|
|
|
Home
View Inventory
"Do You Buy?"
About/FAQ
Show Schedule
Links
|
March 2024 (Note: I'm writing this first part on March 12. Thought I'd get my thoughts down on the first two shows of the month now while they're still fresh in my mind.) As my early-2024 show schedule came together, dates started piling up in March. And I booked these shows in a variety of ways. For the Des Moines show (my first time setting up there), I reached out to secure booths with the promoter, Brian Eikenberry, last November. St Louis is pretty routine e-mail to promoter Dave Jackson since I've been doing that show for 15+ years*. And for St Charles, the promoter(s), John Craig and Mike ???, shot me a message through Instagram asking if I'd like to set up, as they wanted more vintage representation (old cards, not old dealers - haha) at the show. With March approaching, all I could do was cross my fingers that the moderate weather we'd been having would hold out. With snow/ice still a possibility, early mornings on the road could be treacherous. Saturday-Sunday, March 2-3: Oh man, this drive wasn't the most fun. Why? Because I'm a f***ing idiot. I was up too late on Friday drinking Fireball with Kate and my BIL/SIL. Oh, and then wine when the Fireball ran out. I'm not here to decipher the different components of a hangover, but I think it was as much from a lack of sleep as it was the alcohol. In any case, poor decision-making led to a slow burn where I got more and more tired as the drive wore on. Arrrrg, where are those self-driving cars we're all supposed to have by now!!?? Back to the good news. Leading up to this show, I had FIVE customers I was holding cards for. Those built-in sales are a nice safety net, especially when St Louis hasn't been a great show for me over the last few ... ummm, years. The first of those pre-arranged deals I knocked out on the way into town. I met up with a great customer and friend, and that's all the details I have about that! Next up wasn't a customer interaction. I went out with a college buddy and his family for a birthday dinner to Three Kings. I had three gyro sliders and (ONE!) guava sour ale, the name of which I'd never be able to remember, even with a decent memory. Seemed Hawaiian, with lots of Ls, As, Es. In any case, my friend's wife ordered an italian beef sandwich that looked fantastic. Sorry, I was busy catching up and didn't think to take any food pics. After that, I went back to my hotel and hit bed pretty early...around 8:30. No writing, no bidding, no working of any sort. I even had a voucher for a free drink at the hotel bar that I declined to use. At that point, I needed some high quality sleep. Hey, we're finally getting to the show! Since I'm not a regular in St Louis anymore, I no longer have the same familiar location. However, it's not a big room, so I don't mind being bounced around. This time, I was in the very back corner of the room. As I texted Kate, "They got me back here with the MFer whose leg fell off!" 
Other pre-arranged sales included a pair of Ernie Banks, the hand-off of the tobacco card deal I've recently written about, this Babe Ruth, and this T213-2 Cardinal. Attendance was bangin, especially for a 70-degree day. And anytime there's a good crowd, I have plenty of people digging through my cheap stars. This time, I had my $1 and $2 stars on display, and they got crushed! I've been loading them up all winter, and customers loved them. Other than that, I appreciate the few regulars who still come out. My number of frequent flyers is about half of what it was in the St Louis heyday. Many of you asked how my quest was going to set up at The National, and it's very heartening that we have that connection. Thanks for your support! *As a side note, there were so many people in attendance that I didn't know. Many asked if this was my first time setting up at Orlando's. Made me laugh since I've probably done close to 200 shows in St Louis over the years. But also a reminder that you have to earn it. Lose some 1-to-1 time and people forget; there's a whole new crowd who have come into this hobby over the past few years. Gotta be present to get a "leg up" on the competition. :) Friday-Saturday, March 8-9: The topic was raised on Monday by Kate whether I should take days off, especially when I travel. Shows and travel will age a person; I have no doubt about that. I've frequently referenced a "show hangover" on Mondays after shows, particularly 3-day shows. Still, it's hard for me to take any days off, regardless of whether I'm just off a show or have worked for 7+ straight days. In fact, after I show, I usually have a glut of work...pricing, re-organizing, following up with customers, etc. Suffice it to say, I didn't take Monday off. In any case, by the time Friday rolled around, I was fully recovered and excited for the weekend. Friday night, I had dinner (pizza!) and crashed with family on my way up to St. Charles. I'd never set up at the Kane County Fairgrounds before, and some of that was due to the drive. However, I was on the road by 6:15 with my Casey's vittles: breakfast pizza + jelly donut + coffee. Stellar. I do love my McDonald's McGriddles, but damn, McDs can't get a coffee to my specs. Sorry, Hamburglar. I'm not intentionally trying to hammer this point home, but there's a lot more to being a card dealer than flashing a Mantle card here and there. Here I am, up and rolling before the sun's lazy ass... 
While I'm on this theme, I didn't get home until 6:30, and that doesn't count unloading and post-show bookwork. But those 12+ hours in between went something like this... First of all, one of my uncles that I rarely see was in town, so it was cool to hang and chat with him for a bit. Next, I was set up in what I called "Vintage Row." Our little aisle of the show had vintage dealers Tom, Tony Gordon (one of the cool guys in the hobby - read his blog!), Dave, and, as I learned from Tony's blog, Gary G, all lined up across from me. I like that set-up. Technically, sure, they're competition. But a lot of times at shows, I don't have time to walk around the room, and I like to shop! So having them close made it easy to peruse their inventories. And in fact, I did buy a handful of cards from Gary and Tony. One other customer came up with some ungraded star cards to sell. I bought a bunch, but ultimately couldn't land his '69 Mantle. 
This show was also BUSY with customer traffic. In fact, at the end, they announced attendance of 1300! That's awesome. Once again, with that number of people, my cheap stars ($1, and this time I rotated in $3s instead of $2s) were a hit. I was constantly straightening up the piles in the $3 box: 
(For you eagle eyes, the '62 Mantle is the '96 reprint.) One unexpected perk of this show: a taco truck! I had done so well planning for a healthy lunch by bringing a salad. However... taco truck, right? Easy decision. I went with a ribeye (left), which was full of guac, and a pastor (right). Very tasty. I made the right decision. 
I had one really cool sale for the day, and as you might notice from the theme of this being the people in the hobby, it was indeed because of the collector/investor. A gentleman came up and asked about my T206 Demmitt variation, one of the second-tier tough cards in the set. Turns out he was the underbidder in the auction where I won it. We swapped notes for a minute and he ended up buying an E253 Eddie Collins, another card that's very difficult to find. And he used a phrase I really like...hopefully I won't butcher it. He said, "I like cards I don't have to hurry on." As in, you don't have to turn them over quickly. To me, that's all vintage cards to an extent. But getting to the heart of that notion, there is a subsection of vintage cards that fit the bill...those that are difficult, short-printed, high grade for the issue, etc. That's been a lot of my focus over the past handful of years, since before covid, in fact. And while my inventory isn't the wild expanse it was 7-10 years ago, it is full of more desirable, tougher cards that embody the core of that philosophy. I enjoy meeting collectors, or even investors, who understand that. Outside of selling $1 cards, $3 cards, and a whole binder of Michael Jordan cards, that was a good take-away from the day. ---- (Note: I'm writing the remainder of this on March 27. I still have a ton of real card work to do and catch-up on, but I don't like waiting forever to put these columns out.) Let's get one thing straight. I don't procrastinate. Sometimes I have too much to do and run out of time, but I don't put things off. Even though I had about 10 days between the St Charles and Des Moines shows, I still didn't get everything done that I wanted to. I still had commons to price and lots of bidding to do in auctions. Two large auctions were closing March 22/23 (one auction over two days) and March 24. Fast-forwarding, I still was able to win over $10K in each, but it was a total hurry-up job by me, and I'm sure I missed out on some things because I simply ran out of time. In any case, I was all packed up on Wednesday, March 20th and left at 9AM on Thursday. Des Moines was a new show for me, but I'd heard good things about it, so I was psyched. Not only that, but I would staying with my dad/stepmom and seeing my younger sister. None of them had ever seen me at a show before. Now they could actually witness all the glory that is selling baseball cards; I was excited for them! As HOF Cubs broadcaster Pat Hughes says about Des Moines, "The Ss are silent, but the city is buzzing!" Thursday, March 21: Because I had worked at such a breakneck pace leading up to the show, this drive wasn't great either. At least I wasn't hungover or sleep-deprived... But it did make me take stock of the month: the closest show I set up at was St Charles at 2.5 hours away. Des Moines is 5ish hours. Alas, I reminded myself of my resolution to do bigger shows in 2024. With that comes more driving. April and May in Strongsville and Pittsburgh will each be 7-hour+ trips. Move-in on Thursday started at 2, and I was there at almost exactly that time. I want to make the most of the time I have at a show. However, there wasn't any dealer-to-dealer action to be had. It's unfortunate. We had five available hours on Thursday to make deals, and hardly any dealers wer there, and none were circulating. I don't understand why people woudn't take advantage of that opportunity. Oh well. Since we could drive into the Iowa Events Center, it was an easy, quick load-in process. With no show action, I was in and out pretty quickly and visited the fam. Friday, March 22: oh boy. 
We have this running joke in the family that whenever I/we come visit (particularly whenever our schedules align for Christmas) that I bring the snow and ice. As this trip neared, I kept an eye on the weather, saw temps dropping, but didn't expect any snow. Well, so much for that. Overnight rain turned to sleet turned to snow Friday morning and slowed me down getting to the show. Fortunately, it was a short trip, and it didn't last all that long. By the time customers could get in around 2 or 3, it was long cleared up. However, where were the customers? Friday again had very little dealer action. At my table, at least. So I went around the room and made a few small buys and chatted some dealers up. One dealer bought a '52 Topps Hi# deal (probably 40-50 cards including two Mathews, a Wilhelm, Nuxhall, and Dickey), let me look through it and ultimately offer, but never gave me a price on it. After he sold it to another dealer in the room, I found out he paid a bit more than I wanted to. The condition was darn rough...think 1s and Authentics. Tears, tape, glue, etc. Overall, the lack of traffic, and specifically the lack of vintage customer traffic, had me pretty worried. I kept my eye on another vintage dealer's tables and saw that he wasn't busy either. With that knowledge, I knew it wasn't just me, but regardless, it had the makings of a long, boring show. Saturday, March 23: The party finally started on Saturday (and without snow)! More traffic in the room as a whole; the promoters said approximately 1100 adults came through the doors. I made a lot of sales, but no big sales. I moved three graded Mantles (61 PSA 3, 63 SGC 1.5, and easily my largest sale of the day, a 65 PSA 6 to a gentleman who saw it on Instagram) and bunches of $3 stars. A couple set builders also stopped by and looked through my commons. I feel like these customers are still the lifeblood of my biz. That's why I still price commons and lug 1000s of them to the shows. Zach from Pastime Sports in the Chicago suburbs also drove out and bought a couple commons lots from me. I hit an emotional low point on Saturday afternoon. A couple people came by in quick succession and took the wind out of my sails. The first I believe was another dealer in the room. He looked at the Duke Snider SGC 88 rookie I had and told me what the last one had sold for. I made him an offer around 10% off my price and he repeated himself, telling me what the last one had sold for. "I heard you," I replied dismissively, which seemed to catch him off-guard. (In fairness, I freakin HATE being told the exact same thing or asked the exact same question twice in a row in hopes I'll change my mind.) He grumbled about not wanting to pay that much and walked off before I could ask what the previous one had sold for (a higher amount) or the one before that (still higher...$100s more than I was asking). He either didn't understand, or was trying to bargain from a straight-up disingenuous position. Hard to say. No matter what his issue was, it drives home the point I made above about preferring to deal with intellegent customers. The next guy I simply didn't want to deal with. Some people have cards that aren't worth much at all, and I was polite with him in telling him I wasn't interested in buying or trading with him. He looked at a few cards out of one showcase and then another. Then he again wanted to trade ... a creased '71 Gale Sayers card for a beat-up '70 Bart Starr I had. When I told him he would need to kick in another $4, he got sassy with me, telling me his card I was offering $5 in trade for "would sell all day on eBay for between $15-30." I told him he should probably sell it on eBay then. ...Another guy who walked away muttering. At that point, I had to pull my shit together. I was exhausted, hungry, unhappy with the slow traffic and the prospect of being bored for another day and a half. I hadn't made many of the sales I mentioned above yet, and I thought the show was gonna be a bust. However, that ended up being the turning point. I ate a salad, people started showing up, and the day was salvaged. The show was far from a success, but at least the day wasn't a waste. Sunday, March 24: Getaway Day. I had low expectations for Sunday based on how traffic patterns usually work at multi-day shows. Usually the most serious customers, the biggest spenders, come out the afternoon/evening the show first opens. After that, it's usually a slow burn for the remainder of the show. But since that point around noon on Saturday, the show just kept building and building. Sometimes you have a hot hand, and that's what Sunday felt like. The $3 stars had been hit pretty hard the last couple days, and in their place I rotated in the $2 stars. A bunch of those moved. Dealers came around and picked up a handful of cards here and there (including a gentleman who plucked 220 commons from my boxes); many said they were too busy to get out and shop on Fri/Sat. A lot of smaller deals also walked up to the table for me to buy. Probably the most encouraging thing was seeing a handful of customers from Saturday return and buy more on Sunday. That's a confidence-builder right there...starting a rapport, people realizing my prices and grading are fair, etc. I dig it. Ultimately, Sunday was my biggest sales day, and my buys were decent as well. It really had the feel of the action of a one-day/Sunday show instead of the final day of a weekend show. On Saturday, before things were even going well, I signed up for the September 20-22 show as well. I talked to the promoter, Brian, here and there over the course of the weekend as he was walking around and it was great getting to know him a little bit. I forget his partner's name, but they're cultivating a friendly, fair (on their dealer packet, there was specific language that dealers should not be taking advantage of customers - adult or child, and it's the first time I've even seen something like that mentioned...much appreciated) atmosphere for the show. It had a home-like feeling, and I look forward to going back. I mentioned all the promoter names for the shows because I've enjoyed working with such professional, personable, passionate folks. Putting a bow on this show and the month, loading out and the drive home went pretty smoothly. I started packing at 2:30, was on the road at exactly 4, and got home before 9PM. This March, I put over 1500 miles on the van - and myself. I did promise myself I'd take a day off this week, and it doesn't look good for that. Even now that this writing is done, there's still a lot of pricing and more attention I need to pay to auctions that end this week. I hope you enjoyed riding along and getting a taste of these trips! Have fun! -T |
Inside My Brain