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08-09-2011 Props to my dealer-friend "other Tony" Gordon, who writes great re-caps of most every show he goes to. I was on the fence about setting up at The National this year, even though it was in Chicago (Rosemont – Donald E. Stephens Center), which is about as close as that show is going to be to my home base in Champaign. But a chance encounter with other Tony at the end of May at a show in Orland Park sealed the deal for me. Ordinarily, bigger shows are out of my realm. I'm a one-man operation, and the bigger shows require at least one other person's help just to watch your tables to make sure nothing is stolen. In addition to just bathroom breaks and having another set of eyes for security, having a second person allows me to roam around the room, network with other dealers, and try to make purchases. An ordinary "big" show will run Thursday or Friday through Sunday, and finding someone willing to take time off of their job to sit there and be bored watching your table isn't an easy task. The National isn’t just any show either; it’s the biggest, longest show of the year. It opens to dealers on Tuesday, but allows dealers to set up on Wednesday as well. So, asking someone if they would like to spend 5-6 days away from home, eat fast food, sit around 8 hours/day - most of the time with no company, and watch some baseball cards, isn't exactly a winning proposition, especially when the pay is so little. Granted, I am proud of my inventory, but I'm not about to drown in overhead trying to advertise and pump myself up as a big dealer. Monster Cards is a wily, yet efficient, venture. It isn’t bold, in-your-face company...yet. But back to how I ended up exhibiting. Other Tony, in passing at this show in May, mentioned he had a group of four dealers (himself included) that were setting up at The National, but that one of the dealers wasn’t responding to e-mails and seemed likely to back out. Well, it only took me a day or two of thinking about this conversation to finally realize this was a good opportunity for me. If I could take the place of that dealer, I would limit my expenses at The National and also allow me to set up with someone I trusted, and people I assumed he trusted, to watch over each other's inventories when we had to grab a bite, run to the little boy's room, or go on fantastic buying voyages. The combination of lower overhead and not having to trouble someone to come with was the perfect fit. Brilliant! And since this column is a recap of The National, I hope you’ll realize that the other dealer backed out and other Tony worked me in to the mix. From there, I didn't have a ton of time to ready myself for the show, but I did have a couple things done from a marketing perspective, namely having a banner and t-shirts made. Baby steps to get the business' name out there. From experience, I can tell you that not having a banner or anything other than business cards does not give your tables/booth a very professional appearance. That makes it all the harder to build customer confidence and make that crucial first contact/sale. I wasn't sure what to expect from this show. I did go into it with a sales goal. I also hadn't met two of the three dealers I would be setting up with. I wasn't sure if they would smell bad (they didn't), be rude or weird (they weren't), or if we would get along swimmingly enough to form a mariachi band (we didn't do this either, but I'm pretty sure that's just because no one brought the required instruments or caliente outfits). But the other dealers – Dave (from the area), and Scott (from Milwaukee) and Scott’s dad, Jim – were very friendly and we all got along well. Along with meeting these dealers, I was looking forward to catching up with other dealers I hadn't seen for a while, namely Joe Yanello of Joe's Vintage Sportscards. I started working for Joe in his shop in 1997, coming off my freshman year of college. Before then, I was a collector, and only a halfway knowledgeable one at that. Joe, who I often refer to as a "baseball card genius," transformed me into a dealer and taught me a ton about the baseball card business, and business in general. In addition to seeing Joe, I hoped to meet an idol of mine from the writing standpoint, Bill Simmons, who is overlord of two ESPN websites - www.sportsguy.net and www.grantland.com. I knew from his columns that he visited the past couple Nationals, so I hoped to run across him at this one. As for Bill Simmons, I'm not sure if he attended. I thought I saw a guy who looked like Bill Simmons – only about 15 years older - running around all hyper on Thursday with a 2- or 3-person entourage, but I never did get a positive ID. The voice sounded like his, but white hairs sprouting and thinner face didn't look like the profile pictures from his columns. Joe, of course, attended. I knew from the list of dealers on The National's website that he would be there, and fairly close to where I was setting up. I caught up with him after I finished setting up on Wednesday, and it was just like old times. I hung out at the shop, travelled all over the country, and went to shows with Joe for 5+ years. And although I blew off a lot of school in the process, I learned more important things about the business of sportscards. Joe isn't flashy either; he just knows cards, knows numbers, and knows how to spot trends in the market before they happen. I have him to thank for several things, including: many of the early hobby contacts I utilized when starting out on my own, security considerations while travelling, how to see the big picture, and the psychological aspect/art of deal-making. It was a great feeling catching up with him at various points over the weekend. We're both the same as we were before, just now with bigger inventories and more experience. In the triad of Learn, Do, Teach, the last two are up the individual themselves. All that is required for teaching is an audience. But it was definitely from Joe that I learned. This show was a marathon, filled with more sitting around and frustration than I anticipated, but with a handful of good moments mixed in as well. Wednesday was a good day to get a lay of the land. I explored about half of the room (yeah, it's that big) and scouted for deals. Selling is one thing, but the key to making money is buying at the right price. If you buy successfully, you will always have the opportunity to move cards on eBay or to other dealers and turn a profit. Uncovering good deals is a big part of attending any show. Then, to some extent, the cards sell themselves. I made a few smaller purchases around the room (Jim Brown RC BVG 6, Brooks Robinson RC BVG 5.5, Seaver RC PSA 4, 67 Shannon, 73 checklist #588, 58 Mantle, 61 Marichal RC PSA 7, Yaz rookie) and filed away some promising prospects to hit later on in the weekend. The show opened to the public at 4PM (closed at 8PM), and sales were slow. Despite what I just said about cards selling themselves, I do actually needs sales to happen to keep my cash flow up and keep new inventory rolling in. Throughout the weekend, sales were on the disappointing side. I’m really not sure what to credit that to, but I do need to work on figuring out what to do differently in the future to make these larger shows more profitable. I won't go into detail; those ideas I'll keep between myself and my marketing department for the time being. Thursday, the show was open to the public all day (10AM-6PM, with dealers able to enter at 8:30 and VIP customers able to enter at 9:30, for what must have been a glorious half-hour of buying opportunities). Despite selling a T205 Ed Walsh SGC 60, this was another slow day from both a buying and selling perspective. On Friday, Sarah showed up, and must have been my lucky charm. She sure was charming in her Monster Cards shirt! This was by a wide margin my biggest sales day. Blasting off from my table were a 1967 Seaver PSA 8, three different 1964 Topps Stand-Up PSA 8s (Killer, Spahn, and Drysdale), a couple ungraded Jordan rookies, and more miscellaneous graded cards of Spahn, Koufax, and Aaron. These are by no means difficult cards to sell, but still, generating the cash was nice. Bad news of the day is that other Tony had one of his binders of cards stolen sometime in the morning or early afternoon – 40s/early 50s Leaf, Bowman, and Topps. Unfortunately, the person(s) was never caught and Tony was out 1000s of dollars worth of cards. That was a real shame. It's difficult enough to take on the time commitment and expenses to set up at a show like that, but to then suffer such a setback is extra frustrating, to say the least. Not only that, but Scott, Dave and I felt like we let him down. Part of the benefit of setting up together was that we would all be able to police the tablemate's inventories while they were away, and we failed. This day I also met a gentleman by the (first) name of Jordan, who said he was from Miami, and was walking around the show with cards to sell. He had an impressive lot of 50s/60s stars, some graded, but all the big names: Ted Williams, Mantle, Mays, Aaron, Clemente, Berra, Maris...and really no lesser players than that. Over the course of the weekend, he sold groups of cards to me four or five different times. We'll just say that I ended up with decent amount of high-powered cards and he ended up with a decent number of my $100s. All of the cards I purchased from Jordan on Friday went into my box of buys to be sorted out and priced after I returned home...except one – a BVG 4.5 1955 Roberto Clemente rookie. This one I threw into my case, had a bite on it at the very end of the day (so late I had stacked up my cases and had to shuffle them around for several minutes before actually getting to the card), and ended up selling it first thing Saturday morning to the same dude who couldn’t pull the trigger the evening before. Buying was also up again on Friday as I explored the south half of the room and turned up some Red Hearts (from the only dealer in the room who was halfway reasonable on his prices on these somewhat rare cards), a T206 Jake Beckley SGC 60 (a card I can’t seem to keep in stock), and a Johnny Bench rookie (not a particularly tough card, but it's one I haven't had in a while for some reason). One more note from Friday about PSA. I picked up one card on Thursday that I wanted to have graded at the show – a dead-nuts beautiful ’66 Topps Grant Jackson rookie, #591. Tough card to find. I dropped it off Thursday and picked it up Friday only to find out they had awarded it…an 8. F@#$#^ing bulls@#%^! After the show, Sarah and I went over to Harry Caray's in Rosemont and had a nice dinner. Our server was new, but didn’t show his inexperience until the very end of the meal when he couldn't seem to bring us a bill that was figured correctly. Despite service that wasn't too bad, our waiter considered his service to be slow, and offered us a free dessert. Ironically, my sister had given us a coupon for a free dessert, so, darn the luck. The previous time I visited, I had the chocolate bourbon pecan pie, which was out of this world. However, that was no longer on the menu. Instead, we ended up settling for their Eli's cheesecake with strawberry compote (which must translate to "not many strawberries"). I liked it, but Sarah did not. Though this also doesn't relate to the show, I stayed at the Hyatt adjacent to the convention center. Starting Friday and lasting throughout the weekend, the Hyatt housed a "Festival of Beatles Fans" (the only thing I can figure is that “Beatlesfest” is trademarked), and all hotel staff wore tie-dyed shirts. Beatles music played nonstop. While I'm not a Beatles fan, it did make for a fun atmosphere. There was even a conference room on the lower level dedicated to Beatles Rock Band. I would have played drums, if I even knew which of the Beatles was the drummer...Ringo? And I'm not bothering to look it up on the internet. The weirdest band member is always the drummer, right? The show on Saturday was slow again, save for some more buys from Jordan. Toward the end of the day, we worked out three separate deals. There was also a gentleman who came up to the table with five PSA graded Mickey Mantle cards that I ended up buying. Graded Mantle cards – they peg the red on the "easy to sell" meter. At this point, I was on the verge of having a real stinker of a show. Nothing much ever happens on a Sunday of a big show. After four days, the great deals have all been snatched up, the serious buyers have already spent their money, and everyone is just plain tired. It is at this point that I really had to power myself through, mentally. I spend a lot of my time talking to people who aren't in the hobby...people who had a passing interest in cards in the late 80s and early 90s and who still have boxes of these overproduced cards hiding out in a closet collecting dust. When I tell people that I sell baseball cards (I don’t usually say "sportscards" because I've found it sounds too much like "sports cars," which then leads to minutes of a mundane conversation before getting back on track), after telling me how they used to collect cards, I'm usually asked, "Is there any money in that?" This is a business that's seen as child's play, not as a legitimate enterprise. I like this hobby and this business a lot, and often find myself in a position where I have to defend it. With that in mind, after four days of lackluster sales, I was getting exhausted and frustrated. Sarah was also there, and had only previously accompanied me to one-day shows where I'm busy all day. This slow trickle of customers and sales, and seeing me bored, was something new to her. I resolved to have a good time and make the best of it, and not to let this opportunity pass me by. Being at a card show is like being at a casino – there is opportunity all around. Only this is my realm; at a show, I am the house. After the show on Saturday, Sarah and I went to pick up some wonderful Gino's East pizza. No matter that I'd had Giordano's Wed/Thurs before she arrived – part of the fun of hitting up the Chicagoland area is snarfing down some awesome pizza. Sunday, I was on a mission. Halfway through the day, I packed up all of my loose boxes of cards, leaving on display only what was contained in my showcases, so I could walk around and leave my tablemates with an easier task from a security standpoint. Despite feeling slobby from eating fast food for four days, having achy feet from standing/walking on concrete, and being disappointed in general from a lack of sales, I went on an expedition to try to buy before the end of the show. Do. Carpe cards. In true Disney-ending fashion, I did end up finding a great deal. A dealer that I've worked with on a couple major transactions in the past had a run of sets he wanted to unload after a buyer backed out on him. The mental toll of a show like this is hard for most people to grasp. You've negotiated and hunted for deals for days, and with your own money, not your company's money. You're constantly thinking about your own inventory and how quickly you replace the card you're selling or how quickly you can sell a card you're buying. You think about the labor involved to price and sell a group of cards. You network and also fend off people making ridiculous offers who are nothing more than time-wasters. Despite all this, I pushed myself to stay sharp and not give up. I worked a masterful deal on what started out as nine complete sets from the 50s and 60s. I allowed another dealer to buy a set right in the middle of the deal, and I also kicked out a set that I could tell the seller was valuing for more than I was. All told, I ended up with Topps complete sets from 1960 (gorgeous), 1961, 1962, 1963 (another blazer), 1968, 1969, and 1970 for an amount that I won't disclose, but I will say was under five figures. Success. The dealer's son helped me bring this booty back to my table, to the stunned looks on my fellow dealers' faces. I had simultaneously salvaged the show, regained my mojo, and also taught the dealers around me a little bit about buying cards. It felt great. That was a fitting end to the show. After that buy, it was nearly time to pack up and go, and the rest is no more than a typical Hollywood prologue. Packing and moving out of the show went smoothly until my very last trip, when the sky opened up and poured down heavy rain. Luckily, I had loaded up all my cards and just had a banner and cooler left to pack. Moisture is the natural enemy of cards, so I made sure to secure all of them before the storm rolled through. Getting home through all that rain and slow traffic was a pain in the butt, but I managed. Making the transition back to a life where there isn't opportunity around every corner was also difficult, but I managed to do that as well. When I checked my e-mail that Sunday night, I saw that I had won a 1939 Play Ball Joe DiMaggio rookie in an auction. And in with my mail was a letter that reminded me how good a return from card-emersion can be. It was from a friend and included a picture of his 9-month old son. Perfect timing on receiving that. My friend and his wife are both optometrists, and I'm convinced they dress their son in goofy outfits and poses so that if he ever tries to take advantage of their wealth, they'll be able to counter him with some serious blackmail. Good times. Have fun! -T You can now find me all over the web:  Like Monster Cards on Facebook
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