Hello fellow TIG members!

I come today to ask for opinions. As you are all probably well aware, we have not had Best Collection Awards contest for quite some time.

One reason is it has become increasingly harder to get "Real" Sponsors. We had a good run with prizes from Brian's Toys, Ript apparel and some others. Recently, when contacted, we got some rather short replies, indicating either our welcome had been worn out, or they just can't give any more prizes.

Would those of you who took part like to still have this contest every few months? Would you like to see any changes? If we had to turn to participants for prizes, would any of you consider donating a prize?

I know the first time we teamed up with TIG, DarthBerizing put up one of his own bootlegs as a prize.

Please feel free to comment, complain or suggest either here in this thread or message me directly.

We wish to continue the contest. We can't do it without participants. We CAN do it without prizes, and make it more of a "bragging rights" sort of thing.

To all of you who have taken part, THANK YOU. To all of you who offer some form of reply, Thank you, for helping us make the contest better and more fun for all.

That sounds like it would be a plan and I would even to be willing to see what I can do myself in the way of getting a donation. We have a vintage toy store here called cherry bomb toys I am sure if I and maybe who ever decides to be in charge could both talk to the owner of the company. Just so he knows it's all ligit.
 
I will give the link to the shop so you can all see it, and what they do in the way of sponsoring.
 
http://cherry-bomb-toys.myshopify.com/
 
This is also one of the events they hold every year
http://www.ultimatetoyfair.com/

Once a year, I'm sure I could come up with a prize ( unload some modern stuff    )

Instead of running it every three or four months how about making it an annual or bi-annual event?
You could widen the categories to draw more entries in, go for a bigger promotion of it, and maybe official sponsors will be more willing to offer up prizes if it's only once/twice a year.

If you're having trouble with sponsors you might want to consider what interest sponsors generally have. For the most part they look at their "donations" as a trade for advertising that will hopefully generate more income than the original investment made by them. Business owners know that if no one knows they exist they will get no clients so advertising is looked upon as a very important part of business. If your past sponsors "went cold" it is probably because they didn't see enough sales related to this group or event. So what can you do to get sponsors? Find new businesses that will look at this as an opportunity for them to get broad, free advertising to a group they think will make purchases. This will likely involve adding a banner or business logo to the event and doing a bit of promotion (ie: ass kissing). There are tens of thousands of small businesses that deal with figure collecting worldwide and you could probably get a few involved for each contest with a little time spent contacting businesses and "pitching" your contest to them. If you put up a post asking members to list the businesses they know of I think within a month you would have more than enough leads to start sending out requests. I would be willing to help organize and pitch the event if you like. I run my own small business and know a bit about PR. You basically just have to get people's interest by making your pitch attractive. (Why do you think so many big companies use scantily clad women...)
The other option would be to have a $1 entry fee for the contest and with the funds generated then purchase an item as a prize from one of our members (who will likely give us a better deal than other sources). You could get more entries by making the contest accessible to even the most modest collector (ie: handsomest Luke Farmboy figure or something else that is based on subjective votes rather than largest or rarest collection.)
I hope this helps.- J

Thank you all for your replies. It has been decided, since my original post, that we will be starting a new round. The date will be from Feb. 28th to April 28th.

The history of the BCA contest started back in 2007, when Yahoo went crazy and started the "World of Star Wars" site. Several of us all got together and had a monthy contest. We would have as many as six categories at a time! All prizes came from other members.

When Yahoo shut the site down, we moved the contest to Wattos junk shop (My site, co-founded with a friend of mine from the UK) Some of the staff took it upon themselves to go out and find "Real" sponsors. Hence the prizes from Brian's Toys and the like.

Membership stalled, contest entries dropped, and we turned to joining with other sites, such as TIG and Yakface. We do run less contests now. I think last year we only ran two or three.

Of course this is all done by volunteers, and it can be time consuming for some of our staff. That reason as well as less entries brought the decision to lower the number of contests we have. Maybe we should run the contest every 6 months and try to contact a wider number of companies to see if we can get a responce. Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE the idea of Hasbro kicking a prize in every time, but I doubt that would happen.

For those of you who have names and contact info for some of these smaller shops, please send them to me in a message. It certainly can not hurt to contact them, and see if they would be willing to sponsor.

We do try to promote the contest, as I post details here, and on Yakface. The facebook page constantly pushes out updates and contest info as new rounds are running.

Feel free to check out the facebook page, as well as the website for the BCA.

WEB: http://www.wattosjunkshop.com/BCAindex.html

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/#!/BestCollectionAwards

These pages contain ALL previous categories and winners.

Every suggestion you guys make is taken to the rest of the staff. We try to make the round as accessible to everyone as we can. One of the biggest topics we need help with is category selection. I know this is a primarily VINTAGE forum, so if you have a Vintage idea, feel free to post it here, or on the facebook page

Im willing to selflessly give my body up for sexual favours to any female winners, in fact im calling for a category for just women to showcase their collections, once again i'll give my time to hand pick the winner as long as the girls submit a picture of themselves with their collections   cheers