Brimfield online trading saw some good prices.

BRIMFIELD, MASS., & ONLINE – The coronavirus may have kept thousands of shoppers from descending in typical fashion on this small town but it could not stop the annual spring event from going on. Prevented from making their annual pilgrimage, dealers and shoppers alike turned their attention to online forums to trade. Two of the busiest sites on Facebook were Brimfield Online, with administrators Tom Sloan, Michael Lord and Justin Nash; and Hertan’s Antique Shows & Brimfield Live, moderated most prominently by Klia Ververidis Crisafulli. Hertans Facebook page posted live videos of field openings (despite no shoppers to “run” onto the fields) and dealer posts in the order they would have taken place, giving the “live online” format authenticity. Not to be outdone, Instagram brought “the best of Brimfield” to online shoppers with @TheBrimfieldShow launching a series of shows under specific hashtags.

Antiques and The Arts Weekly’s editors also missed the reason to hop in our cars and head north, but we have been monitoring the posts, videos, dealer talks, sales and comments from afar and will present extensive armchair coverage of this not-to-be missed series of shows in an upcoming issue.

A screen-shot from a short video taken the morning of Wednesday, May 13, when the gate opened for the New England Motel field. Twenty-four hours after the field “virtually” opened, the video post had been viewed by 2,800 people.