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Anyone run anything at their local store as a way to trade around bitz, either as an event or as an ongoing bitz bin type idea?
Suggestions and anecdotes would be appreciated.

My club has had bits swap events where you go through other's bits boxes and trade for stuff, kind of like we did with Star Wars figures when I was a kid.

No shops have had bits bins for trade/purchase, but the owner of a store that's been defunct for years now used to let players buy stuff out of his personal collection of bits. I used to get shields for my 2nd ed marine army from him back in the day when they could have combat shields.

I've seen it done as a silent auction with lots. I've also seen it done as bitz swaps. This seems to be happening less and less often though as fairly priced online bitz sellers become more common.

Do you mean things like GW's Bizarre Bazaar?

I've found that shop owners are willing to do almost anything for their customers, but since theyre job is to sell kits and run a business, things like this are few and far between. You could run an auction or have open trading. To motivate them for something like this you'll probably need 2 things.

1) Gauranteed revenue to the shop. Auction's are paid to the shop and the seller gets store credit. I'm not sure how to gaurantee revenue for open trading.

2) Gaurantee no extra work for the owners. They're busy enough as it is so someone in your community would need to step up, orhanize it and follow it through to completion. This is probably the toughest part to get going though.