I've been attending gun shows for a very long time and have seen pretty much everything mentioned here. The only thing I haven't seen is very light attendance.
The last time I attended a big Gun Show, by the time my son and I got in the door after paying to park and a long walk, it was $35.00 or so. It was Summer, and inside were what seemed like thousands of sweaty people, who apparently didn't bathe regularly, with the kind of vendors, for sale items and trash mentioned by others. The gun shows of olden days I attended were not as big as some of today's shows, but they really were more fun and interesting to me. There used to be a lot of new and used guns of all descriptions, never cheap, but at prices that seemed at least sane to me. I bought several guns at such shows. Today: tons of AR stuff, black tactical everything, Chinese optics and fantasy knives, plastic pistols by manufacturers I never heard of, general non-gun trash of all descriptions. There are always some non-plastic new guns and some clean pre-owned, non-plastic guns, priced at only twice or so what the market will bear, etc. Unless it's a small show nearby, I don't attend much anymore.....ymmv