No to sound like a bitter, old man (if the shoe fits) but they're nothing like they used to be. The internet, and all those small arms related import laws and restrictions at the fringes, that most people don't pay attention to, have destroyed gun shows.
It used to be that gun shows had tons of imported arms that were purchased cheap overseas, and sold at deals you couldn't get anywhere else before the internet. Great rifles and handguns you just couldn't get unless you went to the show and to the table of an importer who received a container of goodies.
I remember going with my father as a boy, and the WWII mill surplus stuff just mesmerized me. Awesome Mausers and Garands of every sort, and a constant trade of cool, war-trophy pistols.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s I was serving and we would go to shows in the Tide Water Area. You could get a Norinco MAK-90 (still packed in smelly fish oil), with a 1,000 round spam can of dirty, steel, commie cartridges for $200. We all had those wind-up drums and sets of, now forbidden, pistol grip furniture. We'd take off the thumbhole bs, put our furniture on, and blaze away till the barrels glowed. We considered them cheap, disposable fun. When I see what those stamped rifles go for today it boggles my mind.
I really think that the internet has killed gun shows as the place to get rare or odd stuff, and it has certainly killed the possibility to find deals. Now it's like finding a needle in a stack of needles. I still enjoy going once in a while, but I don't go there as a buyer...just a browser.