I moved it as it's a great thread and I thought more folks would enjoy it here. It can be copied/moved back over, if you prefer?
.

Nope, I'm fine with whatever you wanna do. There are a lot more eyes (to undoubtedly ignore it) on this side of the site. :D

My response to a dealer would be… yeah I get that- but if I buy from you here then you don’t get hit with a 14% ebay fee or more… so let’s make a deal…! Cash is king!

Loved the post. Thanks Darren!

It's an oddly strange little thing, this online community we baseball card collectors make up, so I try to add a little entertainment here and there to get us to laugh at our absurd selves.

I'm glad you guys (I assume) enjoy it!! :D

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I have a wealth of observations to post about a recent show out here, but those sad attempts at humor must be delayed due to the urgency of this Special Bulletin.
Yes, it's a helluva long read, but your CARD SELLING LIFE may depend on it!!!!!!!

Something NEFARIOUS is going on, and if any of you vintage card sellers are plying your trade at The National (or other shows), you have got to be on very high alert!!!!


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1. Steve McQueen tried to warn us...now, it’s my turn
Look, I’m no tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist, but this is urgent and the truth needs to be exposed immediately, before the modern table overlords ‘disappear’ you vintage guys like they did to the dealers I’ll mention here!!!!!!!!

We assume vintage show tables are going the way of the dodo due to cardboard evolution, right?
Young collectors love all of the flashy new issues and players coming out each year, so it’s NATURAL for them to ignore the old stuff and push it further aside into oblivion...but what if I told you that there is something completely UNNATURAL about the growth of modern card tables??!!!


Please consider:
The day started innocently enough. The venue was laid out in a giant rectangle. No hidey holes, no way to get lost. You walk the perimeter checking out everything, then make your way down and across the aisles to freely visit each and every table. Easy peasy.

Since the show was a sea of modern cards, I was happy to find port at a trio of vintage tables abutting each other. It was a twenty foot stretch of heaven for the eyes (definitely NOT for the wallet, though) and I stopped to yap a bit with the guys. One of the purveyors was a man I mentioned earlier in this thread with a stack of overpriced 1971 Topps Greatest Moments cards. I even amiably (read: Snarkily) feigned surprise by noting, “Oh, you still have those guys??”

(To be clear, this wasn’t an imagined event. Mr. 1971 Topps Greatest Moments cards was there, and I was there. We vintage guys conversed. No one can tell me otherwise. If God himself came down and said, “Sorry, my son, thine heart is true, but thine words are mistaken,” I would reply, “F*ck thou!! Theyeth wereth hereth!!!”)

Eventually, I bid them adieu (if by "adieu" you mean, “Catch you f*ckers on the flip side!”) and ventured onward to explore the rest of the show.


After spending over an hour seeing nothing but the refractorization of the American pastime as I walked the floor, I decided I needed to revisit my vintage ‘happy place’ and go see those guys again. So, I headed back to the spot where they were - the only part (THE ONLY PART!!) of the venue that was bounded by windows and afforded a view of the outside, with a Dave & Buster’s, a giant parking lot, and the foothills of Mt. Diablo peppering the horizon, but they were nowhere to be found.

That was weird, but let’s be honest, we’ve all lost our bearings at shows and couldn’t find our way back to specific tables we had visited earlier. It happens to everyone, so I casually circled (I guess I should say ‘rectangled’) the floor a couple of times to find them again...but there was still no sign of them. I even started at the entrance and systematically walked the entire show grid, not missing an inch of floor space, but each time I repeated the route, it again returned me to my starting point without passing them along the way.


Now wickedly freaked out, I headed directly to the windowed area to seek answers. Instead of the old, wispy haired gents (with guts preventing them from buttoning their A’s and Giants jerseys) who were here manning the vintage tables earlier, what greeted me now was a pair of metrosexual twenty-somethings - tanned gym rats with blindingly white teeth and outfitted in identically oversized hats with arrow-straight (not curved a millimeter) brims. They looked more plastic than the slabs they were slinging!!!

“WHOA!!!!!! WTF is going on here???????!!!!! Where’d my vintage sellers go????!!!! There is no way in heck they just packed up their tables in the middle of a busy show and left on their own accord!!! Something is wrong!!!!”


And it got scarier. I realized the space that was formerly occupied by three separate tables was now taken up by a single, massive table loaded only with shiny, refractory, parallely toploaders and slabs...without a single vintage card to be seen.


The conclusion is obvious!!! Modern tables are ridding the planet of all the old stuff by (yes, I could say “absorbing,” but no matter how terrified I am, I still want to write with panache, so will instead use) SUBSUMING all of the vintage tables around them!!!!! The vintage tables were devoured by a modern one!!!!! This form of supernatural ageism - preying on the weak and old cardboarded tables alone - is happening right in front of our very eyes, yet nobody talks about it????!!!!! We’ll spend days endlessly arguing about a player’s WAR...but the subject of an EVIL INGURGITATING CREATURE never comes up?????? What the hell, man???!!!!


You can call me crazy, but I swear that the table was...pulsating...almost breathing. It seemed to be...I can’t believe I’m saying this...a LIVING organism!!!!!


Not wanting my fear to let these preternatural predators know that I was on to them, I casually asked (hoping they didn’t notice the Niagara Falls of nervous sweat pouring down my face), “Hey, where’d the vintage guys go who were here before??”

Like something out of Westworld, these trimmed-and-shaped-facial-hair-fellahs responded in a robotic, exacting unison, “We have no recollection of such vendors. We alone have occupied this space all day. You are tired and mistaken, human. Perhaps you need to sit down?”

Then in synchronized form, they paused, angled their heads upwards to process (digitally scan?) the (Mets) hat on my head, and with full-toothed smiles, pointed to the same spot in the case and said in stereo, “Can we interest you in a 2019 Topps Chrome Pete Alonso Refractor Auto? An internet search indicates he currently holds a spot on the roster of the New York Metropolitan Baseball Club, Inc., based in the New York City borough of Queens.”

Having me locked in place with their hypnotic eyes, I couldn’t look away...but I swear my peripheral vision caught a piece of the colorful, circled face of Sal Bando from his 1971 Topps Greatest Moments card momentarily being...I don’t know, regurgitated???...by the table...before being sucked back in again and digested!!!!!


Being frightened to death by pure evil isn’t something you can ever be prepared for, so I decided to imitate Enos Slaughter in 1946 (gee, I wonder if any of his cards were on the ingested tables, but I digress), and immediately took off running and screaming like a maniac, and never stopped until I got back home!!!


Unfortunately, it was only then I realized that the TRUE FACE OF EVIL hadn’t even shown itself yet. By fleeing the way I did, I had left my girlfriend back at the mall!!!
My Gawd, you really think some huge, table-consuming, unearthly card show parasite is scary??? Ha!!! If you wanna see a REAL MONSTER, just piss off my girlfriend!!!!!!!! My God, am I in seriously deep sh*t now!!!!!!!!!


If there’s a lesson to be learned here, I guess you vintage sellers really need to watch your backs!!!!! Oh, and always be sure to get a receipt when you buy a card at a show. That way you’ll be able to prove a dealer was actually there.




Until next time, my fellow non-subsumists!! If you happen to see a seller with a stack of ungraded 1971 Topps Greatest Moments cards, tell him, “Thank God you’re still alive!!!” :D:eek::D

They say brevity is the soul of wit.

Well, if you think the opposite is true, then you’ve come to the right place!!

I'm not going to lie. If you walked The National for four days straight, then had your eyes taped open and forced to watch seventeen reels of home movies from my family’s trip to Fort Ticonderoga, that would take less time than reading this...but hopefully a smile or two will emerge.
Perhaps, you should read a single observation, (call back alert) digest it like a modern table, move on with your life and then come back later to read another one.
Or just ignore the whole thing entirely. Collector's choice!

Here are my (uber-longwinded) observations from a recent show...



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1. The Best Offense is a Good Pretense
It seems that the secret cabal of vendors that we damn well know is working behind the scenes against us collectors, had a clandestine meeting to determine the best defence (wait, why am I suddenly spelling like a Brit?) against the constant barrage of complaints about every single dealer’s crazy, museumic (is that a word?) pricing.

• The meeting notes from their conspiratorial conference must’ve stated very matter of factly:
No matter what the complaint is about pricing, simply respond with, “Of course, it’s a LITTLE (yes, use the word “little,” not the more precise “abundantly exorbitant times a million”) more expensive than other comps, but...(wait for it)...IT IS VERY STRONG FOR THE GRADE!!”


I can’t even count the number of times I heard that specific phrase, or a derivative thereof, during the show:
“A killer example for the grade!”

“There’s no 3 out there with corners as good as this one!!”

“That ain’t no 5, it’s a five plus plus plus!!”

“I’d sell my wife to find a better 7 than this guy!!” (In all honesty, a simple look at his huge gut told the world he’d happily sell her just for a bag of mini donuts, so that didn’t tell us much.)


They all said the exact same thing, and it didn’t matter if someone was actually questioning the price on their slab, they just kept repeating this mantra over and over again.
If you had to do a shot every time you heard someone say it, you would’ve wound up in the drunk tank before your first lap around the floor was half-completed.


One modern table guy even intimated to me, “We all know that many tens are so much better than other ones.”
We do??

Under my breath, I muttered at one of them, “Again with the ‘strong for the grade’ claim? Who are you, Arnold Schwarzengrader?!”

The funny thing is, not a single crazily-priced card I was shown by these phrase-wielding sellers looked to be a supreme example for the grade - quite the opposite.

Bottom line...it’s time to establish a new TPG called Charles Atlas Grading (CAG).

I even came up with a slogan you’re free to use:
“If your card isn’t in an Atlas slab, then it’s weak as a chump for the grade...and so are you!!!”



2. An Excuse to be Touched by a Young, Hot Angel (not really)
This is so minor that everyone will say, “Get a REAL problem, buddy!!,” but I urge you to follow my lead...

The front table was staffed by young women handing out wristbands (for us to affix ourselves), but I took a stand and reached out my arm and (referring to the wristband) asked, “Could you please put that thing on for me? I’ll probably make it too tight and cut off my circulation.”
(I’ve done that before, so it wasn’t a lie.)

A happy smile followed with, “Sure, lemme get that for you.”

Dirty old man, right? No frickin’ way!! A smart young (apparently, only to myself, so continue reading) man!!

Here’s why:

• What’s the worst thing about a card show? (The crowd screams, “STUPID PRICES!!!!!!!!!!!!! DUH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!")

• Whoops...what’s the SECOND worst thing about a card show?

Of course, it’s hurriedly trying to get that frickin’ wristband on in time.

After paying admission, but before you can enter, you only have one ‘free’ hand to work with and you have to turn into a juggling circus performer as you attempt to keep all the crap you’re bringing inside - bags, clothing, hard cases, reading glasses case (oof!), food and drinks, and perhaps also fumbling to get your change into your pocket - from falling to the floor while you desperately try to find the edge of the adhesive section with your fingernail and get that damned thing attached to your other arm.


Wouldn’t it be helpful if they provided a few tables off to the side so showgoers could take a moment to put down their stuff and attach their wristbands??
NOOOOO, what an outrageous idea!!!!!!
Instead, they make it the live action version of those subway videos from Japan you run across, where city workers shove the crowds onto the trains so the doors can finally be closed. (Yes, that’s a reach, but I’m trying to make a point.)


Doing it my way, you avoid all of that, because it only takes a split second for her to put it on for you. A split second well spent - no delays and now it’s show time!! Plus, no need to seek out a garbage can to throw out that pesky little peeled-off segment, because she has it, not you. Ain’t your problem no more!!

Of course, (call back alert) we could avoid all of this by just stowing everything in a large backpack to free up our hands, but where’s the fun in that?


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3. Chairing is Caring...No, It’s Not!!!
The first table I stopped at had the usual assortment of boxes and binders and slabs (“Oh my!!!”), so I was casually standing there taking it all in (my ‘Collectorism’ for this is Table Tilt - the stationary pose of standing still at a dealer’s table with your head angled slightly downward as you examine all of the items there) when the vendor suggested that maybe it would be good if he got me a chair. Thanking him for his hospitality, I said there’s no need, and didn’t think much of it.

But...merely minutes later, I was engaged in the same activity at a different table, when the guy there immediately came up to me and said, “Let me find you a chair.”
Looking around, I thought, “Why is everyone from the get-go treating me like I should be in some “I’ve fallen, and can’t get up!!!!” commercial airing during the afternoon soaps??”

Later on, and directed specifically at no one but me, a dealer said, “I got a couple of chairs at the ready.” (I guess he forgot to tag on, “...for a Methuselah-looking motherf*cker like you!!“)

This was the most seriously high ‘dealer to chair-offer ratio’ I had ever encountered. Why was everybody trying to be an usher?? All of these overtures came unsolicited, so what was I missing??

In the end, I wasn’t sure if like a restaurant host, they were just saying, “Sit down and stay a while!!,” with the hope I’d put a few bucks in their coffers by ordering overpriced jalapeño poppers and cocktails, or was it that I looked like my stasis pod malfunctioned last night and suddenly aged me thousands of years like Stewart in ‘Planet of the Apes’???

The jury’s still out.

This depressed me so much that I needed to take a moment and sit down.


But then it got even worse...


4. The Reading Glass is Half-Empty!!!
Pulling out a 1972 Topps #32 Cleon Jones ‘In Action’ card to give a look-see (it’s crazy hard to find without a tilt), and bringing the beloved Met closer to my eyes, I exclaimed to no one in particular, “Crap!! Need my reading glasses!” (Which I had recently started bringing along to use for close-up inspections.)
The couple working the table reacted with a good natured, hearty chuckle. Instant friends (Spoiler alert: that changes).

I said, “I still can’t believe I need these things sometimes. It’s all brand new to me, and it’s such a frickin’ bummer.” (Yes, people my age talk like that.)

(The WTF moment commences now...)

The lady, who looked absolutely ancient to me, grinned and said, “Yeah, my time is also going to be coming soon in a couple of years, as I had a hard time even reading the expiration date on the paprika (she pronounced it “pah-prick-uh,” with no slight hesitation between, or stress placed on, syllables, and not “pah—PREE—kuh” like normal people) jar last night. Right, hon?” (as she looked to her hubby to confirm her story).

My brain shrieked, “Coming soon???!!! Wait, aren’t you years, even DECADES older than me??? Shouldn’t MY gradual vision loss be following YOURS, not the other way around???!!! I can’t possibly be older than you, you crypt-keeper-resembling crone!!! I still have my youthful, boyhood glow!!!”

(Oddly enough, her husband was clearly much younger than she was, so maybe they have a ‘sugar momma’ thing happening, but hell if I know.)


She was then able to hammer my coffin shut for good with a final, “You should go to Bath & Body Works in this mall. I think they carry those chains that hold your glasses around your neck when you’re not using them. You know...attached like a necklace, so you won’t lose ‘em??”


It’s a rare occasion when I’m rendered speechless, but holy heck did she inadvertently (God, I hope to hell it was inadvertent!!!) do a number on me that I won’t ever forget.
When exactly did I become a “back in my day” saying, canasta-playing, butterscotch-carrying, sweater-smelling-of-mothballs-wearing, old biddy who plans on spending my final years down in Florida kind of person???!!!


5. Mourning Has Broken...My Heart
Like placing the Thanksgiving turkey in the middle of the table so all can gaze upon its magnificence, so do Willie Mays cards always occupy the center spots of cases out here as reverential moneymakers. Sadly, those middles sure got a lot girthier after his recent passing, with a ton of cards being added with (Surprise!! Surprise!!) monumentally inflated prices.

One guy had every single card in his display - all HOFers big and small - with ‘loud’ price stickers attached to them, except for the now overabundant number of Willie Mays cards clogging the middle. He purposely removed the stickers from those. Everything else still had (literally and figuratively) large prices showing, but the "the Say Hey Kid" cards were devoid of such trivial indications.


I cut to the chase and very politely (swear!) said, “You clearly want people to ask about these cards, so you can gauge their interest during this sorrowful time and then invent an obnoxiously high price on the spot...to see if they will bite, right?”
In a theatrical pretense, he frowned, shrugged his shoulders and spread his palms-up hands out in an exaggerated gesture of, “Who-ooo...me??” (Although this was real life, I swear there was a ‘sarcasm’ emoji floating beside him.)

When I asked why he did that, a self-satisfied grin appeared as he scoffed, “You know what they say about hot ironing, don’t you??!!”

Uh...I assume he was trying to trot out the standard, old time blacksmithing maxim, “Strike while the iron is hot,” but he seemed to be referring to pressing a dress shirt, so you won’t look like a schmuck at your friend’s bar mitzvah (true story).

Being none too fond of this guy to begin with, I replied, “Yup, my mother says it sure makes the wrinkles in a skirt go away,” and left him with a puzzled look on his greedy face.


6. The Great Progressinator

Da Vinci...Edison...The Wright Brothers. Innovators??? Ha!!!! Mere tinkerers.

For my money, the title of history’s greatest groundbreaking mind goes to the dealer who made my eyes give him a standing ovation when I saw his booth. He (get ready for an overuse of adverbs) purposely had all of his ‘bargain bin’ storage containers illustrously on their sides, wonderously spilling out waves and waves of toploaders marvelously cascading across his tables. What an ingenuously engaging set-up!!!


There were scores of excited teenagers...(whoops, since I’m so old now, I guess I should say “young whipper-snappers”)...surfing through the massive waves of shiny cards, building huge stacks to separate the ‘seen already’ from the ‘unseen yet,’ and smaller (closely guarded) piles of ‘keepers’ to the side.
‘Twas an absolute beehive of activity. When a kid would leave, the proprietor would then ‘re-spill’ the left-behind stacks into and around the large bins.


I said, “This is sick!! What a cool set-up!!”

He smiled hugely, and said, “Thank you very much!! It is, right??!! There’s barely any really old stuff, but every card you find is only a buck!!” (Wait...was this yet another person implying that I look ancient...AND was that buck comment a dig to call me cheap???)

Like Alexander Fleming accidentally discovering Penicillin by stumbling across contaminated Petri dishes, he told me how he unintentionally tipped over one of his tubs while loading up his SUV for a show and had an incredible ‘aha moment’ (being an Archimedes fan, I would’ve called it a ‘eureka moment,’ but let’s not quibble), and he knew right then and there how he was going to start setting up his tables from now on!!


I should’ve snapped a picture earlier, but only got this one very late in the day, so it’s lacking the impressively eye-catching, beginning-of-the-show spillover, but it clearly illustrates that he sold a crapload of cards, because those things started off being fully packed...


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He joyously added, “I want to patent the idea!”

I laughed and told him, “Call your booth ‘Spillage Village,’ or better yet, ‘Spilladelphia.’”

The smile disappeared, “No way! It’s gotta reference one of OUR teams!!!!!”

(Well, excuse the f*ck out of me for trying to help. I won’t even bother suggesting ‘Overflow Montana’ or ‘Buster Flowzie.’ Would those references be local enough for you, ya creep??!!)


As morosely as the interaction seemed to end, he still gets my rubber bin stamp of approval for his advancement in the cardboard sciences.

Reality check: I assume some “Alexander Graham Bell wasn’t the first to invent the telephone!” decryer will chime in to say, “I’ve seen plenty of dealers doing that same thing for years. It’s nothing new!!,” but I’m sticking with it. It was mah-velous.


7. Prologue: The C.H.O.M.P. (Creepy Hordes Of Munching People) Factor
As a complete aside, when the lunchtime pangs of hunger kicked in, it was time to take a break and meet up with my girlfriend for some grub.

I have to say it. Next to the ungainly nerds (no offense, making fun of dweebs is never cool, because the moment you have a problem with your phone or computer, who’s going to be your best friend?) digging through the modern stuff, coupled with the waves of balding middle-aged men with fat rippling through their stretched to capacity, sweat-stained shirts looking through the old stuff at card shows, is there a more repulsive group of people anywhere in the world than what is seen stuffing their faces in a mall food court?? No frickin’ way!!! BLECH!!!


Anyway, after overpaying like Dean’s Cards for the privilege of eating a footlong hero (yes, it’ll always be a “hero,” not a “sub” or “hoagie” or “grinder” or “torpedo”), I decided to cruise back towards the cavernous former Forever 21 store that served as the show’s venue.


On this short walk is where our tale commences...



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8. Gunfight at the OaKland Corral
(This entire ‘event’ took a mere handful of seconds, and would mean nothing to other humans, but the enduring and misguided passion we have for our teams makes us baseball fans an entirely different animal.)

As I strode back, the mall’s drab, industrial-gray floor covering in front of me suddenly became empty...deserted, like the street outside the saloon in a movie western. Out of nowhere, a lone, silhouetted figure appeared in the distance and slowly began making his way towards me...with something green on his head. Are keys jangling in his pocket...or is that metallic clicking sound coming from a pair of spurs????? Wait, did a tumbleweed just roll past the entrance to Sephora???!!! What’s making those terrifying and echoing sounds...are there rattlesnakes in this shopping center????!!!!


(Cue the infamous Clint Eastwood movie “waaah wah waaah waaaa-aaaah” sound effect.)


Finally coming into focus and stopping a mere ten paces away, this buckaroo looked about the same age as me and he was proudly wearing an old Oakland A’s hat. It wasn’t some newer thing from the ‘Bash Brothers’ years. No, sir, its well-faded and weathered green and yellow told me it came from the 1973-era A’s!!!
Channeling Indiana Jones, I woefully grumbled, “Why’d it have to be the 1973 A’s??” As I stood there in my faded blue, 1973-era Mets hat.


His quick glance at my head told him exactly who my team was, and he nearly imperceptibly squared his shoulders to face his enemy (I’m sure I mirrored his movement to also face MY enemy).

As my brain growled, “This mall ain't big enough for both of us!!” I imagined spitting a gob of tobacco juice at his feet.
Sadly, it was all just an act. Since I’m the only Mets fan west of the Pekos, I was alone. No one would be galloping in to help me circle the orange and blue wagons.


Both he and I recognized this for what it was, an unavoidable duel between hated adversaries. It was high noon in front of the Hello Kitty store, but we both knew full well that my Mets had already lost this gunfight over a half a century ago in The World Series...4 games to 3.
He didn’t need a Colt ‘Peacemaker’ in his holster to prevail. The only thing he needed was already hanging inside whatever ballpark the Athletics call home - signage boasting “1973 World Champions.”


When 1973 comes up, my thoughts go to Raquel Welch, Pam Grier’s funbags (no offense, I’m obviously referring to her purses), and Ann B. Davis as Alice (yeah, sometimes my freaky tastes veer towards the matronly, but I won’t apologize for that). That’s what real men think about, but this guy wasn’t pondering delicious 70’s babes...his reverie told me he was off thinking about Darold Knowles and Bert Campaneris and Reggie, about Willie Mays losing balls in the sun, and about his boyhood hero, Joe Rudi, playing flawlessly even though the blinding rays in Oakland made it feel like those long ago games were being played on the surface of Mercury.


I searched his eyes for a hint of compassion, maybe a little, “It’s all right, buddy,” to ease my pain, but he offered nothing. Not even bothering to meet my eyes, he only proffered a deliberately slow and knowing tip of his green hat to say, “Eff you and your Big Apple losers!!! 'Miracle Mets,' my ass!!!!”
He was silently laughing out loud as a smirk filled his hate-filled soul. I guess there are none so loud as those who will not speak. (Whoa!! Someone call Bartlett's and get that quote in the next edition!!)


As he happily walked off into the sunset (literally, the store was called “The Sunset Emporium”), I was left with the last vestiges of my masculinity destroyed by his yellow and green stagecoach rolling over me.
I never stood a chance...you can’t change the past.


9. Epilogue: The H.O.W.D.Y. (Hotties on Walls Delighting You) Factor
As the dust settled (see what I did there?), it was time for me to do the ‘walk of shame’ and mosey on back to the show. I was feeling as low as a horse hoof in mud (ibid.), but then a saving grace appeared. Everywhere I looked, the same, oft-repeated poster of a trio of soaking wet, racially diverse, gorgeous ‘fillies’ who were falling out of their skimpy bathing suits was visible. Don’t reckon I can tell you what in tarnation these ads were trying to sell to people, but gazing at them made my diminished testosterone levels shoot up faster than a buzzard on a carcass!!!!


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10. The Apparent Unimportance of Nothingness
A young guy was doggedly trying to sell his card to a dealer, and he kept referring to the prices on his phone with choruses of, “They always sell for $125. Always! I want $125 for it.”

The reply was, “I’ll give you $80, and that’s being generous.”

“But it always sells for $125. Be fair! I need $125.”

After a few rounds of this same conversation were repeated and in the books, the seller finally said with exasperation, “Only $80. Let’s see if you can grasp this. What does this card sell for?”

“$125. See?” (as he showed him his phone.)

“Okay, so if I buy it from you for $125, what price can I sell it for?”

“I told you!! $125!! Every time!!”

Pausing a few moments in the hope that enlightenment would enter the kid’s brain, he asked, “Do you really not see what I’m getting at???”

Now mumbling to himself, the kid huffed and puffed and stormed off.


Looking for support, the seller remarked, “This is my job. The boy wants me to buy his card for $125 and maybe I can re-sell it for $125, but probably less. No profit. Nothing!! He can’t grasp that simple concept...and he thinks I’M the bad guy?? When did they stop teaching basic economics in school??”
I commiserated, “You can’t teach common sense.”


11. Would You Like an Order of Despise With That?
As a pair of guys were happily digging their way through some bins, I could tell that one of them was brand new to the vintage game. His buddy kept explaining the differences in Topps designs to him, and would test his newfound knowledge by pulling out a 1959 common and asking, “What year is this one from?”

The other guy thought for a moment and replied, “It’s the knothole layout. You said the 58’s have the empty colored backgrounds, like this one (as he pulled a 1958 card from the bin)...so it’s from ‘59, right?” (And the crowd roars!!!!!!)

Exclaiming, “Very well done!” I gave him a fist bump. (Both were really good guys, so we got to talking about all sorts of things.)

Being all giddy as they pored through the final toploaders in search of gold, they readied their stack of ‘keepers’ to buy. The more ‘expert’ of the two enthusiastically focused his smile on the serious, bespectacled seller and said, “Wow, all of this is incredible!!! It’s obvious you’ve been a COLLECTOR for a long time!!”

With unmistakeable contempt in his voice, and seemingly ready to rap the guy’s knuckles like a yardstick-wielding nun yelling, “Sinister!! Sinistro!!” at my left-handed sister in Catholic school (TMI), the seller dismissed him with a corrective, “No I’ve been a VENDOR a long time!” As if to separate his lordly self from the common riffraff of the regular collecting community.

Note to self: Revise Chapter One, Page One of ‘The Idiot’s Guide To Selling Baseball Cards’ to include, “Always display derisive scorn towards highly-spirited customers.”


12. Randomly Funny Moment
As I was checking past sales data on my phone BOOM!! the site went down. I hit refresh and hit refresh and hit refresh again, nothing. So I held my phone up high...I dunno, to ‘try to reach’ the Wi-Fi or whatever and get a signal.

Don’t think everyone’s completely reliant on their phones at card shows??

At the very moment I did this, people as far as the eye could see, everywhere across the floor, were all suddenly holding their phones up in the exact same frickin’ manner, suffering the same indignity of having their Wi-Fi taken away.

In the old days, people used to hold their hands up to the heavens for Jesus, now they do it to see what an SGC 5 1963 Topps Manny Mota RC should sell for.


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13. Meet Me in the Middle...of Park Place and Fort Knox
While waiting to chat about a pair of Jim Palmer rookie cards, I stumbled into a fascinating negotiation unfolding in front of me.

A pair of guys - seemingly a lead negotiator and a ‘bag man’ with the money - wanted to reach a deal on a variety of slabbed cards (I couldn’t see the grade numbers) spread out on the glass display. The two main prizes were a 1950 Bowman Jackie Robinson and a 1957 Topps Mickey Mantle. Among the other things were a few overly-colorful modern cards with blue Sharpie signatures on them - ‘hot’ autographed rookie or chase cards or something.

Back and forth they went in a spirited and respectful manner, with the buyer time and again offering a (very large, but still too low) number, and the seller (while explaining his pricing and punching numbers into a calculator) countering with a (slightly reduced, but still much) higher number.

At one point (referring to the Robinson), he said, “This is literally the cheapest you can buy this card for in this grade anywhere on the planet. I checked. You can search your phone as long as you want, there isn’t a lower one on this great big, spinning, blue beach ball.”
(Quite poetic!!! Wonder if back in the day he was using his student loan money to buy cases of 1990 Score cards while studying for an English Lit degree, but that’s pointless conjecture.)


Finally, the talks reached the point where the two sides were close enough (metaphorically, their beer bellies were bumping each other) that the end game was imminent. Holding out his hand to shake, the buyer said in a hopeful fashion, “Meet me in the middle??”

Let me say this: When I ask a dealer to ‘meet me in the middle,’ it’s when I only want to pay 50¢ for a 1972 Topps Moe Drabowsky card he wants a buck for. I will say, “Seventy five cents?” If he comes back with, “I’ll let it go for eighty,” my reaction would be, “That’s too rich for my blood.”
So, take a wild guess what the ‘meet me in the middle’ price was here??
It was a “Holy guacamole!!!” (ugh, I can’t stand avocados) inducing $17,300!!!!!

YOW-ZA!!!!!

With the seller accepting the deal, (earlier, it was agreed that this would be a cash transaction) a perfectly uniform stack of one hundred and seventy three newly minted (or is it “printed”?) $100 bills was slid across the table.
It was like a scene out of a heist film, and I expected the seller to say, “The serial numbers are non-sequential, right?”
He handed the stack to his assistant who then disappeared somewhere. Returning only seconds later, he gave a subtle nod to indicate the cash was the correct amount (did he have a currency counting machine hidden back there???), and the sale was finalized with more handshakes.

Whatever the opposite of a monied collector is, that’s who your humble correspondent is, so this transaction was so above and beyond what I’m used to that it was very cool to behold.


14. California...The World’s Mental Asylum
Complete randomness here, but how about a last minute giggle?

Driving back home from the venue, we spotted something that would be quite odd to anyone not forced to deal with the daily lunacy of The Golden State.
A guy was pedaling his bike down a heavily trafficked (shouldn’t that be spelled “trafficed”?) street with, whaddaya know, a giant German Shepherd casually standing without a care in the world on his head and shoulders.

This is a waaaaaaaaaaaay zoomed in part of the only photo my girlfriend was able to snap out of the passenger side window (from a very far distance) as we turned off of the road, so at least we got something...

Attachment 629452


(Editor’s note: I did say, “WTF!!,” and whipped a uey to wait at the light, so we could get back on that road for a better picture of the dynamic duo, but the intersection was a mess and by the time we returned to pursuing our quarry, POOF!!! they had vanished just like my youth. You always regret the pictures you don’t take.)

Want further lunacy? Do I even have to mention that although it was a balls-blistering two thousand and forty three degrees out, the bike rider was dressed from head to toe in thick, fully black (heat absorbing) winter gear, as if he and Lance Arf-strong (thank you, I’ll be here all week) were headed up to Squaw Valley for a weekend ski getaway????




Until next time, my fellow table tilting dueling collectors!! :D


Darn it, I hope there are no typos in thing. Where did I put my damn reading glasses??

I can't say I read it all, but OMG Lance Arf-strong is unsurpassable.

Darren, loved your account, up to your high standards. The bike rider with his canine buddy was priceless. The only thing better would have been the pooch pedaling and the guy standing on his back. Might happen, California, you know.

I wonder if it is only a matter of time before those dealers, who use wives or girlfriends as an enticement to visit their booths, go all in and have pole dancers performing on-site. I can envisage a scenario whereby the girls finish their shift and are looking for a gratuity. They are not looking for dirty Washingtons or abused Lincolns they want your high grade cards. Pity poor Fred, who came to the show with the intent of having his super nice '57 Brooks Robby graded, a Xmas present from his wife and now somewhat aroused, slipping his prized card into the generous cleavage about 2" from his nose. I can image the discussion when he got home:
Ethel - " Well, I hope you dropped off Brooksie for grading."
Fred, - "Yes, my little sugar plum at PSA". "Should be ready in about a month."
Ethel - " That's good". "I'm worried about that little nick in the upper left corner." "You know, I wiped out about all my savings to get you that card and i sure hope it gets a high grade.
Fred - Arghhhh (quietly)

Yodes, everything we talk about here on Net54 gets immediately out into the collecting 'community,' as we all have seen.
Here's hoping the next time I'm sitting on the floor eating like an animal, because the venue had no lunch seating, I'll be able to gaze at bodacious dealer-adjacent 'entertainers' as I scarf down my overpriced gruel!! :D

Attachment 650009

With a magnificently huge American Flag calling everyone up the stairs, I knew I was in for a great time!!

Here are my (very long and hopefully semi-fun-filled) observations from a recent show...



1. Elementary School Business Class
Seeing the exuberant crowd at the entrance told me this was going to be a busy show, with a lot of enthusiasm in the air. I don’t bother with the silly ‘health of the hobby’ talk (it’s like talking about the weather), but it is worth noting that there were a lot of kids with their dads lined up waiting to get in, with many of them toting their small suitcase ‘safes’ on wheels, ready to wheel and deal. Born negotiators...baby sharks, I guess. (I have since learned that juvenile sharks are called “pups.”)



Attachment 650010


2. Your Hat’s on Backwards for You...Which Means it’s Now on Correctly
Keith Richards said, “You don’t find a style. A style finds you,” and we all know that the exact same ‘style’ had found all of the modern card ‘bros.’ They live by the (un)stylish credo of “Get a flat brimmed hat a size or two too large and always wear it backwards!”

But this time around, I don’t believe I saw even a single dealer ‘bro’ with his hat on backwards. Not a one!
I guess Kenzo Takada (whoever the heck he was) knew what he was talking about when he opined, “Fashion is like eating, you shouldn’t stick to the same menu.”



3. Speaking of Hat Size, it’s a New Criterion for HOF Voters
If you enjoy enthusiastic (and random) baseball card chatter, there’s simply no better place to be than among the bargain bin diggers, and this show lived up to the promise.

Making his way through masses of 1970s/80s cards, a guy in a Reds hat was piling up a stack of cheap Johnny Bench cards as he and his buddy talked about the best catchers of all time.
The mentions of Campanella, Berra and Carter were heavy, and out of nowhere, one said, “Gabby Hartnett!!,” which was an odd turn.
But to the Reds fan, no one other than Bench mattered: “He was the ultimate player on both offense and defense. A million Gold Gloves, Rookie of the Year, World Series MVP, a pair of regular season MVPs. The greatest of all-time!!”

His buddy replied, “Sure, people always talk about how great he was. I get it, but I just can’t get past his huge head.”

As his friend gave him a surprised “WTF are you talking about??!!” stare, he explained, “My mom started buying me cards in 1983. Donruss. There were like three different cards of him...and all showed his freaky, gigantic head.
It scared me...I had nightmares about it. I was just a kid!!” (Wow, talk about an odd turn.)

Pulling a card (1974 Topps All-Star Catchers) from his friend’s pile, he exclaimed, “Look at the size of that head!! The photographer couldn’t fit it in the viewfinder. Look at this one with Yastrzemski (he pronounced it “Yuh-SKREM-ski”)!!
It looks like he could fit Yaz’s head in his mouth like a lion!!! I will never get past the size of his head. It’s just not natural. It’s all too much.”

Holy crap, this guy has some issues!!! “Dr. Phil?? Calling Dr. Phil!!!!!!”

But is he wrong? I researched the cards he mentioned and there may be validity to at least some of his crazy noggin phobia...


Attachment 650004



Attachment 650006


4. Randomly Odd Bathroom Moment
Me and another guy happened to reach the bathroom door at the same time, just as a maintenance man rolling his large mop and bucket of cleaning solution exited after a janitorial job supposedly well done.

Heading towards the two urinals (no, idiots, we weren’t holding hands), both of us stopped on a dime. The floor wasn’t newly cleaned, it was the standard tidal basin of disgusting pools of yellow everywhere with discarded bits of toilet paper thrown into the mix.
The only way to possibly reach the toilets was to do that guy version of hopscotch where each jump targeted a ‘safe’ dry spot on the floor.

My fellow pissee looked at me and exclaimed, “Wasn’t he (the janitor) just in here mopping five seconds ago???!!! What did he actually do????!!!”

Ick!!!!

If this was The Sopranos, I guess this would be called a card-show no-show job.



5. Table Wife or Table Strife?
Approaching a lady at a table, I was wondering if I should talk to her or wait for her husband/dealer to return, and asked, “Can I make you an offer on these (cards)? Believe me, I’m not breaking the bank here, so you won’t make enough money to take a Caribbean vacation or anything, but it’s something.”

With definite shades of Golden Girl, Blanche Devereaux, she replied dead seriously, “Why...would you care to accompany me to the Caribbean? Is that part of your little offer, doll?”

Listen, you always hear about coyotes, rattlesnakes and bigfoots (I seriously doubt that grammatically speaking it would be “bigfeet”) in California, but man, the most dangerous animal out here is definitely the card show cougar!!!

She was so straightfaced that I couldn’t tell if she was being serious...and I was painted into a corner, so I remained calm and didn’t take the bait. An eternity passed as the clock ticked away (in reality, only a second probably passed)...when she suddenly guffawed so loudly it made me jump.
“My hubby wouldn’t give me up that easily!!! No way...but maybe if you bought a bunch of the expensive stuff he might!!!!!!!!” As thunderous belly laughs roared out of her jowly face, shaking the walls and frightening the guys looking through the boxes of cards.

Of course she was kidding!! Of course. Stupid boy, I should’ve known. I mean, who uses an expression like “care to accompany me”???

(Strange side note: Whereas I pronounce it “car-a-BEE-in” — with the third syllable stressed, her reply was “cuh-RIB-bee-un,” an entirely different pronunciation. That alone should’ve told me we weren’t speaking the same language.)


Here’s a pair of AI-generated pics of this good time lady and me living our best lives at the beach...


Attachment 650005

My possible future as her boy toy was derailed. Oh, what could have been. :(



6. The NFC Championship Game
This is an NFC town. Didn’t see any (now Las Vegas) Raiders hats or jerseys, but as usual there was a sh*t-ton of Niners hats to be seen, so I kept casually walking up to people to cheerfully ask, “Hey, who are you rooting for tomorrow, Washington or The Eagles??”

Yowza!! Who knew there was an infinite number of ways to convey, “I don’t give a goddamn flying f*ck about that!!!!” in polite society?

A few examples:
• “Who the heck cares??!!!!”
• “There are no other teams, only the Niners!!!”
• “Are you out of your mind??? Why would I care???”
• (A guy’s young son with confusion) “The 49ers aren’t playing. The season’s over.”
• “That’s a dumb question. I hope they both lose!!!!”
• “Next season can’t come soon enough.”
• “Man, how bad did the Cowboys get??” (Just a tad bit off-topic.)

I had a whole thing written about the AFC Championship game, but since my Bills once again went down, I deleted it. It was all about how everyone on planet Earth wants the Chiefs to lose. Alas.



7. Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign
Man, this guy speaks my frickin’ language...


Attachment 650007


I kept wanting to go up to him and ask if he would literally tell me what “AF” stood for, to see how much enthusiasm he’d add to those two words (the strength of one’s cursing ability is very important to us native New Yorkers).
However, he was busy the entire time (clearly doing something right), with his chairs forever being occupied, so I didn’t want to urge him to curse loudly in front of potential clients. Not a really good business model.

But as a young, case-wielding guy left his booth, I asked how he did with his negotiations. “Was the guy willing to pay as far enough into “AS EFF” territory as you wanted?”

“No, it was low ball. NOWHERE NEAR a good amount. He didn’t care about the comps I showed!!!” (I guess he thinks the sign should read “NNAF”???)

I let it slide that I can guarantee the comps he used were cherry-picked to only show his cards in the most (new word?) expensivest of lights, while ignoring all of the data that said otherwise.



Attachment 650011


8. The High Price of Craigs
Said it before, but it bears repeating. Dealers gotta do some surveillance if they want to make sales in a competitive environment.

I saw a PSA 8 1966 Topps #543 Roger Craig prominently displayed on a table at a very silly price and glanced at it for a few moments, because I love high numbers and due to his time in Brooklyn and being an original 1962 Met, I have a particular fondness for Craig.

After moving on to a neighboring table, I saw sitting before me in plain sight the very same (newly graded) card in a PSA 9...for less than half the frickin’ price of the first one in an 8!!
Its sticker still had an ‘unreasonable’ number on it, of course, but in chatting up the dealer it became apparent he treated people fairly and enjoyed the back and forth of the bargaining process.
In the end, I was happy to take Rog home after securing a nice deal.

(Side note: the only PSA 9 found listed on eBay is a $500 BIN. Yowza!! Not exactly what I paid for mine.)



Attachment 650013


9. Trapped in a Plastic Prison of His Own Making
Many collectors bemoan when a seller says, “Well, I have X amount in this card, so...” while telling you how much he wants for it. Quite a common occurrence, and I witnessed a slight deviation of it...

A guy had tons of PSA slabs for sale, nicely ordered in a multitude of two sided boxes. All had cert numbers starting with a 9 (and undoubtedly numbered sequentially), so he himself had obviously sent them off to be graded very recently.
The cost of grading his inventory is unfathomable to me...mind-numbingly so.

After furtively checking my phone for reasonable comps, I asked about the excessive prices on a couple of mid-grade cards, and he told me in no uncertain terms that his prices were FIRM.
“It cost me so much to get them graded, and those (the cards I asked about) came back lower than expected, so it screwed up my cost basis. My hands are tied. I just can’t sell them for less...sorry.”

At least he was polite.



10. Yelp Me if You Can
I asked another dealer how his day was going, and he replied, “Can you let me know? How am I doing? Are my prices reasonable?”

Since he was looking for a review, I surveyed his set-up and made a sweeping hand motion to point out how many people were digging through his stuff, and said, “Dude (sometimes the word “Dude” just slips out of my mouth for some reason), if you have price tags on all of your cards and people are STILL assembling piles to possibly buy, you’re doing fine. Otherwise, they’d run for the hills. Well, since this is a mall, I guess by “hills” I mean running to Victoria’s Secret to stare at pics of scantily clad models, but I digress. In the baseball card world, people staying at your table like this is a five-star review!!”



Attachment 650012
(Yes, this is obviously a fake pic meant to emphasize a point.)


11. Parker Bros.
I don’t ever recall seeing a single Dave Parker card eminently displayed on a dealer’s table before.
He’s usually found and overlooked in the bargain bins, probably because his cards go from 1974 through the 80’s...not exactly a ‘valuable era.’

But as a new Cooperstownian(?), that changed dramatically. His stuff occupied some prime real estate positions in a bunch of cases - mostly his rookie card and the occasional 1978 Topps with a sticker on the holder loudly screaming out, “MVP!!!!”

You know how you’ll pass a modern guy’s table replete with the shiny stuff, but he’ll also have one or two random old cards mixed in with them?
This time, the fraternal order of dealers were all playing the same game, because the majority of these older cardboard ‘guest stars’ were junk-era Dave Parker cards at huge mark-ups!!

Wouldn’t anything more than ten cents apiece be too expensive? Too bad you couldn’t pay for them with Monopoly money.



12. De-Cancel Cultured
I ran across something that really cracked me the eff up. And as I laughed, someone said, “What???” So I turned and showed him this...


Attachment 650008


The dealer told me he used to show that card to people to give them a good laugh. “I find the best customers are the ones who like to laugh.”

I offered, “As long as they’re not laughing at your prices, right?” (Hey-ooooh!!!)

He continued, “But the last few years with cancel culture? It’s obviously funny, because it looks like her...but to the wrong person? They’ll have their internet warriors attack me for no reason.
I’m retired and don’t have the energy for that junk, but I don’t care anymore!!”

“Oh, are you a Phil Collins fan??” (His empty gaze told me my reference flew over his head.)

A couple of other guys asked what we were talking about, so I showed them the card, too, and they frickin’ loved it!!!
One said he wanted to buy it just to have, but he didn’t want to deprive the dealer of using it as a showpiece to entertain people.

(Side note: I have a sneaking suspicion he’s going to buy the same card, grab a Sharpie and copy what this guy did and pretend it was his own ‘brilliant’ idea.) :eek:

The dealer said, “I don’t like her dumb dancing, so I’ll have my 25 Facebook friends accompany me in canceling her down!!! Ha ha ha!!!!!” (Wait, did he really just use the word “accompany”???)

Since he was so happily cracking himself up, I didn’t have the heart to explain that his 'canceling her down' terminology was way off.



13. Gathering the Magic in Pokémon Town
There was an entirely separate and seemingly closed to ‘outsiders’ corner area of the show that I somehow stumbled into. It was dedicated to Pokémon and other modern stuff.
As I stepped into this beehive of activity, it was like a scene from ‘The Amazing Race’ where the contestants have to quickly complete a tough task while running around a crazily crowded, loud and energetic foreign food market.

I was overhearing all sorts of different Asian dialects in the air, as everyone was yapping away in (I assume) Japanese, Chinese and definitely Korean (my girlfriend’s mom is from there).

My assumption is a language app like Rosetta Stone must’ve been running a special on eastern tongues, because there was an abundance of people of all races/skin colors fluently negotiating in, I don’t know, Cantonese(?) or something, in a highly spirited fashion with their Asian counterparts.
Their accents seemed perfect.

Since I know nothing about the modern stuff, I was a stranger in a strange land, and the whole thing was wild to behold...and not a Topps card to be seen by this wandering gaijin.


Speaking of accents...in hindsight, it's really too bad I wasn’t able to secure that Caribbean vacation with the table lady, because if there was ever a word that was meant to be mellifluously over-pronounced by a joyously happy, dreadlocked Jamaican man, like this gentleman, it would be “Poké-MON”...

Attachment 650003

(You can hear him gleefully saying it to you in your head right now, can’tcha?)




Until next time my fellow yago kadeu sujipga!! :D

This is friggin' hilarious , you made me laugh more than once, something hard to do these days, thanks for sharing ! :)

Oh, so you're the person who read the post?
I thank you!
Just figured it must've been someone from my family. :D

(That's my way of saying that although the site has really gone down a wildly argumentative road, I'm still trying my damndest to provide a bit of entertainment.) :D:eek::D

Are you suggesting that wild arguments aren't entertaining?

If so, I've got a bone to pick with you!

Attachment 650434

Since no one is reading this thread anyway, how about a further (new word) Elonganation of it with additional bonus material (so even more people can ignore it) for no one else’s amusement, apparently, but my own...




Attachment 650435

1. Me and ‘Mize,’ a Cardboard Lunchtime Love Story
Hitting the jam-packed food court, we ended up at a long-ass, rectangular table that looked like a centerpiece of a Viking feast with 100 awful-looking people gnawing on the roasted bones of game as they knocked tankards of ale together.
(However, the difference is I doubt the Vikings were asking each other if their fresh kill was gluten-free.)

A group of guys next to us were regaled in the standard baseball card collector wear, so I asked (more of a statement than a question), “You guys here for the card show?”

With exuberance, “We sure are!! It’s (sounded like he said) Mize’s first time!!!”
Then, of course, they made hack jokes about him being a virgin...to my unamused face.

Turning to the Mizester, I asked, “How’d it go? Was it what you thought? Get any good stuff?”

He said, “Honestly, I’m so out of place. Everyone here could be my grandchildren. I’ve barely seen any old stuff, you know the cards I collected as a kid, and everyone here is so young.”

Then I saw his tell, the thing so many people do when their focus suddenly shifts to your face to judge how old you are to know if you’re both on the same (new word) ‘age-length’ to understand whatever reference he’s going to make.
(It was actually kind of a compliment this time. I’m worn down and growing older by the day, so the fact he didn’t immediately say, “Present company excepted,” and really had to look me over to see if I was nearly as old as him, gave me a needed lift.)

“The cards I loved the most are 1973, 1974 and especially the colorful 1975s. The A’s ruled the world!! My friends and I were trying to track down George Brett rookie cards the entire summer. So many great memories!”
(He might’ve noticed me smirking, because I damn well know that no one THAT SUMMER was tracking down Brett rookies, that came much later on. I even mentioned this offhandedly in a video I still need to finish up, but didn’t want to be rude.)

After chatting for a bit and before saying goodbye, he somewhat defeatedly added, “We just stopped for lunch, but we’re going back in. I haven’t bought anything and was really thinking this would be the live version of eBay. You know, with every cool card out there. A feast for the eyes.”

Trying to meet their hackiness, I said, “More of a starvation diet for the eyes, am I right??”
No reaction whatsoever. Bummer. The only thing I heard was the smacking lips of a thousand food court fatties.

Like the ‘January Gym People’ who join up to fulfill a New Year’s Resolution, but quickly stop going after a week, I highly doubt I’ll be seeing my buddy, Mize, at a show anytime soon.



2. A Noob’s Guide to Crazytown
While taking in the wild action of the modern card sector previously mentioned, I approached a busy dealer (who thankfully greeted me in English, because I don’t have Rosetta Stone) and asked, “What simple advice would you give someone who knows nothing about Pokémon cards that would help them begin collecting them?”

He said, “Undoubtedly, collect the first “hundred and fifty” (in researching it afterwards, I believe he meant 102) from the first release of 1999-2000, a couple of years after the Japanese version. It’s called the BS (I chuckled) or “Base Set.” From there you just lose your mind and have no clue what’s going on. You simply can’t keep up.”

I don’t wanna keep up. Still have no interest in them whatsoever.


Attachment 650433


3. Bookmarks and Birthmarks
It seems the newest highly-touted ‘innovation’ at many tables this time ‘round was basically a bookmark to save your place while you thumbed through the packed rows of toploaders and slabs in a dealer’s box...and the sellers didn’t hesitate in bringing it to your attention.

It was reminiscent of the oft-told joke (it’s not really a joke, is it?):
Q: “How do you know someone’s a vegan?”
A: “Because they won’t stop telling you they are.”

When yet another seller was crowing about this great advancement in table management, he had the audacity to instruct me on how to use a bookmark, like I was a little kid, and I sat there puzzled.

First of all, I had my own (what I call a) ‘spot marker,’ which I’ve used for years RIGHT IN MY FRICKIN’ HAND (I generally cut up a large and useless - since attics are virtually non-existent out here - postcard mailer about attic clean-ups), so I was already doing exactly what he was ‘teaching’ me to do...right in front of his face! That was effin’ weird.

Secondly, (perhaps a little bit aggressively) I barked, “I’ve been using bookmarks to save spots ever since I stole one of my mom’s decorative ones to mark the ‘best’ pages in a Playboy that my friend and I liberated from the stash under his older brother’s bed!!” (Whoa!! TMI!!)

His slight hesitation told me visions of naked woman were suddenly dancing in his head, “Oh, sorry. It’s just that they’re carefully curated (never heard a card dealer use that term about a box of cards before) and in numerical order, but so many people just screw it up instead of paying attention to what they’re doing. It’s nothing personal.”

Perfectly understandeable. Okay, he’s a good guy after all.



4. Highs Jump
At the same guy’s table was a box of stunningly beautiful 1972 Topps commons, but the numbers abruptly (and expectedly) stopped with the upraised arms of Rudy May’s #656.

One guy asked, “You don’t have any high numbers here?”

“No, those are on eBay.” (With an unspoken, “Where they’ll actually sell at nice prices.”)

And here came a very telling exchange. “Wouldn’t they sell if you had good prices on them here?”

The dealer chuckled, most likely thinking about how cheap (to him personally) the general showgoer is, and said, “Good one.” :D


Attachment 650432


5. What’s Your Sign (Literally)?
Walking up to this gentleman’s table, I was very honest and told him, “I’m just looking for laughs, so I gotta say your sign is quite non-specific...it might indicate you’re paying high amounts with that “BUYING (big space) UP TO 90%," but it doesn’t explain what those words mean.”

So I rattled off a few questions:
• “Are you buying up to 90% of all the cards shown to you?” (Shook his head no.)
• “Are you negotiating to buy cards, but 9/10 of the way through your pitch, you’ll just stop and move on to something else?” (My application of math in this instance seemed to confuse him.)
• “Is it 90% of book value, whatever that is these days?” (Shook his head no.)
• “90% of comps?” (Shook his head no again, which is weird. Wouldn’t it have to be one of those two things?)
• “90% of what the collector’s mom says they’re worth?” (Smiled.)
• “Or are you only buying trimmed cards? Get it? They’re missing a 1/10 piece?” (A glum look.)

Overall, he chuckled along with me, but it was time to stop beating a dead horse and I moved on...still ignorant of what “90%” stood for.


Attachment 650430


6. Jamaalpractice
I ran across this card (it’s Warriorsville out here, says the sad Knicks fan) and come on now!!! It is definitely a finalist for the worst Hall of Fame rookie card of all time.
If this was a beauty contest (actually a non-beauty contest), ‘Silk’ would be advancing to the swimsuit competition.


Attachment 650431


Is it even up for debate? Look at it!!

In general, the photograph itself is an engaging mid-game shot, but no way does it belong on the front of a card. There are three players stuffed together, and the person whose card it is has the least amount of presence.
He’s scrunched between two Washington Bullets (with one, of course, being Wes Unseld, who appeared on about 90% of all basketball cards produced by Topps in the 70’s), and if the photo was snapped a microsecond later, Wilkes would be completely blocked out by their big bodies, as he stands obscured in the background.

The scene captured is like when one of my drunk friends would try to get back into the bar near closing time and a pair of massive bouncers would say, “Whoa!!! Hold on there, fellah!!” (Don’t recall many people speaking like cowboys in New York, but you understand the point.)

Plus, with the ball in the foreground rocketing towards the viewer, whenever someone picks up this card, his first inclination is to DUCK!!!!!
There is also the fact that the card features his birthname, Keith, so it’s not even truly a Jamaal Wilkes card.

A big-time airball on this one from Topps.




And that's all she wrote!! If a man named Mize asks you for a ‘spot marker’ while thumbing through your 1975 cards, tell him I miss him. :(

A short time ago in a card show far, far away…


Attachment 662276


Went to a show held at a swanky indoor/outdoor shopping center with fountains in the courtyard, and it was a giggle-fest adventure indeed!
We had seen 1970’s soft-rockers Pablo Cruise (which is the name of the group, not a person) there a few years back (see photo above),
which was way cool. In tribute, I shall pepper in references to a few of their charting hits.

The open layout was nice for us showgoers for a couple of reasons. First, the unrestricted airflow ensured that when you were stuck next to a disgustingly sweaty individual
(99% of the folks at these things), the breeze quickly swept his nastiness away outside and up and away into the sky. (Man, talk about destroying the ozone layer!!!)
And the easy access to sunlight meant you could swiftly refuel by holding your face up for a nice helping of solar energy...




1. Good Day/Bad Day Sunshine
However, there was a clear dichotomy happening with the vendors due to the vagaries of the set-up. Depending on where you were located in/at the venue, you either had “A Place In The Sun”*
or were one of the ‘mole people’ relegated to a dark and cramped (but airy) burrow. Between those extremes, there were all sorts of good and bad lighting anomalies.

One guy’s table had the bright sunlight streaming directly into his face, so every time I asked him something, he’d have to practically get on his knees to avoid the sun and see who he was talking to.
Not gonna lie, I asked him some needless questions just to make him go through the crouching rigamarole again. (Sometimes, you just gotta make yourself laugh.)


Attachment 662280

At times he held a slab in front of his (ineffective) sunglasses to act like a visor, but a concentrated white beam of light kept reflecting off of it and bouncing around everywhere off of everything,
and I was completely transfixed by it!! If there were cats around, they would’ve been bouncing off the walls trying to nail their illuminated, but illusional, prey.


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On the darker side, I asked one guy if he was happy with his placement in what was essentially a sullen and gloomy dead-end back room.
He told me he felt like he was tied down and locked away in his grandfather’s basement again.

“Again”?? Whoa!! What an odd thing to say. Since Vallejo (pronounced vuh-lay-o) and San Francisco are nearby, I instantly got seriously creepy Zodiac vibes off of him.
Feeling kind of trapped, I decided NOT to stick around and ask any follow-up questions.



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2. A three hour show...a three hour show...
One modern dealer was outfitted in a big, floppy, white hat at his outdoor set-up, and he looked nice enough to chat with, so I chuckled and asked,
“Did you spend time as the first mate on the SS Minnow charter boat?”

A dead blank stare. In fairness, he was much younger than me, but I’ve always thought ‘Gilligan’s Island’ references were universal.

So I remarked how great it was being outside in the beautiful sun. He immediately decried that claim by telling me he burns easily and can’t put on suntan lotion,
because it gets grease all over his cards and holders. (Seriously...couldn’t he just wash and dry his hands AFTER putting the lotion on??)

He said, “Steve’s wife gave me this hat. (Who in high hell is Steve??) You wanna see anything?”

I told him, “No, sorry. You know how people either prefer Ginger or they prefer Mary Ann? Collectors feel the same way about vintage and modern, and I’m a vintage guy.”

(Truth be told, I’ve always hated the age-old Ginger vs. Mary Ann debate, because why would I waste my time fruitlessly pursuing either of those cock-teasing castaways when I knew that trying to
land Lovey Howell would be a much safer bet. Thurston would certainly be happy if I took her off his hands once in awhile. Sure, it would be "a cool kind of love,"** but we’re all beautiful in the dark, I guess.)

I asked if he was worried about the sun damaging his cards. “Shoudn’t you protect your inventory better? Not sure about the shiny stuff, but old cards fade big-time.”

Laughing a bit cockily, he said everything was going to sell quickly, so it’s not a problem, and offered me a, “No worries, bro.”

I said, “Really, at these prices??? That’s a lot of zeroes. I’d have to have Thurston Howell III’s money to afford anything...am I wrong?”

The lost at sea look on his face told me my ‘witty’ remark again sailed over his head, so I decided it was time to paddle away from his island...er, table.

As our time ended, I realized it was actually good he was clueless about all things Gilligan, otherwise to my great dismay, he would’ve uttered the trite and obligatory,
“The Professor could basically build a nuclear weapon out of bamboo and gourds, but he can’t patch up a hole in a boat???” as he guffawed at his own cleverness.



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3. A Shepherd of Potbellied Men
Some older guys were exhaustedly complaining about the lack of vintage cards at the show, and I offered a simple, “Yeah, it’s all new stuff these days.”

One of them replied, “I know, but the e-mail flyer my daughter sent me said there was going to be a 55/45 split with Topps being the 45. That’s such a lie.
Nearly half of the cards should be vintage Topps, but all I see is that ‘Pokey’ stuff (Pokémon, I assume?). What a rip-off!” (The show was free, so that exclamation was a bit off.)

My old self (see #5 below) would’ve needed to free myself from the reverie of wondering if his daughter was hot, but I knew exactly what he was referring to, because I saw the same thing.
Thinking of the Bible, “I am the good shepherd, I know collectors and collectors know me,” I decided to help him out.
“Do you mean where the ads indicated a 55/45 split between sports and TCG?”

His look told me, “Yes, exactly!!”

“Those initials actually stand for ‘Trading Card Game,’ not ‘Topps Chewing Gum’ anymore. It basically means there will be a lot of Magic and
(hitting the word kinda hard) ‘Pokey’ cards here. Hate to say it, but we’re dinosaurs. TCG will never mean Topps again. It’s “Out of Our Hands.”***

He replied with a defeated, “I had no idea.”



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4. “I want my two dollars!!!”
Digging through bins and assembling my ‘buy pile,’ I ran across an obvious ‘mispricement’ — a silly $2 sticker slapped on a toploader with a beautiful Carlton Fisk rookie card nestled inside.
As an unapologetic 1972 Topps superfan psycho, my only thought was, “Don't Want To Live Without It.”*

Momma taught me to be polite, so I told the dealer, “I’m no fool. Clearly this price is wrong...unless there’s hidden damage or something??”

Perplexed, he thanked me for pointing it out to him, and (taking it out to look at and show me) said, “Yup, it’s in great shape. No problems.”

I said, “Being only two frickin’ bucks, I couldn’t understand why someone hadn’t already jumped on it.”

He assured me that if that did happen, he would’ve immediately ‘corrected’ the price.

“Your ‘correction’ might be too rich for my blood, but how much do you want for it then?”

He thought for a moment and said, “Since you brought it to my attention, I’ll let you have it for $20.”
(I’ll skip the uncomfortable part where I groaned, “Whoa! Twenty bucks? That’s ten times as much as two dollars!” (I love math!) — while unsuccessfully trying to talk him down to $15.)

He suddenly realized that his $20 offer was hastily given, so he added, “I promised you $20, but if you DON'T take it at that price, I’m immediately going to put a much higher price sticker on it.”

My momma also didn’t raise no dummy, so (sounding weirdly like someone’s uncle at a barbecue) I said, “Yessiree Bob, I’ll take it!”



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5. High Toppstesterone or Frisky Business
Man, this show got me feeling old.

While I stared with anticipation at a nearby table (whose structural integrity was being taxed by the sheer weight of slabbed deliciousness atop it),
waiting for space to open up and allow me to squeeze in...WHAP!!! My girlfriend blind-side slapped me with an echoing ferocity!!!!

I shrieked out (you can insert your favorite curse words here), "#$@&%*#&@!!!!"
(Nice bit of trivia: symbols used like that to indicate cursing are called ‘grawlixes.’)

She barked, “You’re drooling!!! Stop checking out that girl’s ass!!!”

Doing that quick, repeated head-shaking and murmuring thing cartoon characters do to regain composure after getting smacked hard, I stood there baffled, having no clue what she was talking about.

But looking outward, I realized that among the throng of aged, ill-kempt showgoers in my line of sight, there also stood a young woman with a butt like a ripe peach. If this was an eye chart,
she was the huge capital ‘E’ at top, but my silly eyes were instead focused on the little letters spelling out “E D F C Z P.” That’s how oblivious I’ve gotten to anything other than baseball cards.

Looking to appease my girl (who clearly thought my imagined stare was telling the girl, “I Want You Tonight”*), I said, “Baby, you know I only have eyes for cardboard.”

(I didn’t have the heart to tell her that if I was going to stare lustily at someone, it would be at one of the shrewish, hard-faced wives sitting at the tables. Again, the whole Lovey Howell thing.)

Side note: When she gets out of jail for assault (Yes, of course I had her arrested!! There’s no room for violence at card shows!),
I’ll see if we can build things back up. Hopefully, “Love Will Find A Way.”*



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6. I always feel like somebody’s watching me...
Tell me, is it just a dream? Look, I’m no scopophobic (PayPal me ten cents for that word!!), but as I was combing through long boxes of toploaders (I had left my ‘spot marker’—see post #94—behind
to quickly cover a lot of ground),
I could feel the heavy glare of someone’s eyes on me (regrettably, it wasn’t Miss Peach Ass). I had to check my shirt to make sure there weren’t holes burned into it.

The person focused like a laser on me turned out to be the dealer, and he was seemingly waiting for me to do something wrong as I returned the stacks of cards to his boxes, so I gave him a questioning look.

He politely said, “I usually prefer that people only take 22 to 27 cards (it’s weird that he didn’t just say 25) out at a time.”

Not feeling loved, I replied, “Did I do something wrong? I build stacks to the sides and then righten and align everything, and carefully return them piecemeal to the box.”

He reacted, “No, no, no!! I meant that number for the people who rip through the cards and shove everything back in. You seem to take it very seriously, and I appreciate you.”
(Pet peeve alert: I hate how some pompous people now make a point of saying I appreciate YOU, instead of I appreciate IT.)

Perhaps others treat this activity more flippantly, but I see it as an unspoken rule that you treat all of the cards at a show as if they were your own.



***This interaction was from a show a while back, so think of it as a hidden track on a CD (for you younger readers, a compact disk (CD) is a studio-released digital audio 'record album')...***

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7. Well, the world needs Grich-diggers, too.
A dealer had a good part of a box dedicated to 1970s Bobby Grich cards, with plenty of doubles of each one.

Although his other boxes and bins had large “50% OFF Marked Prices!!” signs, this one had nothing, so I casually inquired what kind of discount the Grich cards had.
He reacted with surprise, “Oh no! Those prices are as marked.” (It sounded like a grandma saying, “My stars! Of course there’s no discount, dah-ling!!”)

He told me Grich is a surefire Hall of Famer this time (via some Veterans Committee, I assume), and “I’ve had his cards forever, but now it’s time to
share them with other collectors.” (So the purpose of business is to “share”? I had to hold in a laugh.)

“He’s a lock sabermetrically!!” The fact that he may have invented his own adverb there — although it did sound
like he said “sabermetric-ABLY“ — made me smile, and he reacted with, “What??”

Shaking my head, “No, nothing. You were saying?”

“He was the best fielder of the seventies by far. None better!”

Then, seeing the decidedly worn and whitened Oreo of a 1971 card for $50 in my hand, the salesman in him came out and nodded approvingly at me,
“You got a good eye. That’s his rookie card right here...and it’s a steal!”

The snark was obligatory, “Yeah, thanks, the inch high, Sharpied “RC” on the holder didn’t escape me.”
(If that’s a steal for fifty bucks, then an old guy with a cane would be this guy’s idea of the fastest man on the basepaths.)

And he went on, “I’ve been a fan of his since I was a kid, diving down the line in the World Series stealing doubles away. It was epic! Couldn’t get anything past him!!”

Huh?? Was he switching out Brooks Robinson or Graig Nettles for Mr. Grich in his head??

I know a couple of things. One, he was only an American Leaguer — Orioles and Angels — and two, he didn’t play third base...plus, I was relatively certain he never
played in the World Series (I confirmed that later), so I decided to test him by responding, “Yeah, against the Yanks. What a great series he had at third!! One for the record books!”

“You bet! I remember it like it was yesterday.”

(I bit my lip and DIDN’T respond, “Yes, it was the first time two AL teams faced off in the Series.”)

Okay, he really dug Bobby Grich, but maybe next time he should do a tiny bit of research before subjecting people to his excessive hype???



8. I’ve always depended on the blindness of strangers.
A dealer told me if I wanted to see anything, let him know.

In an overly friendly manner, I replied, “I’d definitely like to see the prices a lot lower.”

He replied, “Yeah, I know, sorry, but I’m trying to make money and it’s tough. My margins are super thin.”

“What do you mean?”

He explained that he doesn’t send in cards to be graded, so everything he has available was bought by him recently, and he had even purchased cards from another dealer that morning.

Whoa!!!! I immediately wanted to break out a Business 101 textbook and have a discussion with him.

“So, if a card regularly sells for $150 and you bought one recently, chances are you paid right around that price for it, right? Or, I mean, on average if you tally
up everything you’ve bought, it would probably come close to what any other collector at a show or on eBay would have paid for them?”

He said, “You’re certainly not wrong.”

Trying to be as diplomatic as I could, I said, “So, for you to turn a profit, you have to rely on people showing up who have no knowledge of comps
or what your cards really ‘should’ sell for...and you convince them to buy them at your prices??”

Suppressing a sheepish grin, he said, “You said it, not me.”



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9. The sticky bur of memory
Surely, I’m not alone, right? Don’t we all have cards that immediately trigger specific way-back memories??

On a table, I saw a 1973 Topps Luis Tiant card staring back at me, and BOOM!!! my mind instantly went rocketing back to May, 1973 and my friend Mike’s birthday party. In the crowded backyard, his mom (who we all found outrageously hot as we got older)
was handing each kid a Topps rack pack as a party favor. On the middle panel of mine sat Luis Tiant in all his glory, with that goofy, opened mouth look on his face. That memory, for whatever reason, is tattooed onto my brain.

I will never be able to see that card and NOT be immediately transported to that long ago, sundrenched day in New York again...and that memory
(slightly mind-edited to put Mike’s sexy mom in a string bikini) will remain unavoidably stuck to me forever.



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10. Shooting an Airball in the Humor Galaxy
With a sh•t-eating grin, a dealer handed me a 1977 Star Wars card (like the one above), chuckled and urged me, “Take a look at this. Notice anything??”

Not a fan of being treated like an idiot, I repled, “What am I, a moron?? Do I NOT ‘notice’ his huge, metallic hard-on? Yeah, the gold guy is excited. Everyone knows about this card.”

But sensing an opportunity for some laughs, I dove head-first into juvenile humor mode:
“Maybe C-3PO was thinking of Princess Leia in that Jabba the Hutt bikini when they took his photo?”
(I was terrified someone was going to call me out and say that unforgettable scene was actually from the third movie, Return of the Jedi.)

No reaction.

“Or maybe the droid has a weird fetish, and he’s turned on by thinking of Darth Vader’s decrepid, scorched old man head when he removes his helmet?”

Nothing.

“He doesn’t ‘wake up’ with morning wood, he wakes up with morning steel...or is it morning titanium?? Morning carbonite??”
(Hell if I know what C-3PO droids are made of.)

Still nothing. But “Whatcha Gonna Do,”* can’t force people to laugh.

Not giving my top shelf humor even a single giggle, he instead ‘corrected’ me with, “Whattaya mean??!! This is a one-of-a-kind error. I just bought it.”

Feeling bad, I said, “Sorry, you know there are more of these on eBay than there were people on Alderaan, right?”

Blank stare. Does he have both peanut AND laughter allergies??

I continued, “Look it up! It’s the only Star Wars card normal collectors like me even know about. Decent ones probably go for a good amount of dough,
but if you bet ‘one-of-a-kind’ money on that card, (had to think real hard to come up with this pun) then just like Luke Skywalker, you lost this hand.”

Where’s a laugh track when you need one??

I think that by pushing back, he found my lack of faith disturbing, and I could see the wheels beginning to turn in his mind as his face grew more serious. He clearly didn’t want to believe me, but he obviously did.
My takeaway was he probably spent a crapload of money buying that card from someone, but was now realizing he got burned worse than Luke Skywalker’s aunt and uncle.

I gave it one last go, “If the Topps artists were truly clever, they would’ve created a third version and put a large schoolbook in front of his crotch to camouflage his ‘excitement.’”

Another blank look.

“You know, like in junior high when your gorgeously-Italian Spanish teacher picks a very inopportune moment to call you up to the chalkboard in front of the class?" (True story and TMI.)

After I left, I’m sure he made a call to his own Boba Fett and offered him a bounty to locate and capture the villainous rebel collector who sold him the card.








May the (graded) fours be with you, my fellow collectors!! If you see Mike's mom, ask her if she'd like you to slather suntan lotion on her delicate shoulders. :D


*Pablo Cruise song.
**Pablo Cruise lyric.
***Pablo Cruise album.

I made it to the NorthEast expo show in Marlboro this past weekend. The entry fee for this show was $20 which felt like extortion (kids 12 and under were free), but the show was pretty crowded so I guess it's the going rate. Tons of deals taking place, too many teenagers running around acting like Alan Rosen Jr, too much Pokey-man, new crap and even Dragon Ball Z (wtf?), but also a good supply of vintage sellers, and many quality ones.

There's a vintage dealer I need to single out who sells the most fantastic raw vintage of anyone I see in these parts. This guy takes the time to put extra stickers on all the cards, even the commons, explaining the condition in great detail. I grabbed a few pack fresh 75 minis from him and complemented him on his craft and dedication. He explained that his process helped him get sober, for over a decade now, so we had a conversation about that. Dude is an absolute legend.

You also had Matt from Providence, who has become one of New England's finest. Funny he only had one table and had to stack his fantastic inventory six or seven high. Was hard to even get near the dude's table. He has a Youtube video with vlogger Wax Pack Wisdom that is a nice listen and kept my attention for 40 minutes which is hard to do. Also want to give a shout out to Steve Winnick who always has tremendous stuff and is a down to earth guy.

I didn't find anything that great, as my true want list is for phantom cards that you don't usually see (like 48 leaf Red Sox SPs, off back T206 Red Sox, a few others), but I did manage to corral a '52 Red Sox card to get me closer to completing that set, along with a pair of 49 bowman red sox for super cheap, a 68 Jose Santiago, a 1950 Bobby Brown (the former AL president, not the recording artist), a 59 Stan Musial with a bit of writing on the back, and a three pristine 75 mini commons from the aforementioned dude. Total spend was $45 but I left feeling like I was really efficient and filled a few needs. Playing the long game over here.

Here's yet another long and exhausting take on a local show.
Read it or don't. Laugh or don't.
To be honest, I'm just too tired to care anymore. :(


‘twas your basic shampoo bottle show...


Attachment 666414


Lather, rinse, repeat - it was the same dealers, the same set-ups and the same cards, so knowing I wasn’t going to find much stuff to buy, I decided to throw caution to the wind and just engage with anyone who seemed friendly enough to approach, and man, it was fun!!

There was an air of joy in the air, as all interactions (save one, see below) were lighthearted. The laughs were numerous...




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1. Twelve Noon in the Garden of Good and Evil
During my initial walk-through of the floor, I saw a lady with a ‘mom bag’ hunkered down against a wall and thought, “What the heck,” so I jumped in and asked if she was a collector or did she get dragged here in an act of family unity (not sure why I expressed it that way).

Smiling, but confused by a rando approaching her, she gestured towards a table and told me, “It’s a great bonding experience for my (she stressed this word really hard) HUSBAND (Come on, lady, I’m not hitting on you! And you’re a soft 5 MILF at best!)
and my daughter, who can’t get enough of her cards. We’re headed to my sister’s in Vacaville (isn’t that ‘cow town’ in Spanish?), but she would’ve screamed like mad and rained down hell on us if we didn’t go here first. She forced us!”

Chuckling, I said, “Wait...so it’s not your husband making you come here, but your diabolical fiend of a daughter??”

She kinda giggled and playfully leaned into me as a reaction to me basically calling her lass a demon, and it got me thinking, “Gee, that was quick. She’s really warming up to me...and she's cuter than I thought. Maybe I should ask if she wants to ditch her evil spawn
and hit a motel with me that charges hourly rates?” But her face grew very serious, and making sure no one could overhear her, she nervously admitted in a hushed whisper, “We have no power. None. It’s scary. She rules us with an iron fist.”

The moment those words came out of her mouth, I swear her darling little girl’s head immediately swiveled around like Linda Blair’s, and she savagely locked onto her mother’s eyes with a furious stare of damning admonition.

Whoa!! How in hell did that little goblin even hear that???!!!!!!!!!

Screw having a good time at the Motel 6, I got the hell out of there!!!



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2. Heads I win, tails you lose
(To avoid all the yammering, just read the very last line of this section to get the entire story.)

A real amiable dealer’s table in a far-off corner drew me in and we got on like old pals. He walked me through all sorts of unopened packs of Mork & Mindy, Kojak, The A Team and other old TV show cards and said,
“If you haven’t guessed, I’m a non-sports guy...but I do have a handful of baseball cards,” as he motioned to a smattering of beat up cards from the ‘70s.

It was a pile of raggedness, but as if lit by a beam of light from heaven, sitting gloriously in a throne atop a worn out stack of his vanquished cardboard enemies (gee, hyperbolize much?) was a beautiful 1972 Roberto Clemente!!

Sure, it was off-centered, but I was hooked!! Who DOESN’T love that boyishly-playful, baseball-flipping card of the ever-serious Clemente??!!

I told him, “Having this card on top of the other, sorry, JUNK is like putting a Ferrari hood ornament on a totaled Buick. No offense.”
As he smiled at my candor, I told him, “The centering kills it, so I’d be a lot more comfortable paying forty instead of your $60.”

Politely shaking his head, he said that’s too low and he’s happy to keep it, because it’s his best card and grabs people’s attention, “You stopped here just to look at it, and it got us talking, right??
I love that and it’s not all business for me. I rather have a good time at these things (shows).”

I reluctantly nodded, “Yup, you nailed it. I saw it and came over. It’s beautiful...except for the centering.” (Had to drive home that point again.)

As we chatted, he eventually countered with, “The lowest I would go is $50. You’re right about the centering, but if it was better, a few zeros would have to be added.”
But me being me, I still resisted, so he had an idea, “You know what, this is fun. How about we flip for it? I’ve never done that at a show. If you win...$45. If I do, let’s say $51, so I’ll ‘win’ an extra dollar from you. Sound good?”

As he dug in his pocket, he had a frustrated realization, “Darn it, I only have a dime,” and it temporarily took the wind out of our sails, because everybody knows a dime is NOT an acceptable coin flipping option.
I told him, “We have no choice, nobody carries coins anymore. We’ll never find a quarter here.”

And so, moments later as FDR was arcing high into the air, I cried out, “Heads, of course!!,” but was surprised when instead of catching the coin and slapping it on the back of his hand, he just let it hit the floor and plink around
(I think that properly describes the tinny sound of a bouncing dime). Striking his wife’s shoe as she leapt to avoid it, it finally came to a rest on ‘heads’!!!!!

Righteous victory was mine!!!!!!!!!!

(I’m not ashamed to admit that if it landed on ‘tails’ instead, I would’ve yelled, “Interference!!!!” and demanded a re-flip due to the lady’s foot affecting the outcome.) :D:rolleyes::D

Long story short, I ‘won’ an otherwise perfect, but OC, 1972 Clemente for 45 bucks.



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3. Mini Maximum
He and I began talking about 1975 Topps Minis, and I remarked how in New York we never even knew they existed, but on this coast they’re everywhere.
(An invented statistic) “For every regular-sized 1975 card I see, there are a hundred Minis out here.”

Out of nowhere and with a surprised look on his face, he reacted with seriousness, “You’re from New York?? We’ve been talking this whole time, but you didn’t swear once.”

For a laugh, I responded, “What the F*CK is that supposed to mean???!!!”
(Which startled him a bit. Whoops!)

(It’s odd how often the ‘New Yorkers love to curse’ theme arises out here. They think all we do is throw ‘F’ bombs around...which I guess is kinda true. It’s funny to me, but if you don’t call the stuff you drink in the morning ‘cawfee,’
you may not understand that’s just who we are. My girlfriend always jokingly asks, “Are you feeling all right? I haven’t heard you swear at all today.”)

Getting back on track, he said, “When I used to sell cards online, I had loads of 1975 Minis. There was such a surplus available that I got them for nothing. After I noticed all of my orders were coming from Easterners,
I got wise to the fact that packs were never sold there back in ‘75, so I started upcharging more for them...a lot more. It was like minting free money. I miss those days.”

Wanna know how great this guy is? He actually made a point of personally apologizing to me for greedily (his word) overcharging my fellow coastmates (is that even a real word?).

I responded, “Yeah, your apology for treating us like f*ckin’ schmucks is greatly appreciated.”



Attachment 666418

4. Do you wanna wipe me bum, also?
As I was fully engaged in digging through cards, the ‘dealer lady’ inquired if I had gone to the bathroom yet.

Assuming it was a stray comment not meant for me, I ignored it and kept my eyes on the table’s treasures.

A moment later, the question was repeated very slowly and deliberately, with each word pronounced individually, “Have...you...gone...to...the...bathroom...ye t?"

No reaction from me.

A little while passed, and practically feeling her breath in my face as her head was now only a foot away from mine, she again asked with exasperation, “Have you gone to the bathroom yet?!!!”

Finally thinking, “WTF???” I leaned back and asked, “I’m sorry, but why do you keep asking me if I’ve relieved myself???”

Taken aback, a mighty horselaugh burst out as she patted my forearm and told me, “No, no! Ha ha! I’m talking to my son behind you. He keeps ignoring me!!!”

Turning around, I found a silly-haired (what my mom called a ‘rat’s nest’) kid with the over-exaggerated facial features of someone in the middle of a very awkward growth spurt.
With an angst-ridden look on his ungainly face, he stood there defiantly staring down his mother.

Nodding to ‘momma bear’ with understanding, I laughed, “Oh, okay, wow!! The age-old problem of growing up. For a moment there, I thought you were a full-service dealer, really caring about the digestive well-being of your customers!!”

Chuckling with me, her hand gently squeezed my arm with maternal affection.

(Editor’s note: as I drove home later, it occurred to me that like his mom, I never DID find out if that kid ever took a whiz or not.)



Attachment 666420

5. No, YOU do the math
For fun, I walked up to the table in the photo and pretended to be thinking things over as I very seriously asked, “Excuse me, if I bought something from you...how much ‘OFF’ would it be??”

Slapping his hand down, he laughed big (which was nice), and a guy there said, “That’s funny. You can’t believe how many people just DON’T read the signs.”

The dealer then told me how he actually had to chase after someone earlier who left him the amount on the price sticker and didn’t take the 50% off, “I needed to give him half his money back!”

Integrity. Priceless.



Attachment 666419

6. We Both Give a F*CK
(It dawned on me that this dealer may be the same one featured in Section #7 of post #90?)

The two set-ups in the picture were only separated by a table and an aisle, so wearing a goofy look, I approached the “PAYING STRON” (the ‘G’ was folded back) guy and asked, “If I had something to sell, why would
I choose you with your claim of ‘paying stron' (yes, I deliberately pronounced it like it was spelled), when I can go to the guy right next to you who’s not only paying strong, but paying strong AS FUCK??”
(I guess they’re right. We do curse a lot.)

Playing along, he responded, “You’d be making a mistake. We definitely pay strong as fuck here, but we’re just a lot more subtle about it.”

Ha!!! I told him that was the line of the day and gave him a reverential bow.

Footnote: He disclosed that he and the other guy are actually business partners - they work together. It was only due to the booth size that the ‘AF’ part of his banner had to be folded around back.
“You can’t see it, but believe me, it’s there.”



Attachment 666421

7. Moon Squawk
I started chatting up the people at this table to uncover what they meant by “BAD” cards?
Since the graphics mirrored all of the shiny TCG stuff that kids chase, perhaps it was a newfangled brand of modern cards??

One guy craftily said, “We exclusively deal in baa-aaad cards,” then with a happy salesman’s positivity, exclaimed, “Don’t waste
your time with anyone else. We buy and sell only the baddest cards out there,” as the gents beside him nodded along.

“Oh, bad as in ‘bad-ass.’ Got it,” I said, “I thought maybe you found a market niche and were slinging old cards that were in bad shape.”

“Nope, he said, “just the baddest of the bad.”

Going for a laugh, I gave a loud “Hee hee,” turned my head towards them and said/sang, “Who’s bad??”

Blank stares. (And let’s be honest, I must've looked like a ridiculous 'theater camp' freak.)

Seriously? Michael Jackson references are completely lost on millennials or Gen Zers or whatever they’re called?? How f*cking old am I????



Attachment 666429

8. High Number Anxiety
Act I: Regret is a four letter word

The more Mantles you have, the more prosperous your financial future will be.
(Editor's note: we encourage you NOT to make baseball card purchase decisions based on the implied advice of someone going for laughs in an internet forum.)

Although I’m not a fan of (overpaying for) lower grade cards, there are certainly ones that deserve attention, like the 1961 Topps #578 Mickey Mantle All Star shown here.
I’ve always had a bit of an obsession with that venerable card from the newspaper-busting 1961 subset. And this one looks a helluva lot better than merely a four.

As shocking as it is to hear, the dealer’s price WASN’T overly psychotic, just a tad bit high for my cheap heart. But did stupid me try to secure a better deal for this high number
with the Benjamins I had earmarked for such a purchase?? Noooooo...I just made a mental note of the card and sailed off into the show.

However, after only seeing two other examples elsewhere - a prominently displayed PSA 9 for many, many thousands of dollars (not exactly my neighborhood),
and a very off-centered SGC 3 for TWICE the price of the SGC 4 - I realized I gotta get my ass back and find a way to take the nicely centered card home.

So, after a bunch of rounds of dogged negotiation, and adding a pair of the dealer’s other ‘reasonably’ priced cards - a 1963 Mays and ‘65 Koufax - to the mix,
we eventually shook hands and had a deal that allowed me take home the trio of deliciousness for an outstanding price.


A happy ending for me...but someone else’s tale was ending unhappily...


Act II: Hesitation is Devastation
As I was mulling about shortly afterwards, the dealer pointed to me and waved me back over.

Beside him stood a disappointed fellow, and he directed him to me, “This is who bought it. It’s his Mantle now, so he can sell it to you if he wants.”
Then to me, “He came back to buy the 1961 All-Star. He saw it before and now he’s upset he was late to the party. Was going to pay full sticker, too.” And as a genial, but rueful, aside,
“I knew I could’ve gotten my price if I held onto it longer. The comps have been really trending upwards.”

Enjoying his terminology, I responded, “Mantles will always and forever be trending upwards.”

Although the dejected guy didn’t actually ask me, I felt obliged to match his sullen face and politely say, “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to sell it.”

Inside I was cheering!! If I had hesitated a moment longer, the depressed, disillusioned guy would’ve been me!!

I considered directing him to the SGC 3 I saw earlier (while NOT mentioning the extortionate price) and saying, “There’s a guy who has a great looking SGC 3 for a great price. You should grab it before it’s gone.”
But I rightfully held my tongue. Karma is a bitch.


If I may be so crass, the end result is I went home with the HOT CHICK (it’s only a metaphor, so ignore the fact that rating any guy or girl a 4 doesn’t make them “hot”), and the other guy had to settle for trying to hook up with one of her sloppy friends.



Attachment 666422

9. Compropriety
Speaking of comps, am I the only one who does this?

I never directly go to my phone and check out comps in front of the dealer while looking at his cards. Maybe I’m old school, but even though phone-comp-hunting is the only way to do things at modern card tables,
it just seems rude to me to do it in front of a vintage dealer. (There are exceptions, of course. When you see lunatic pricing on a card, you MUST immediately call up comps and ‘nicely’ call him out on it.)

I always casually slide off to another area, out of eyesight, and then start gathering intelligence on the cards I’m interested in (and others I’m not interested in) before moseying back in to better approach my targets. It’s become second nature to me.

So, I don’t hide my phone from my girlfriend, but I DO hide it from random dealers? That just seems off.



Attachment 666425

10. If ‘no comps’ is wrong, I don’t wanna be right
(This conversation sort of creepily echoed #8 in post #95.)

Chatting with a dealer about my ‘not using my phone at tables’ policy, I remarked how each time I tried to connect to recent sales sites on the show floor, a prompt would tell me that traffic was too high...and it wouldn’t load.
The colored wheel on my screen kept spinning around, so I had to keep escaping the congestion by walking out into the mall or parking lot to actually get results.

He cheerfully said, “It’s the best thing that could’ve happened to me. My prices aren’t bad (I obviously wanted to request time for a rebuttal), but no comps means the less I need to come down on my prices.
If they can’t prove (he basically italicized that word with his voice) that my price is too high, they have no leg to stand on.”

I asked/stated, “So, your mission is to keep your customers in the dark?”

He smiled at me.

Wow.



Attachment 666424

11. Randomly Humorous Dealer Comeback
Watching a 40 or 50-year old guy bobbing and weaving as he tried to talk his way into getting cards for even cheaper than the ‘5 for $10’ (or whatever it was) price marker slapped on the large bin,
I heard the dealer (with good humor) finally say, “Look, whattaya want me to do, give them to you for free??”

In my head, I thought of a great way to chide this creep in a completely dismissive manner. The dealer should’ve sadly shook his head and said, “Aren’t you just a little too old to be trick or treating??”

Ouch.

So, if there are any dealers out there who could make use of this rebuke, go for it.



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12. He’s still got Blue Balls...or is it Gold Balls?
After again running into the outgoing dealer who bought the C-3PO card discussed earlier (refer to #8 in post #95), I asked if he was able to track down the guy and get his money back.

But he played a game of pretending he didn’t know what I was talking about it, and I thought, “Come on, man, have some class.”

He did a double take when he first saw me, so he obviously remembered exactly what we talked about last time. I mean, who wouldn’t?? Perhaps, like unexpectedly running into someone who broke your heart, he wanted to avoid the pain of interacting with me?
Annoyed, I remarked that between the guy who told him the card was a unique item, and me who told him they were everywhere, I was the only one telling the truth. His exasperation shouldn’t be directed at me.

With his eyes looking side to side, hoping a customer with a question could ‘save’ him from having this conversation, his look told me he accepted what I said, and he finally remarked, “I kept it. It’s in SGC’s hands now!”

Yowza. Talk about praying at the graded card altar!! He was calling the hands of the TPG, and not God’s, the higher power.
Taking my leave, I warmly wished him good luck with it, “May the grading company bless you and keep you. In SGC we trust, right?”



Attachment 666427

13. The long arm of the low-life
For many of us, the most scrumptious part of a show is digging through boxes and bins in hopes of finding who knows what, and wondering what treasures may suddenly be uncovered...but where’s the decorum??

We’ve all been there and it’s annoying as f*ck. You’re flipping through a row of slabs or toploaders in a dealer’s box, when out of nowhere some sweaty schlub purposely breaks your flow by reaching across you to grab the cards you were about to search through next!!

I was working my way through a two row box of 1966 cards in numerical order. It was full of stars and everything else, and as I was approaching the end of the rightmost row,
a guy with a stomach telling the story of too many nights drinking beer and too many days downing donuts (wait, that describes 99% of us vintage collectors) struck.
His jiggly, fat-armed interruption was wantonly deliberate, as he must’ve been watching my progress and wanted to beat me to whatever high numbered jewels were about to be revealed. An act of total douchebaggery.

I stopped him from getting a hold of anything and barked, “Hey!! Let me finish the goddamn row first!!! Look through the cards I’ve already seen!!” (There were a few curses thrown in, but I cleaned it up.)

His lack of any reaction told me he’s quite experienced at pulling this crap, as he didn’t say a word and just sort of drifted off into the mist. A fellow ‘digger’ at the table joined me in a look of disdain.
Our faces both said the same thing, “F*cking prick!!”
(Call back alert: actually, he’s probably not from New York, so let’s assume his stare didn’t include the curse word.)


Which kinda leads into this...


Attachment 666428

14. Viewership has its Privileges
Diametrically opposed to that box invader, a guy beside me at a different table was all kinds of polite. He wanted to make sure his arm wasn’t bonking into me due to the closeness of the boxes we were digging in.
I thanked him for asking and realized he looked familiar - a YouTuber I actually left a comment for awhile back to say I enjoyed his welcoming manner (something like that).

With such a sparse supply of vintage tables, he and I seemed to be cruising the same places at the same time, and I heard various people telling him they enjoyed his channel.

Don’t want to overstep in case I got it wrong, but I believe some sellers were giving him celebrity-type deals, because I would hear the lead in, “Well, since it’s you...” when a price was about to be discussed. (Or maybe it was said in jest??)

Then there was a friendly give and take with a dealer he obviously knew well, who while considering the price he was being offered said, “It cost me $40 just to get those two cards graded!”
(The implication being he would lose money if he agreed to the deal.)

Oddly enough, I believe that negotiation also led to a coin flip that went bouncing around on the floor (is that a California thing??), but I was leaving the table before the denouement (ten points for that effin word!!), so I can’t be certain.

If he’s a Net54er reading this (Ha! Like there's anybody actually reading this!), I would welcome any corrections. Just remember to continue being polite and welcoming and don’t throw stones at me if I didn’t accurately gauge what I was witnessing.




Until next time, my fellow dime flippers!! If you see that doofus kid, tell him to listen to his mom and go to the f*ckin' bathroom already!!!! :D:eek::D

Attachment 673559


It’s been over a month since I’ve been on Net54 (thanks for noticing), and haven’t been able to attend any shows for awhile, so here’s the next best thing.

Emulating how The Who assembled and cleaned up a bunch of unreleased recordings to create their ‘Odds & Sods’ album, I have taken the same approach and gave a good scrub to some of my own ‘outtakes’ from various shows over the last year or so to make them presentable (and entertaining?) for a two-part offering.

But Elms, why are some of these observations so long?
Because I’m old school and don’t cut it down for the quick-read, tiny phone set. I put it all out there (with graphics and whatnot) for my fellow big screen devotees.

Plus, since no one reads this thread anyway, isn’t it better to have all of the material in one place, so you can NOT read all of it at the same time?

But for anyone actually making it through to the end of Part II, at least you’ll understand why in tarnation this random graphic is here...


Attachment 673558




Attachment 673557

1. Call Me Henny Old-Man
My health sucks, so now I have a glucose monitor unceremoniously stapled to the back of my frickin’ arm. When its screaming alarm announces my blood sugar problems to the world,
it is bitterly annoying...sort of like having to sit through a caterwauling Katy Perry song blasting from the car next to you at a stoplight.

So when it suddenly sounded at a packed table, the screeching broke the silence and startled everyone!
Nobody had a clue where the high-pitched squeals were coming from. “What is THAT??!! Did someone pull the fire alarm??!!”

(Slyly hitting the ‘off’ button) I reacted with dismay, “Dammit, it’s my ankle monitor!! (Ha! They can’t see my ankles...although their eyes did instinctively glance downward.) Now I’m in trouble!! My parole officer knows I left my goddamn house!!!”

Hurriedly handing the card I was examining back to the dealer, I apologized, “Sorry, man, I really gotta go!!,” and made a show of grabbing my stuff and heading away from the table and through the crowd, presumably towards the exit.

I guess a better man would’ve stopped and went back with a smile and said, “Ha ha! Only kidding, guys!” and shared a joyous laugh with everyone.
But screw that!! I decided instead to just go on my merry way and leave them scratching their heads and confused as to what it was they had just witnessed.

Since then, I occasionally find myself gazing up at the night sky and wondering, “Do any of the people there that day tell their pals about the wild time they ran into the ‘card collecting convict’ at a show in the mall??”
(The tale would certainly fit into a parallel universe’s version of “Observations from the Card Show Front Lines.”)

Postscript: I have since learned how to modulate the volume and avoid such scenarios in the future. However, it would be fun pulling the same gag on new audiences.
Maybe I could turn it into a bit of schtick, sort of my version of “Take my wife...please” to make random showgoers howl??



Attachment 673560

2. Wheels of Fortune?
Like the baggage carousel kicking to life shortly after an airplane lands, there is suddenly a great abundance of suitcases now appearing at card shows.

The modern areas have scores of people wheeling around carry-on luggage pieces as they attempt to offload the incredibly valuable (your opinion may vary) wares packed inside to interested dealers...but who are we kidding? Fellow showgoers make up a huge part of their target market.

Asking a dealer if it bothers him that these guys haven’t paid to set up, but get all of the great exposure to customers for free, he was unfazed. “I’m busy dealing...and wheeling (yes, it was peculiar how he switched the order of that phrase around) all day,
so I barely notice. Doesn’t have any impact on my bottom line.”

And in a mocking tone, “Have you seen what they got? It’s probably just trash no one’s gonna buy anyway. I say let the kids play.”

Golden Opportunity for Future Merriment:
Somebody really needs to fill one of the spare compartments in their card suitcase with a bunch of socks, underwear and t-shirts. So when the right moment presents itself at a show, they can pretend to reach in to grab cards, but instead pull out a handful of clothes and exclaim, “Darn it, guys!! I brought the wrong suitcase!!!!!” to the uproarious laughter of the assembled masses.


Remember, you always regret the giggles you DON’T give people.



Attachment 673555


3. A Tale of Two (Actually Three) Kiddies

Attachment 673544

Part I: Taking Benjamins from a Baby
When I was young, the cereal aisle regularly witnessed me begging my mom to pay the extra twenty cents and buy Froot Loops instead of the cardboardy store brand
“Fruity Circ-O’s” (or whatever sadly imitative name they were given), but my pleas would be met with a glare of “Go f*ck yourself!!”
(Benny Franklin would’ve loved my mother. She considered every penny saved as being earned.)

But kids today are clueless about such indignities. If mom is headed to the supermarket after yoga class, they’ll just Venmo over cash and order her to buy whatever effin’ sugary cereal they feel like drowning in milk the next morning.

I know this because kids just keep blatantly forking over bundles of greenbacks to dealers at shows for shiny new things. By never thinking twice about laying out huge sums of money,
I swear the only thing separating these baby-faced barons from Mr. Monopoly is a top hat and an elegantly curved mustache. Price means nothing to them!

One Junior Moneybags was looking on with great annoyance while the dealer carefully counted the stack of bills he had just handed him. Apparently feeling a bit ‘dissed’ by the seller’s diligence,
he met the eyes of onlookers and gave a perturbed, theatrical show of, “Can you believe this guy??!!” and glibly declared, “It’s all there, bro.”

A child unable to grow facial hair was being dismissively patronizing to a 40+ year old man??

When a show is on the horizon, I have to root through old birthday cards from my long-gone grandma in the hopes of discovering a missed five dollar bill tucked inside of one. Finding a lost Abe is the only way I’m able to finance my purchases, but who’s bankrolling these middle school moguls?

Since they’re devoid of price-sensitivity, Lord help us if these infant industrialists start directing the wads of dough spilling out of their pockets towards paying the ridiculous sticker prices on vintage cards!!
No dealer would ever need to lower their outrageous prices again and my collecting days would be over!!!



Attachment 673548

Part II: To the Victor Go the Foils (Gold Foils, that is, Numbered 1 of 1)
Overhearing one tweener tycoon cockily bragging about how he took someone for a ride (his words, not mine) in a trade, I realized it’s not the age of the shark that matters, but the size of the teeth.

Since he was speaking modern flipper lingo, what exactly the great ‘steal’ was wasn’t apparent to my vintage ears, but I gathered he was able to grab a more expensive (refractor or chrome or prism or whatever) parallel in the deal than what the other guy thought it was??
Something along those lines. His trade partner unknowingly shortchanged himself by making a low valuation mistake, and the great white kid-shark swam in and took a big bite outta him!

When his pal (who apparently has a moral compass) asked if he felt bad about ripping the guy off, the squeaky-voiced capitalist replied, “If the card was the (less expensive) one he thought it was,
then he was trying to rip ME off by making the trade value so high. Do I feel bad about getting him?? No!! It’s either burn or get burned.”

Whoa!! These kids are wise and jaded well beyond their years. Be careful out there, everyone.



Attachment 673549

Part III: My Way or the Thoroughfare-way
Another rugrat huckster was hot to trot (away) as he played a game of threatening to leave if the dealer didn’t buy the card he was offering him at such a great bargain. The interaction was upbeat, but insistent and accented by a lot of posturing.
He kept teasing the same result, “This is your last chance to buy this great card. Once I walk away, you’ll regret it and never see me again.”

From the cheap seats, I was intrigued watching it play out. If the hustling ragamuffin had a smudge of dirt on his face, I would’ve sworn I was in a production of ‘Oliver Twist,’ so let me attempt to translate his
disappointment with the dealer’s refusal to buy his card into the musings of Charles Dickens:

“Good sir, I daresay thou art failing to grasp the merit of my offer to part with this ballplayer for such a trifling of farthings. Thou protest too heartily to my asketh price, which would make me suffer a loss whilst fortune smiles in your favor alone.
Alas, I shall skedaddle (okay, that word’s mine, not Chuck’s) to seek a more suitable fellow who properly values my endeavors to greatly enhance his finances. I bid thee farewell, and thou shalt behold my countenance nevermore.”



Attachment 673550

4. Renaissance Art Humor
While shooting the breeze with a dealer, he asked if I was interested in seeing anything.

Not wanting to miss an opportunity, I told him, “Don’t take this personally, but I came up with what I hope is a funny insult to get laughs. Is it alright if I try it out on you?”

Hiding a grimace, he encouraged me to proceed.

Thus, in my best Rodney Dangerfield delivery, I hit him with, “Your prices are so obscene, you should put a fig leaf over your price stickers!” (Hey-oooooh!!!!)

Unfortunately, my top-shelf humor didn’t elicit the big guffaw it rightfully deserved, but sticking to the theme of the gag, his reaction was one of sheer modesty.



Speaking of no respect...


Attachment 673551

5. Easy Snyder
This was a first. I rolled into a table and kept finding more and more duplicate 1959 high numbers staring back at me. The box of toploaders continued surrendering up Gene Snyders, Howie Nunns and multitudes of other players,
which was so wildly unexpected that I took a picture after only venturing a part way through it. Lord knows how many more doubles were waiting to be uncovered.

I have never before seen such an abundance of high number riches from that particular year...but it made me wonder, how come there’s no love for 1959 highs???

Whereas collectors go bananas not only chasing the stars, but also the ‘regular’ high number players from the 1961, 1966, 1967, 1972 (and other) sets, do you know anyone who vigorously goes after 1959 high series cards? I sure don’t.

The focus, of course, is on the epic Bob Gibson rookie, the next number on the checklist, #515 Harmon Killebrew, and the All-Star greats garner the requisite attention, but what about the lackluster players who were marooned on last series island?
Unlike high number scrubs from other years, they fly so far under the radar that they’re completely disregarded. As a collector, it’s depressing that they aren’t held in higher esteem.

Don’t want to get too New-Agey here, but you know how after your girl screams like hell at you for days on end, you decide to show some kindness and finally apologize for sending naked pictures of her to your softball buddies?
Like that, sometimes you have to go out of your way to offer a little compassion. So next time you spot an oft-ignored 1959 high number at a show, pick it up, hold the card close to your heart and let him know he’s appreciated.



Attachment 673552

6. You Gotta Better Nitpick Your Battles
During my time at that table, I witnessed a spirited buyer pushing the weak points of an SGC-graded 1959 Ernie Banks in an attempt to get the price lowered, but the fact the card was already wearing a number in a slab seemed to escape him.

As he repeatedly stressed the soft corners and the not-so-great centering, he wanted a big price drop, but the dealer remained unmoved. However, after finally having enough,
he (politely) countered with, “Yes, what you’re saying is probably true...and that’s why it is ‘only’ (he let the word hang in the air for an eternity) an SGC 5. If it had better
corners, it would’ve gotten a higher grade and been more expensive. It’s a five priced as a five. Why do you act like I’m trying to get five money for a three or four??”

No reaction.

“The points you make would work if the Banks was ungraded (admittedly, he used the word “raw,” but I abhor that silly descriptor). If the price was too high for what grade it MIGHT get, then I’d consider easing up a bit, but they called this one a five, so a five it is.”

The odd thing is, the buyer (he didn’t end up buying it) never said anything about the grade number itself, like perhaps, “Sure, it’s a five, but it’s a weak five.” Something that could’ve possibly made his case for a price reduction more palatable.



Attachment 673553

7. For my next trick, I’ll make your money disappear.
Placing a low-grade, but very expensive 1953 Topps Satchell (sic) Paige back down, a guy was leaving a table with a demure and appreciative, “Thanks anyway.”

Waiting until it was clear, the dealer gleefully turned to his table partner and said, “Toldja he was gonna be a ‘no’!”

Motioning to the bunch of us there, the other fellow announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, I present his majesty, ‘Read the Wallet Guy.’ Never gets it wrong!”

I asked, “Read the wallet guy??”

“When someone is negotiating with us, right from the start he’ll know exactly whether or not the guy will bite and lay out the money when we cut the price down.
It’s an innate gift. He’ll give me a thumbs up or thumbs down, and I swear to Jesus, he’s right every time.”

I asked, “Okay, so I’m safe? It only comes into play when a negotiation is taking place.”

“Correct.”

“Couldn’t he basically always guarantee a sale will happen if he simply lowers the price to match the comps everyone is looking at? That’s an easy out, no?”

With mock indignation, “He NEVER cheats.”

When I asked what happens when the card is just priced so high that it doesn’t matter if the guy can afford it or not, it’s just a bad deal, he replied, “Well, I didn’t say it was a perfect system.”

That made me laugh.

Turning to the ‘wallet whisperer,’ I wondered, “Okay, am I going to buy something?”

He thought for a second and offered a smiling and decisive, “Nope.”

I said, “Too bad. That’s the right answer, but it’s the WRONG answer. You should’ve said “yes,” and dared me to prove you wrong by NOT buying something while everyone’s watching.
That pressure may have swayed me, so you just cost yourself some coin!!”

That made HIM laugh.


End of Part I...

My apologies, but now you're stuck reading Part II...



Attachment 673573

8. Baptism By Freebie
A fun and engaging vintage dealer had been excommunicated to the modern area, but was making the most of it by chatting away with everyone about everything. He was fondly giving out free 1970s cards to young showgoers and entertaining them
with stories about the players. I kidded him that he sounded like a cardboard evangelist sermonizing the youth about the sainted ballplayers from our generation (I mean, if you think players like Sixto Lezcano should be canonized).

Chuckling while awkwardly making the sign of the cross, he pretended to shield his words from the father he was busy with, and said, “I’m not trying to save souls, just trying to create revenue streams.
If ‘pops’ here is okay with his son leaving the modern sect and converting to vintage, I want him buying the old stuff from ME!”

Looking to get a hook into that dad and make a sale, his ‘always be closing’ mind prompted him to do something nice for the guy’s kid. So, delicately gifting the boy a 1977 Mark Fidrych All Star card like it was a sacred relic to be worshipped, he said,
“You’re ten years old? This came out way more than a half century before you were even born. Whooooa!!!”

(Wait...did they NOT teach math at the seminary, preacher man??!!)

That exciting (but miscalculated) revelation caused the child’s eyes to pop so far out of his head they left cornea imprints in the wall!!

Quickly segueing into an amusing bio of the celebrated pitcher, the ‘pastor’ got the kid giggling when he crouched real low and mimicked the classic patting down of the dirt around the mound.
“They called him ‘The Bird.’”

The kid disciple wondered aloud, “The bird??”

“Yeah, because he treated the mound like it was his nest. Made sure everything was neat and tidy.”

‘Pops’ remarked, “He should’ve taught my son how to clean his room. Ha ha!”

My audible groan at the awful dad ‘humor’ told me it was time for this sinner to leave the revival tent and seek my salvation elsewhere.

Repentance:
Misleading your fellow man about a nickname’s origin is a lesser sin, but a sin nonetheless. Since we all know Fidrych’s moniker came from his resemblance to the gangly, flightless bird on Sesame Street, a penance is prescribed.
To match ‘The Bird’s’ uniform number, Padre, you’re tasked with giving away twenty more 1977 Topps cards for free to the faithful.



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9. Numerals Belong on Slabs, Not Shirts

Part I: Crunching the (lack of) Numbers
This was a strange realization. Scanning the entirety of the floor, I couldn’t see a single person donning the digits of his favorite player.

Spotting numbered shirts should be as easy as finding lost Taco Bell hot sauce packets in the abyss between your car seats, and it’s fun seeing (okay, judging) the various numerals being championed.
You can offer a respectful nod of appreciation to some people, while passively snickering at those whose ‘heroes’ you find loathsome, but there seems to be a dearth of numbered apparel at local shows nowadays.

Perhaps it’s simply due to the malaise of attending the same show you’ve been to a thousand times. There’s no thrill in dressing in your best numeric finery if you’re NOT heading to a major event like The National, right? I mean, if you’re going to the prom,
you put on a snazzy tux, but if you’re once again hitting your buddy’s house to chug down a kiddie pool’s worth of cheap beer, you’ll just throw on whatever “Frankie Says Relax” or “FBI - Female Body Inspector” t-shirt is lying around and head out the door.

Couple that with the growing quantities of young people attending shows now and we may have the overall answer. Since they seem to be so interested in Pokémon and other things more or less falling under the trading card game umbrella,
they have no skin in the sports game. Their fandom is reflected in the cartoony imagery on their t-shirts, and not by wearing silly ballplayer numbers on their backs.



Attachment 673575

Part II: 17andMe
One time, I DID spot a delicious number in the crowd!

A father and son were outfitted in Buffalo Bills gear, with the younger of the pair sporting a two sizes too large Josh Allen jersey.
(Being from a big family, I know that reality well. His folks bought it for him to grow into, so it’d still ‘fit’ for a couple of years before they’d have to shell out money for a new one.)

Mr. Flame, meet Mr. Moth. I flew right up to them lickety-split (don’t think I’ve ever used that term before) and pointed to my Bills hat with an ebullient,
“Hey, nice to see you! We’re alone out here in the Forty Niners desert, we Bills fans...(and then sort of an aside) wait, is it “we” or “us” Bills fans??”

He cheerfully matched my enthusiasm, “Nice to see another refugee...ha ha!! I’m from the heart of Bills country and got transferred out here a long time ago now.”

We yammered for a bit, and I asked, “So you carried your Buffalo love with you, but how’d he (his son) get on board? His buddies must all be Niners or Raiders guys, right? How do you stop him from straying to the dark side?”

He smiled, “I’m not going to lie, if there ever came a day when he asked me to hang a 49ers poster on his wall, I don’t think I could go on...my life would be over. But my DNA - the Bills gene - is dominant!

“He grew up sitting next to me Sunday mornings (1PM eastern games start at 10AM here, which is nice) as I yelled at the TV (God, we/us Bills fans know all about that!!) and it became our ‘thing.’
He was born on the Bills train and never got off. He loves them.”

(There was a huge amount of pride in his voice. Did he just dab a tear?)

“That’s gotta be tough. Must be a lot of football peer pressure from his pals?”

He said, “I don’t think that’s the case anymore, you can ask him (his son wanted nothing to do with we/us grown-ups). With TV or streaming packages, you can watch and be fans of whatever team you want no matter where they play.
Not like when I was young and it was just local teams and a random match-up for the late game...and Howard Cosell on Mondays, of course.”

A smile came to my face with the Cosell mention, so it was a fine time to wish him luck and take my leave.

Depressing Postscript:
A lot of our chat centered around the looming playoff game between our beloved Bills and the dreaded Chiefs...and we all know how that turned out. My TV screen is still spattered with the dried spittle from my screaming.


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Epilogue:
We did VERY MUCH AGREE that one of the most disgusting things in the whole of humanity is how when you order Buffalo wings in California, they give you a ramekin (nice word there!) of ranch dressing.
Ranch, NOT blue cheese, the frickin’ heathens!!!!!!



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Part III: Guilt By Association
I hate steroids, I hate the steroids era, and I absolutely despise obvious steroids users.

Of the few jerseys that still make an appearance out here, local hero Willie Mays’ #24 has a virtual monopoly on the tops you see, but oddly enough,
the guy who juice-head enthusiasts consider the greatest ballplayer of all-time is routinely ignored right in his own backyard.

Let’s put it this way, if life was a bingo game and number 25 was called, no one would be grabbing their dauber (for some reason, my 100% New York accented, bingo-psychotic grandma pronounced it “dah-bah” like a silly, clichéd TV Bostonian),
because I can only recall a single time I ever saw someone wearing a #25 Bonds jersey. It was on an older, seemingly friendly gentleman beside me, so I felt compelled to ask, “The steroids don’t bother you??”

His confused reaction caused me to point, “Your Bonds jersey.”

Putting his hands out to stop the perceived ‘accusation’ dead in its tracks, he said, “Oh no, not that druggie! This is a (stressing the word hard) BOBBY Bonds jersey, his dad. Loved him as a kid and he’s still my favorite. The ONLY Bonds in my book.”

He got the aforementioned respectful nod of appreciation from me.



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10. In my day, I had to call my friend from a pay phone and ask him to look at his Beckett’s
It dawned on me that phone companies are missing a golden opportunity to gain subscribers.

They should highlight how great their 5G or 12G or 27G (hell if I know how many frickin’ G's we’re up to now) network performs in incredibly high-trafficked areas like card show floors. When you’re at one of these events, it’s a foregone conclusion that when you need it the most,
the Wi-Fi will inform you, “The past sales site you seek won’t load due to overcrowding, so you’re sh*t outta luck, douche-knuckle!! And FYI, your wife’s cheating on you!!”

It’s so frustrating! Therefore, if a provider could promote how their service is able to rise above the technical difficulties of a big, congested room and allow users to connect to websites, they would have a leg up on the competition.

Remember those old commercials asking, “Can you hear me now?”

It’s time to retool that idea:
Show a preteen in a Pokémon shirt forlornly staring at his phone inside of a bustling card show.

His look is one of hopelessness as his device is unable to provide him with the sales data he needs...but then a disembodied voice, seemingly sent from heaven, knowingly asks,
“Can you see the comps NOW?” and his eyes suddenly light up from the glow of the phone finally providing the info he was craving!!



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11. FOLO Follies

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Part I: Stop and Buy the Roses

Can we all acknowledge that there’s a special kind of growing craziness wrapped around the 1964 Topps Pete Rose?

A FOLO card is the first time someone is featured on his very own AFTER being a part of a multi-player rookie the year before. It’s a player’s ‘first solo’ card, and Pete has clearly ascended the 1960s FOLO throne.

(Editor’s note: No one bring up Gaylord Perry’s 1962 and 1963 cards, please. That situation is just bizarre.)

Rookies have a special glamor attached to them, but there is a significant drop off in relative value for a player’s next card. Case in point, think of how easy it is to obtain a
1968 Rod Carew or Tom Seaver card versus the nightmare of trying to land a 1967 rookie (not a great example, as those are high numbers, but still).

And just like how Topps took the tiny headshot from Rose’s rookie card and overinflated it to use on the 1964 offering, so has the value of his second-year card grown exponentially when compared to other 1960s ‘after-rookie’ cards.

This has led to a rule at card shows: Regardless of shape, if a dealer has a 1964 Rose, a dealer will prominently display his 1964 Rose with a psychotic sales price slapped on it.
To say this card continues to trend upwards is a wild understatement. Each one is priced so high above comps, you need the Hubble Telescope to see the figure!!

Since I can see the day coming when the 1964 card will end up costing more than his rookie (just kidding...or am I?), let me offer a simple rule of my own. If you see an affordable
1964 Topps #125 at a show (Ha! Like that ever happens!), be like a horny, starry-eyed woman on ‘The Bachelor’ and grab that frickin’ Rose quickly!!



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Part II: Of Gods and Catchers (and Therapists?)

Is there any doubt that Thurman Munson’s 1971 Topps is the most aesthetically pleasing second year FOLO card ever??
(We choose to ignore the pesky fact that despite Thurm’s gritty efforts, Chuck Dobson was actually safe at the plate.)

Although not in Cooperstown (yet?), Munson is a bonified HOFer to us New Yorkers, and his ‘71 card is a first ballot Cardboard Hall of Famer. It’s an incredibly magnificent split second in time captured forever,
and the All-Star Rookie trophy coupled with his autograph rising from the dust makes the image worthy of a spot in The Louvre...or at least prominently displayed on a wall inside a participating Applebee's.
(Damn!! I could really go for some sizzlin’ fajitas right now.)

I bring this up, because it was the source of a surprisingly cantankerous interaction...

The problem with the card is it’s an absolute bear to find one decently centered. The rare examples that DON’T have Dobson (pun intended) sliding off the side of the card have big premiums attached.

So, when I asked a dealer about his extreme pricing on a Munson centered as badly as the one pictured, he acted like I went into his fridge and scarfed down the leftover chicken parm sammy he was saving for a late night snack,
“What are you talking about?? My price is perfect!! It’s really hard to find centered! Do you even realize the prominence of a centered Munson??!! How hard it is to find one?? Do ya??!!”

Hoping his own absurdity would dawn on him, I gave him a moment, but he remained stone-faced, so I explained, “Sure, everyone knows that, but yours is completely OFF-CENTERED!”

The bitter and baffled expression on his face plainly told me he couldn’t understand where I was coming from. It practically snarled, “And...what exactly is your point??!!”

His excessive pricing was based on nice centering, but the card was centered awfully...and I’m the one who’s out of line here?? This guy’s a pink stick of gum short of a full pack!

Freud would’ve called it ‘cardboard transference.’ This patient was taking his extreme emotions for a well-centered card and delusionally applying them to a terribly centered one.
In the end, I guess I should’ve mirrored ole Sigmund and just walked away with, “You know, buddy, sometimes a card is just a card.”



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12. The Rising Tide Lifts All Sunk Costs
Trading vintage cards at a show can be a near-impossible feat. Even if you’re able to find a willing dealer, there’s always the unwritten rule that you must in effect ‘lose’ so he can ‘win’ the deal.
Sellers are there to make money, plus they’ll tell you their time and travel, table fees, etc., must also be factored into the equation.

A good strategy for wannabe traders is to bring along cards that you’d be willing to take a bit of a ‘loss’ on in a trade, because you originally got them for much less than what they’re worth now.
It opens more doors, because as you fall on your sword and allow the dealer to claim victory, you haven’t really been defeated in the swap.

It doesn’t mean you should just give stuff away, but if you can get close enough to what value you would settle for, then you’re in a good position to bring home something you want more than the card you’d be surrendering.

Let’s mathematicize it: If you recently bought a Mays for $300, then that card is STILL ‘worth’ that amount, so there’s no point in trading it for anything that costs less.
You could’ve just used the original $300 to buy the card you’re now getting in the trade AND had money left over.

But if you acquired that ‘Say Hey Kid’ a while back for $100, then you can allow yourself to wiggle more than one of those inflatable dancing tube guys outside of a car dealership to grab a card you want.



Which leads into this drawn out tale to end our time together...



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13. Body Language and the Single Man
(I have no idea why marital status came into play here, but the title seemed to work.)

With the trading principle outlined above in mind, I brought along a sweet card (that I got long before its value skyrocketed) to see what I could score for it.
This put me in a very strong negotiating position...or so I thought.

After asking a dealer with a luxurious spread of Topps beauties if he would perchance be interested in trading, he offered a reserved dismissal of, “Ummm...sometimes.”

Body language interpretation:
He clearly assumed I had the same junk everyone tries to push on him at every show. Cards that they not only completely overvalue, but which are slated
to become nothing but unsold dead weight sitting in his cases forevermore...so the answer is a big, fat no.
(That’s a lot to read from two words and implied punctuation, but it’s right on the money.)

However, when I instead broke out a PSA 7 1973 Topps #280 Al Kaline ‘With Bandage’ (it’ll always be Band-Aid to me) card, he reached for it and declared,
“Ooh, this is a nice one!!,” but then immediately caught himself. (Sort of a “Doh!!!” moment.)

(Editor’s note: I should point out for the non-Topps-era crowd, this variation is one of the most valuable cards from the 1970s.)

Body language interpretation:
If his face was an enthusiasm elevator, he hit the button for the penthouse, but immediately knew he made a mistake with his exuberance and tried to hit the ‘tamp it down’ button instead. The wheels in his head
began spinning to try to come up with a way to ‘correct’ his overenthusiasm and devise a scheme to get my Kaline for nothing. In other words, “How can I rip this guy off?” (No offense to any dealers...but you know it’s true.)

After a moment, he settled on what I assume he felt was the best route to take, “Look, it’s a nice card (yeah, buddy, I saw your reaction), but it’s not...ummm...OFFICIALLY the error card, because they didn’t put it here
on the...uhhh...inscription (I assume he meant ‘label’). Some people think it’s a hot card, but...ummm...at most I will trade you is a tenth of what you think it’s worth and that’s doing right by you. Sound good??”

Body language interpretation:
He was awkwardly fumbling his way through trying to convince me that the lack of two words, “With Bandage,” meant a 90% reduction in value?? What kind of crap math is that?
And see how he used “some people” to disassociate himself from the silly fools who find the card valuable? Ha! Nice attempt, sir.

I reacted with surprise, “That’s it? Just ten percent?! You’re kidding, right???”

“No, all that matters is what it says,” he told me as he tapped the slab, “and this one says it’s the...ummm...NORMAL Kaline, NOT the error, so I have to sell it as the regular card. I have no choice.”

No body language interpretation required:
Even supported by those wonderful harmonies, I didn’t need Glenn Frey to tell me about this guy’s lyin’ eyes. He was singing a lyrical ballad of bullsh*t.

Reaching out to induce him into handing my card back, I said, “You’re not saying it ISN’T the variation, right? It clearly is. PSA never listened to us when we wanted them to put it on the (I hit the word rather hard) ‘inscription.’”

Body language interpretation:
For someone claiming it’s worthless, he sure was holding the card close to his person. If he wasn’t interested, wouldn’t he automatically hand it back, since it does nothing for him?
He was grasping it tighter than how my grandma clutched her rosaries in the front pew on Sunday mornings.

“No, it’s the error, but I have to sell it as a regular ‘73 Kaline, because that’s what the graders say it is and...ummm...that’s all a buyer will pay for it. No bones about it.”

Body language interpretation:
His feigned earnestness was farcical. We all know that within minutes of landing this ‘worthless’ card, it would be spotlighted in the center of his display
with a Sharpie-written sign screaming “RARE ERROR!!!!” and a many-many-thousand-dollars price tag on it. No bones about it, my bony frickin’ ass!!!!

It was time to go on offense, so I said, “Okay, ten percent, right? Let me look through your cards and see what I’m interested in.”

Body language interpretation:
A glint of a smile flashed across his face and disappeared as he patted himself on the back for winning this, I guess, showdown.
But he should’ve been checking MY body language, the slick grin coming to my face. Silly man, you think you can play a game on me and I’m not going to play one back on you?

So after briefly perusing his slabs, I came back very positively with, “Okay, to me ‘Mr. Tiger’ is worth forty thousand bucks, so 10% of that...move the decimal...I believe is four grand, right? I can work with that.”

Instantly annoyed, he reacted, “No, no, no!! It’s not worth close to that amount!!” (This time his speaking wasn’t interrupted by hesitant, time-buying “ummms” and “uhhhs.”)

With my hands out to my sides in a look of “DOY!!,” I laughed and said, “Good, we agree!! Because that’s exactly what I was going to say about your silly ten percent offer.”


(A final note: Although this dramatized-for-effect retelling paints a contentious picture, the actual back and forth was much more ‘playfully interactive.’ Swear.)




Until next time, my fellow collectors grandma lovers!! Always remember, blue cheese (or ”bleu cheese” for the snobs) isn’t a topping to be ignored, people, it’s a way of life!!! :D

Super entertaining read Jolly. I appreciate your innate understanding of the motives of weasel-dealers and your willingness to call them out. You’re a true champion for the aging vintage collector who frequents these shows and witnesses the nonsense described in your writings. As far as the Bonds jersey goes, I once saw a guy wearing an Aaron Hernandez jersey at a Celtics game and this was long after Hernandez had been exposed as a murderer. I actually got a chuckle at it before admonishing myself for my lack of sensitivity.

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Always entertaining Jolly, thanks for posting.

Dammit, so many of the 'line breaks' look ridiculous, but when I try to fix them, it only worsens the problem. I guess whether or not the layout looks awkward is dependent on how wide your screen is, so there's not a lot I can do. Oh well.

(Yes, I realize I'm just talking to myself here. Time to go eat some wings as I hope for a Bills victory tomorrow.)

They look fine of a laptop and desktop...which seems to be a dying breed of internet interface.

Thanks for the thoughtful content.

Very entertaining, Elms. Great read, thanks for posting. Some of the pics are hilarious.

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