Well, I went to the Richmond 'fest and can't say that I was overly thrilled with the experience. This was my first hamfest. When my wife and I arrived, we couldn't believe the number of people there and the length of the line at the door. We then realized that there was a gun show in the building next door, and the line was for that show. There were, however, a substantial number of people at the 'fest as well, though no waiting line, which was good. Another surprise was the number of people my age and older, 60+. There were very few young people there, which I find a little disappointing.
IMO, it was a typical arena show with inflated prices, and much more junk (=trash) than useful ham components and radios. There was only one main radio manufacturer there, Yaesu, and they did, in fact have a very nice booth set up with radios to handle, lighted and plenty of support documentation (brochures). (I sure did like the FT-950; the 2000 and 5000 were nice to look at, but I figured at this stage in life, I couldn't possibly live long enough to learn what all those buttons do!) If you were looking for cable, connectors and the like, there were plenty of choices, though pricing was inflated for the show atmosphere, in many cases. (I did grab some power-pole connectors even though I new I could get them online at about half the price.)
I know the saying, "One man's junk is another man's treasure," but really. What amazed me was the number of people selling obviously broken items for premium prices. (I was warned about that.) There were very few used transceivers and even fewer that were were "fully operational."
Well, all-in-all, it was a good day out with the wife, but it was a long way to travel for lunch.
