2025 National: a Buyer's or Seller's National?
 

Regional card show attendance (at least in Socal where I live) seems to be very robust in 2025. Couple months back, at a new promoter's show in Inglewood I showed up without buying early bird tickets and found a 3 hour line and was turned away once they reached capacity. I got the sense there were still very active buyers for modern and pokemon. And vintage where you could find it.

What do you think this year's Chicago National looks like? Will there be more buyer's or sellers?

Is it ever in the buyer's favor? Personally, only for really bottom of the barrel stuff or the odd needle in a haystack. With anything that's in demand and familiar to the seller, it's never been a "buyer's National". Again, just my personal, yet unwavering experience.

Just like the local and regional shows, most of the attendees nowadays going to the National are looking for the shiny stuff.

Yes. I predict that most tables will be sagging with tonnage of shiny crap and game cards, and a fortune will change hands. Among the vintage minority, people with great or unique stuff are going to kill; people with commodity type stuff (mainstream slabs) are going to do just fine too. They will get a ton of YOLO action from collectors who traveled a long way to be there and are not going home empty-handed. I am going with the expectation of finding nothing great but armed with a big want list for filling out and upgrading my sets in person. If I can close out a few sets and flesh out some others, great.

As far as the mechanics of attending a show goes, the 1991 Anaheim National is the new normal unless you buy a VIP admission in advance and get there early. VIP means earlier in line, not necessarily earlier into the show. Walk-up and general admission means you may not get in for hours. Or at all.

I think that for the younger collectors, shows have become cultural phenomena rather than simply card shows. For example, it used to be that the announcements were an annoyance. Now they are MC-ing, exhorting the crowd to give more energy. They run music all day and contests. What we think of as noise and distraction, they find entertaining. It seemed to me that this show had more of a vibe, similar to Fanatics Fest, of making the scene itself the event rather than the acquisition of actual material on sale inside. Even without purchasing items, I believe most of the (younger) people there were actually having a lot of fun just being at the event. Since many of these attendees are obviously Gen Z members and they generally prize experience over stuff, being there may be what it’s all about. Personally, I don’t see it, but maybe I’m just getting too fucking old for this.

FWIW, you did not miss a thing at the Los Angeles Card Show. 250 tables meant a handful with older cards, mostly overpriced slabs of mainstream postwar issues. I bought just two minor cards for my PC, a Dale Earnhardt Sr. PSA slabbed rookie card and a Jacques Villeneuve F1 relic card.

Come on, you painter
You piper, you vintage collector, and (start chasing the) shine...

There will be plenty of vintage card and memorabilia deals at the National especially if looking for raw cards.

Of course, graded cards have a fairly consistent value range as reflected in VCP so there will likely be no great bargains on graded cards. You will not find any graded T206 Cobbs for less than market value so if that is what you expect to find you will be disappointed.

However, most vintage dealers do well at the National because they are there to sell but it is true that the shiny cards will occupy a lot of the space and a high % of the customers will be at those tables.

I recently went to a mall show near my home and was shocked to see the number of customers. It literally looked like the National and there were over a hundred tables so it was not a tiny show. There were probably 5% of the tables with vintage and the rest were all shiny with Pokemon probably taking 25% of the space.

It is pretty easy to walk by those tables and concentrate on searching for items you are interested in at the National as there are still plenty of vintage dealers to pick from.

Good luck in the search!!

So if I have General Admission and get there say 90 minutes before open, what type of wait should I expect?

If you have a ticket, you will not have to wait that long. A fairly high % will have the VIP passes and they get in 30 minutes before the show opens at 10:00.

If you have to purchase the ticket at the show, then that may be a different story.

Well, if that is how it is, you can count me out ever going. I have made it this far missing out on all the "fun".

I was at the 2023 National and at Chantilly last year. Those are my only data points to go by but I think the answer is "it depends".

At the 2023 National, there was shiny modern but I found lots of vintage cards and memorabilia.

As a set builder, I think it's great. I get lots of commons available in one place to fill my want lists. Dealers were willing to deal if I bundled a lot together.

For Stars and HoFers, I got a couple of deals (in raw) and paid retail for a few. But I got the benefit of being able to inspect each card in person and I without the worry about unseen wrinkles from an online listing.

I'm going again this year so I hope I find this still holds true.

"Your worst day at a card show is better than your best day at work." Robert Silverman [Vintageball]

I will have at least one Pokémon card for sale at my table!

I am still waiting for my first "Buyer's National". Not exactly the place for "bargains" but perhaps the 15th time will be the charm!

I've found some bargains, but as noted, it was mainly lower-end material where the seller had unwittingly ascribed an even lesser value to it!

I do recall one National where a longtime collector managed to gain table space to sell off most of his collection. He was fun to deal with and was happy to let things go at fair prices, especially if he felt you were the right new caretaker of the pieces in question! Talk about an anomalous, positive experience! That only happened once, and likely never again.

I don't get to walk around much but I swear I see a fun selection of things at reasonable prices every year. If you want the hottest thing, or high grade HOF yeah probably not the best bet, but plenty of cool items at good, even bargain, prices.

A man walks into a bar and haggles with the bartender over the price of his favorite beverage, he then walks out with no drink and totally dissatisfied….yeah, not happening ;)

As primarily a vintage memorabilia collector at this point, I have not see very much of interest at past nationals. Photos, tickets, etc. largely priced somewhere between stupid and delusional.

Autographs as well.

The 2009 show was a buyer's show. Or as close to it as you are ever going to see. I hope; I am 110% happy to not have another financial crisis like that ever again.

Steve, I remain the eternal optimist. If I find one special item for my PC at a show, it is a great day. Regardless, the hunt itself sure beats the snot out of working, doing chores, etc.

This is an actual National find:

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...kie%20RPPC.jpg

So true.

PS where is Rob these days?

That’s cool. Nice Jackie.

It just seems that most dealers specialize in cards and if they do have memorabilia don’t recall have a clue how to price it. Or it’s all aspirational. Nothing wrong with that if you find the right buyer who will cover your travel expenses in one fell swoop.

He's concentrating on building his whatnot business as "vintageball". He streams Thursday evenings.