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01-27-2015 "We live in cities you'll never see on screen Not very pretty, but we sure know how to run things Living in ruins of a palace within my dreams And you know, we're on each other's team" -Lorde, "Team" (*Quick shout-out to Coldwater, who turned me on to Local H's cover of "Team." I didn't really like the original until after I heard The H's version. Now I like them both.) Taken out of the context of the song as a whole, those Lorde lyrics are a good explanation of life on the road. (Although I still prefer "Stay" by Jackson Browne.) When traveling to foreign lands, I sometimes step outside of myself and put a little buffer in between me and what I'm experiencing. In that way, I'm able to simultaneously soak in both my surroundings and my reaction to those surroundings. So instead of thinking "I like it here," I think "Oh, Tony likes it here." Or "Tony is tired of driving and looking at corn fields." Tony is like Rickey Henderson. This past weekend, I set up at two shows in Ohio - Dayton on Saturday and Cincinnati on Sunday. I've done these shows before, but it's been a while...maybe 5-6 years or more. So there are two reasons I want to post this blog. The first is hopefully to provide a little entertainment, or at least insight, for the readers out there in Monster Nation. The other is to aid my own memory. Keeping track of sales numbers is one thing, but that sheet doesn't help in my recollection of the show itself. This actually will serve as a nice little "show diary" of sorts for me. Thus, for everyone out there, and future Tony (who is looking very handsome for his age, I might add), this is how Ohio went... by the numbers. 
Driving: About 2.5: Days gone. Left Friday around 11AM and returned 7PM Sunday 556: Number of miles covered over the weekend. Champaign -> Dayton -> Cinci -> Champaign Lucky #7: Number of cops I saw on the road 7: Times I was speeding while I passed by them 0: Tickets received! 4: Number of times some slow poke was clogging the left lane to the point where I had to flash the high beams at them to move over 1.5: Vegas over/under on that line 8: Tweets sent while driving. 1: Times I should have been paying attention to the road instead of my phone. Waaaay: How windy it was on the trip home Sunday night. You could tell which semis had full loads and which were empty by how they were blowing around. 0: Tweets I sent during that drive. About 3: Minutes of snow I drove through. 0: Minutes of sunlight the whole darn weekend. About a zillion: Number of country music stations in Indiana 7: Number of times I heard Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson (featuring Bruno Mars). I like this song more than just a little, but don't love it. While it was featured on SNL more than two months ago (Nov 22 - Don't believe me just watch), now it's all over the radio. I don't know how release dates work. Lifestyle: 2: Hotels 1: Number that were clean. Fortunately, this is the one that had the hot tub. (*Quick shout-out to J-Bone. The hotel check-in woman, who had a strong accent, was excited when I arrived on Friday. She was like, "Schaefer - I saw your reservation this morning - dat sounds German.") 1: Number that were unclean. You know... the kind where they just caulk over the mold in the shower. Side note: Holiday Inns are no longer the travel beacons they were in the 80s. 0.6: Average number of miles I had to travel from hotel to show each day. This was simply amazing considering I use Priceline and don't pick the exact hotel I stay at, just the area. Friday night I stayed 1.2 miles from the show; Saturday I stayed in the same hotel. Nice! 2: Meals I ate at White Castle. 1: Number of meals I should have eaten at White Castle. The second experience sucked; nothing tasted right. Suffice it to say, I'll be sticking with McDonald's for my low-quality fast food fish sandwiches. Very!: How much I missed my treadmill while I was gone. Time constraints and unfamiliarity with the area prevent most attempts at eating well and exercising while on the road. Bottom Line: 50%: Weekend sales figures (combined) compared to one average St Louis show. :( 200%: Expenses compared to one average St Louis show. #1: Rank of "Nutter Center" (Dayton/Wright State) on list of funniest-named places I've ever set up. I'm guessing a distant 2nd place would go to the Skyline Room up in/around Chicago, but only because it sounds like the name of a strip club. 1: Number of sets I was able to complete (1977 Topps baseball). 2: Close, but no cigar (1958 and 1959 Topps baseball). Although I picked up 13 of the 22 cards I needed toward those. Both are from a collection I recently picked up, and the reason I decided to finish them off and eventually sell them as sets is due to their condition. Both are in the Vg-VgEx range, which are a little tougher to break up and sell card-by-card. 2: Number of cool Tonys who set up at the Cincinnati show. Ha! The other was Tony Gordon, who pops up every now and then in St Louis, and will be there again on Feb 8th. He's a good guy, based in the Chicago 'burbs - read his blog here! 2: Number of cool Andys who bought from me at the Cincinnati show. When I went to shows as strictly a buyer, I liked having someone to go with. We would compare cool stuff we had picked up and alert each other to something we knew the other wanted, but might have missed. On occasion, you could even collectively bargain with a dealer. Now, there aren't too many father/son combos or just friends who attend shows together. But there were a pair of Andys in Cinci who stopped at my tables for a while and bought a few cards each. They seemed like serious collectors - the kind I could count on for repeat business show after show. I actually chatted with them about that very topic. Both shows were obviously pretty slow from my perspective, and attendance was weak. The trick when setting up in a new or unfamiliar city is figuring out if I can build a customer base there. I know there are tons of collectors in Ohio, and in both the Cleveland and Cincinnati areas, and I feel like all I have to do is have one or two transactions with a collector and they'll quickly find out I have reasonable prices and of course, a dashing personality to deal with. Long story short, I feel like Cinci might have the potential for more business, but not Dayton. Finale: 16: Hours 'worked' on Sunday, if you count driving, which I do. I was loading in for the show by 7AM (Eastern - 6 Central), and although I was back in Champaign by 7PM (Central), I still had plenty of eBay work and paperwork to do. I didn't shut it down for the night until after 11. That's a long day. About 50 or so: eBay packages I shipped on Monday. Take a look: 
#14: Good-bye and rest in peace to Ernie Banks. For some reason, it felt strange not being in Illinois when he passed away Friday night. 
Have fun (x 2)! -T |
Inside My Brain