fashion shoe designer Stuart Weitzman for $9.48 million USD last June. It’s the world’s most valuable stamp. The show also offered several several high-quality auctions featuring a variety of world rarities; more than 355 hours of seminars, meetings and youth and beginner activities; as well as first-day ceremonies sponsored by the U.S. Postal Service, U.N. Postal Administration and other postal services.
“Attendance at World Stamp Show-NY 2016 was as successful as previous USA Internationals,” said World Stamp Show-NY 2016 President Wade Saadi, who added attendance was measured by “gate clicks” at previous U.S. international shows: “a click for every time a person entered the show floor, regardless of how many times a day they traversed the gate throughout the show.”
These “gate clicks” marked any time an individual re-entered the show floor after attending a seminar, an auction, or going to get coffee or lunch in the lobby or perhaps around the city. If a person who attended the show attended two seminars and went out for any food or drink, they would have four gate clicks; if they attended the show for all eight days, that would be 32 gate clicks for one person.
“It was felt the most accurate way for us to account for attendance would be by counting those who actually registered, the unique visitors,” said Saadi, about determining the attendance of NY-2016. “This was possible for this show with the advent of online registration and today’s technology; almost 50 per cent of our registrations were done prior to the show by the show goer, and another 10 per cent by us beforehand (dealers, exhibitors, volunteers, donors, et. al.).”
BY THE NUMBERS…
- 23,017: unique visitors by registration
- 2,380: VIP badges printed in advance
- 275: VIP badges printed on-site
- 2,530: school group participants
- 7,738: paper registrations
- 10,094: online registrations
“Regardless of different methods of accounting for attendance, there were more important and relevant methods of determining the success of a U.S. International,” said Saadi. “To wit; the vast majority of the dealers who attended had a fantastic show and were delighted at their sales and traffic. The show attendees, from all accounts, were delighted with the event. The press reports and coverage were fantastic and the hobby was well served by the exhibition.”