Quote Originally Posted by greenmonkey51
Im going to my first show this weekend I have a few questions. Are most deals cash. Also if you buy a herp, will most sellers hold it for a while, so you can go look around more w/o carrying a bunch of deli cups around.
Having stood behind a table at shows for more hours than I care to remember I'll take a stab at answering these questions.

Cash vs. Credit. You will see plenty of vendors out in front of the show holding their credit card machines above their heads, sideways, on top of their cars trying to get a good signal. However, I would guess more vendors do not take CC at the shows than those that do. Consider that depending on the show, probably a third or better of the vendors are hobby breeders that aren't set up for credit cards. When I first started, I had a merchant account and could accept CC's. It was a royal pain and after a while the fees for not having processed enough charges during the month made it not worth having. Seems that most of my internet sales preferred to use Pay Pal, so it wasn't a big deal after I cancelled the merchant account. Personally when I am a vendor at a show I price my geckos a little lower since it is usually a cash sale and there is no hassle with shipping, I'm also prone to let the customer haggle me down a bit just because many people go to the shows looking for a great deal. It's the swap meet mentality that Adam is so fond of... If I still accepted CC's at the show, I would have to add another 2.9% on to my starting price to account for the CC fees, or have a "cash" price and a "credit" price.

As for holding the animal until you are ready to leave, absolutely, no vendor should have a problem with that, I can't think of a single good reason why they wouldn't do that for you after you made the purchase.