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08-02-15 I can feel my heart beating in my temples and in the heels of my feet. It's been a long six days. But I'm one of the lucky ones. By 5PM - the time teardown was supposed to begin at The National - I was already back home, unpacked, and with a restocking trip to the grocery store completed. Good times. As I've mentioned many times, The National is a marathon. The collecting public sees the polished, festive side of the show, with the card companies all represented and the dealer displays all shiny and bright. But someone has to set up that circus, man the rides and games, and clean up the puke. And I'm one of the carnies responsible for all that. My "week" (six days, but if The Beatles can have eight days in a week, I can have six...) began at 4:30AM on Tuesday, when I left to pick up Joe, my tablemate for the week. Tuesday is a full day for dealers, with varying degrees of set-up taking places, but most of the big wholesale deals happening. Some dealers rely on retail and wait for the doors to open to the public; some make or break their show on that first day. (I have a foot in both camps.) The Characters It's tough for me to properly estimate customers or dealers I don't know when they first walk up to my table. In general, the more card knowledge someone has, the easier they are to deal with. People with less knowledge behave more erratically and have a propensity for wasting my time and testing my patience. I only dealt with a couple dumb-dumbs this week. I'm fortunate to have good customers, and I was glad to see many familiar faces from Orland Park and St Louis among the crowd. There are also a good many dealers I enjoy chatting with and working on deals with. I feel fortunate in that sense too. Every dealer walks a fine line between friend, foe, competitor, and friendly adversary. It's important to know what camp they're in. Mistake a friend for a foe, and you'll likely miss out on some good buys or sells. Mistake a foe for a friend, and you'll probably get screwed over. The Sales I'm pleased to say I added a couple new dealers to the "friend" list this week. I sold fairly large piles of cards to representatives of Kit Young and Fanatics Authentics. It was nice getting to know them. And of course, it's always good to have more outlets for inventory. Broader outlets = more buying power. Overall, I sold a relatively unfathomable amount of my inventory. I was already coasting in with a very low quantity of stars. Before the show, I put together a solid idea of what my inventory would wholesale at if someone wanted to buy it all. Including my graded cards, I sold about 25% of that figure at The National. Counting only my ungraded stars, I sold about 50%. That's crazy. Needless to say, I've done a spectacular job selling off a bunch of my inventory over the past year. The Buys Oh yeah, I was able to do some buying at this show. A little of this, a little of that. There weren't a ton of deals floating around, but I did sniff out some stars that I should be able to price before my next show this coming Sunday. However, one of the larger deals in the room eventually ended up in the hands of me and Joe. And it must be seen to be believed. I would approximate it at about 3000 cards - all Yankee stars from 1952-1969. I have 30+ pics on my Facebook page, a third of which are Mantles. This is almost exclusively the big boys: Mantle, Maris, Berra, Ford. It's bananas. The Health After the first couple days of the show, my knees and feet were en fuego. I'd done too much walking on concrete. But then I started stretching in the mornings, which helped immensely. Eventually I got my show legs. The pace and hours of the show don't leave time for a lot of healthy eating, but I managed to down a few salads and even some water in between the pop and beer and Beam. And now I'm back to the real world, or as close as I get. Tonight the cashier at the grocery store was having trouble doing math. I glanced at the paper she was super-slowly writing on, and I saw $24.63-$8.00. I'm not sure why she had to do this math, but this problem had her way perplexed. I realize everyone has different skill sets, but after a week of near non-stop walking, talking, and calculating - often times deals getting into five figures with little more than a few seconds with a pen and paper - it was a an ultra-harsh reminder of how slowly the rest of the world moves sometimes. I like that action once in a while, and wasn't ready for it to end. Have fun! -T You can now find me all over the web:  Like Monster Cards on Facebook (Frequent updates and scans of new inventory - graded and ungraded!)
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Inside My Brain