I made a ton of pics, partly to share impressions of the show, but also for inspiration or reference.
My wife came down to the show on the last day with her friend and the kids.
Her friend is a professional photographer and took a lot of pics. Often time, she would say something like 'oh this is beautiful' and then my wife would think to herself 'not really, because this, that, and that is wrong'.
My wife knows quite a bit about knives by now, and she is a hawk for spotting fit and finish issues. So any gap, or wayward polishing scratches or grinding lines, etc.
She said that at the show, more than half was really not up to standard and pretty 'shoddy work' in her opinion. Which is not to disparage that work, per se. There is a vast market for knives from 50 to 150 dollars, and you simply cannot spend the same time on the finish as on a 500 $ knife.
And the interesting thing was that while the prices for knives at the show was very diverse between 50 and 2500$, there was a really strong correlation between the quality of the work and the price. For example, if you saw a knife (and looked at it as a knifemaker) you could more or less guess the price, and if you looked at a price tag, you knew more or less what you could expect.
That by itself was interesting because it gave me a reference to compare with. Sometimes I do wonder if I am charging realistic prices for my work. Now for razors I have enough references to know that my prices are good. For larger knives like chef, my prices are actually on the low side for the level of quality I make.