Dealers Henry Nicholls and son Peter pictured at a past IACF Ardingly fair.
“I’ve been doing Ardingly since I was 16 years old”, he wrote. “I’m now 54. Never have we had a bad fair there but January can be hit or miss.
“This time we absolutely smashed it! Just goes to show that with quality fairs this trade is going from strength to strength.”
Nicholls once memorably said of his favourite fairs: “The enthusiasm, the anticipation, the overwhelming sense of excitement from buyers and sellers alike was just like being at the Led Zeppelin reunion at the O2.”
Explaining the appeal of fairs such as Ardingly, he told ATG: “Ninety per cent of our trade is face to face at fairs. During lockdown it was all done over the phone.
"Both myself and my son Peter aren’t really the sort of people who can sit on a computer all day uploading, or stare at a phone for hours tweeting and Instagramming.”
