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...
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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.) 
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.”
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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.)
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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.
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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.”
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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????
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?”
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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...
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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!!!! 