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Fairgrounds draws vendors, buffs for Canfield Auto Swap Meet
IF YOU GO
Where: Canfield Fairgrounds
Today: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Sunday: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. with a car show from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Admission is $5 per person per day or $7 for the entire weekend. Children 12 and younger are free.
Parking is free.
Pets are allowed, but discouraged and must be on a leash.
CANFIELD
A white card- board sign warned potential buyers that the burnt- orange ’49 Studebaker “Biz” Coupe was “not for the faint of heart.”
“It’ll take a lot of work [to get it running],” said owner Richard Heflin of Uniontown.
Heflin was one of many early-morning attendees at the annual Canfield Auto Swap Meet on Friday. The show runs through Sunday.
Heflin had intentions of fixing up the rusted jalopy, but those plans fell through when he instead invested in a rose-colored ’63 Chevy Biscayne. He calls that car a “money pit,” and now he’s asking $1,700 for the Studebaker that he’d hoped to turn into a convertible.
“Hopefully I’ll sell it,” Heflin said. “I got a large bill coming up on that race car.”
The swap meet is in its 25th year of having three summer shows in April, July and September. This is the last of the season.
Owner Ed Nelso said the busiest day for the show is Saturday. He said between 500 and 700 cars will have taken over the fairgrounds for Sunday’s car show, which will begin at 10 a.m. and conclude at 3 p.m. with judging and prizes.
In the meantime, there is the ever-present array of fried fair food to keep guests full. And dozens of vendors selling old license plates, Harley-Davidson sweatshirts, work gloves, hatchets, ratchets and rims galore.
Roy Walkowiak of Cleveland brought a truck full of rims to sell this weekend. Roy’s Rims operates on a per-appointment basis in the Cleveland area where Walkowiak houses a few thousand rims in a warehouse.
He brought 600 to the show Friday.
“I’ll probably sell between 10 and 20 sets,” Walkowiak said. “Everybody is looking for something specific, for a year, make or model.”
Dave Dixon of Beaver Falls, Pa., brought an array of truck parts to sell Friday. He and business partner Brian McNeely run Toojuice Car & Truck Parts and have come to the Canfield Swap Meet for several years.
“This isn’t even the tip of the iceberg,” Dixon said of the dozens of car doors and grills scattered about the grass.
Dixon said his girlfriend and McNeely’s wife will join them at the show later this weekend.
“They’ll sit here while we go browsing,” Dixon said. “You never know what we’re gonna find.”
Dixon, who works for an oil company, said he uses a lot of vacation days to attend car shows such as this trying to find parts for his ’72 Nova and ’57 Chevy Truck. He brought his burgundy ’64 Malibu Super Sport to the event.
“I’ve always been a hunter,” Dixon said. “I hunt deer and coyote. When you’re looking for something specific and you find it, it’s like a sense of accomplishment.”