2019 Chicago National: Best attendance since 1991 in Anaheim
 

What does this day about the hobby/business?

Reps report this years Chicago National as having the most attendees since the mammoth 1991 show at the height of the boom?


https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...2020-date-set/

As someone who was there through Friday, it sure didn’t appear that the show was well attended. Maybe it picked up on the weekend, or maybe it was more crowded at the card company booths.

Loaded with Pack breaking gamblers and autograph guys.

I went to Anaheim in 1991, it was nuts !!!

I was only there Wednesday and Thursday. I thought the crowd on Wednesday was strong and Thursday was definitely busier than past years.

Had a bunch more FBI agents than normal.

If 91 in Anaheim was so good why dont they go back? A west coast show would be awesome.

Was there Thursday through Saturday. Seemed to me the biggest crowds were around tables and booths with newer stuff,

I would love a SoCal show. They will never come though. Cleveland and Chicago seem to be the best shot as both have access to a huge population base in an 800 mil radius. Much more central for dealers to transport by vehicle instead of plane.

Just my opinion.

All I will say is that Atlantic City sucks. SoCal would be waaaaaay better. So would almost anywhere else for that matter.

show
 

No No, A/C is gonna be huge !

I had a couple last minute circumstances that should have kept me away but I drove from DC to be there just one day. Simply because of the PWCC / PSA scandal.

Because 2000 and 2006 were so bad.

I wasn't around for those either. I would think that once every 4 or 5 years they could find a suitable venue in the LA area or Vegas. Anaheim would be awesome for me personally and I would guess there are 15 million people within 100 miles and maybe 25m in 250 or so miles. I could be off on those but there should be plenty for a good show.

Strange. I was there all day Friday and walked the entire floor at least 4 times. It seemed busy almost everywhere to me.

PR Spin?
 

I think the question needs to asked...why do the promoters not
release specific attendance figures?

Furthermore, if they don't release the specific figures then where did Rich Mueller get the attendance figures he mentions in the article with regards to 1991 National in Anaheim?

Patrick

I believe there are new collectors getting back into the hobby that left it in the early 1990's and that's why there are more attending the shows. Many of us were just kids or teenagers back in 1991. Now we are adults and can actually afford to visit a National show that we once only dreamed about. This is what I see at my local shows.

I think another bubble burst is coming in the next few years and that it's now leading up to that. I don't expect it to hurt true vintage much but we will take a hit. It's going to be mostly all this new sparkly stuff. I don't buy into them but I watch every new case break product that comes out. I have yet to see anything of actual long term value. Just last week I watched a new product case break and the case hit was a Roger Clemens Jersey Cut card. Maybe a $10 to $20 value coming out of a $1200+ case. Thousands of 1/1's each year being produced and people are acting as if they pulled a 52 Mantle. I'm already seeing many of the previous years chase cards loaded into $5 boxes at shows. These were the highlight cards that people were buying into a break for $40+ dollars. I just can't see this ending well. It's like we are in 1986 all over again except there are 100+ times the sets if you count the parallels. You can currently purchase autographed insert cards at shows for a dollar. It's already starting.

Is there a local promoter putting on a show twice a year for ~25 years there that attracts national dealers? That is why Chicago is so successful. There is an etablished matket. Why leave that to take a chance on the unknown?

Why would they want to? Number of people does not equate to attendance, and attendance does not equate to dollars spent.

Let me ask this to those saying the west coast would be a great place for a show (specifically CA). If it is such a hotbed, where are all the LOCAL or REGIONAL shows? I would wager there are a number of reasons for it (expense, interest, location, et al), but I think people need to really think about WHY that is to garner any insight as to why CA specifically doesn't happen.

Will in a.c i can swim there. From my beach house,,,

The Anaheim area has a decent warehouse sized show set up twice a week every single week of every year, with a mixture of comics and cards.

I was there all five days and it seemed well attended to me. I was very busy at my booth the whole time, even on Sunday. Also, it is well documented that the National sticks with the current three locations because they are able to book years in advance and do not have to deal with extra union fees. Venues in other cities will not allow them to book two, three years in advance and many have expensive union fees and rules that would cause dealer fees to skyrocket.

Chicago doesn't have union fees? That's a big change from when I used to be involved with events there.

At the National this year I spent a good deal of time at the tables at the far side and back of the hall where the newer dealers are relegated by the priority system. They mostly have modern cards and lower cost cards. One of them told me that the dealers in that end of the room call the front of the room where the old guard vintage card dealers are "The Dead Zone" because they have comparatively low traffic and always look so depressed and miserable. I have to agree. At times you could fire a shotgun down some of the rows at the front of the hall and barely hit anyone, but I had to go toe to toe to get into some of the booths at the back. Not a problem: modern collecting has always been the gateway to vintage. When the newbies get tired of picking up Mike Trout cards because he's the next Mantle, they will start looking at Mantle cards, and so on down to the earliest cards.

There are a few out here. I think someone else was referring to the Frank and Sons show, which runs twice a week. Long Beach has a decent sized show every 3 months or so that is more coins than cards, but still plenty of tables. And I've seen a net54 member promoting another LA area show, although I've never attended that one.

I would guess plenty of midwest and east coast collectors would be willing to travel out west once every few years for a show. And a lot of us out here that don't feel like going to Cleveland or Atlantic City would attend.

Scott,

I'm not sure it was the union fees per se. I vaguely remember Mike Berkus saying a few years back at one of the Net54 dinners that the dealers wanted to have the ability to load/unload their own items and not be 'forced' to turn over that responsibility to a third party (ie union worker). So there still may be 'fees' paid. Again, from memory so I could be wrong. Other site considerations included enough contiguous floor space, able to reserve years in advance AND the the first week (or partial week) in August, et al.

You don't need to leave Chicago. It can still take place there every other year, as it does currently. Cleveland and AC are crappy venues, in which it's difficult to even get a direct flight. Anaheim, SD, Denver or Vegas would all be far better.

I know they get Cleveland for free because of it's lack of desirability, so it will have to stay in the rotation. But it could still alternate something like this...

Chicago
Cleveland
Chicago
Anaheim
Chicago
Cleveland
Chicago
Anaheim
etc.

Virtually nobody I know who's situated West of the Mississippi attends AC, because of the crappy logistics. A scant few attend Cleveland, and Chicago is by far the easiest/best.

A very poorly run operation, IMHO.

I was there Thursday thru early Saturday afternoon and I had a completely opposite experience. I found the rows in the front very busy at the times I was there. Had to wait a lot of the time to ask to look at something. Took much longer to get thru the rows going to the corporate rows in the middle than it did to go thru those back rows. Admittedly, I wasn't looking for newer stuff and may have been able to pass by more tables back there but I didn't find the rows any more crowded than in the front.
Overall it seemed that there was a lot of traffic and that dealers were busy actually selling.

That's exactly what I was referring to.

Honestly I'm okay with a market correction.I think the financial aspect of the hobby is getting in the way of collecting and pricing people out of the hobby. Certainly not what Buck Barker, Lionel Carter or Jefferson Burdick envisioned.

Have chase cards proved a good investment?
 

'91 was my first of many Nationals and as I recall it was the promo card mania, with lots of local media attention on that, driving the attendance. Dealers were offering ridiculous money for the swag bags as people came out, and kids were getting in line and paying to get in multiple times to come back immediately and sell their bags with the promo cards inside. But here's my question: with decades of chase cards, insert cards, redemption cards, refractors, and all the rest of the card-company manufactured rarities behind us, have those proven to be either a good investment or collectible in their own right? If it's still going on as strongly as it seems from the reports this year, I guess it must have some history of success. Or is it just new generations of quick-buck exploiters and suckers that come along every few years? Do all the ones that can't find a chair when the music stops just quit the hobby so there is no institutional memory of these things to prevent the next wave? Even though I'm a memorabilia guy and not a card guy, I've never had any trouble understanding the appeal of vintage cards. And likewise, the enormity of the whole "chase cards" phenomenon has me as mystified today as it did when I first witnessed it almost 30 years ago. Could someone (probably much younger!) please explain all this to me?

I would love to see The National go back to Anaheim or maybe even Vegas (Unions there I believe). Then maybe once a decade somewhere in the SouthEast Region like Atlanta, Tampa, Orlando, New Orleans or even St Louis.

All these cities have convention centers and plenty of hotel rooms. Plus the accessibility to get there is pretty easy unlike Atlantic City.

There are other circumstances that impact the decision to keep the National on the East Coast. One of those factors is that most of the East Coast booth holders would take a "once every five year bye" and pass the National for that year and continue to maintain their current priority. That happened the last time there was a National on the West Coast, and it would certainly happen again. I know that is tough on the West Coast sellers, but I think that losing a high percentage of East Coast dealers would have a tremendous impact on booth sales. Correct me if I am wrong, but I always have contended that there should be two Nationals every year -- one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast. That would keep everyone happy, and I might consider doing the West Coast National if I also had an East Coast one to fall back on. Just a thought.

Steve

I think Barker, Carter and Burdick would be thrilled that their sleepy little hobby had become such a sensation and that they had laid the groundwork. Of course there are problems but much better to have a vibrant hobby with imperfections than one nobody cares a whit about.

Very true. It could be worse. It could be like postage stamp collecting. A dying and nearly dead hobby.

If the West Coast could support a 2nd National, it would have been started long ago. Depite having a strong collector base and dealer base, the East Coast didn't get a National until #5 and #9. Then it was 15 more years before its 3rd. In 40 years there have been only 6 on the East Coast, the same number as the West Coast. That is why Gloria Rothstein started the East Coast National. Of course back then Willow Grove was considered a "National" twice a year.

When the hobby was at its hottest, the West Coast shows weren't has good as Willow Grove, White Plains, Chicago, St. Louis, Plymouth, Cincinnati or Strongsville. Until the West Coast market catches up to that in the East and Midwest with strong shows attracting dealers from across the country, I don't see support for another National on the West Coast.

There is support from collectors for a west coast National Convention. The logistics and financial issues are the problem. Also, the National needs a venue that can book years in advance. When Mike Berkus gave his speeches at our Net54 banquets he would discuss the rationale. It is usually about money at the end of the day.

It was really busy most of the time from my perspective.

Thought I would post link to the thread Mike Berkus participated in 2012 (I think 8 separate posts total in the thread) about the various reasons behind convention site selection. His comments start on post #14.

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=114661

Brian

I know the Paul Pierce refractor I bought in 1998 is worth less than I paid or sold it for back in 98. He had a pretty good career.

I went to the 1985 Anaheim convention at the Disneyland Hotel. There was a "whole wrath of people and I don't know what all" as Andy Griffith would say. I'd go again if there is ever one down the street. I wasn't collecting cards in 1994, so I missed the Geo R Brown one.