Get Out Of My Room!

I’ve bitched a blue streak about trade nights and vest pocket dealers acting the fool at shows. Well, the promoter of the Lake Worth Sports Card and Collectibles Show in Florida finally took action. He posted a truly wonderful screed online, accusing the informal dealers of “fucking stealing” and nastily barring all customer-to-customer sales on threat of expulsion and being banned from the show. Public flogging was not discussed but I hear that it is under consideration for the spring show…

The issue is real. If you want shows to exist, direct competition with paid dealers from parasitic sellers cannot be allowed; the dealers who pay the lion's share of the show costs simply won't tolerate it. I spent approximately two grand to set up in Ontario for the Burbank Card Show: rent on my booth, business licenses, sales tax, fees for e-payments like Venmo, etc., and food and lodgings for four nights. If someone can just set up at no cost other than the admission ticket at a table in the snack bar or even sit down next to me and set up like a street peddler, I am subsidizing everyone who wants to sell their cards for free. I also get zero walk-in deals because the sellers go straight to retail; walk-in deals are often the bigger piece of my profit at a show than the actual sales. I've stopped doing shows mostly due to physical limitations but also because it makes no financial sense for me to incur the costs when I can sell for free at any show if I am so inclined.

It is more or less a given that the incredible money at stake in the hobby has blown all the breakers on show behavior. As an attendee, I've had people try to:

--squeeze in and front-run the exact row of cards I am going through

--squeeze in and go through the exact row but behind where I am

--try to take a box away from me while I am looking through it

As a dealer, I've seen people:

--use my table to rest their crap while they try to make a deal with someone

--offer all manner of counterfeits and fakes, from reprinted cards in tampered holders to Frankenstein Bell cellos

--unashamedly lie about their cards

--misstate my own reference books back to me (not knowing who I am)

--kids try all manner of scams to get me to give them a valuable card for a crappy one: the trade up challenge being the main one

--and of course deal all over the place in the showroom itself.

Not that any of this is new per se: greed has always been lurking just below the fun. In 1991 I am set up at a show when a collector standing at the division between my table and the one next to me asked for a common card. I had it and sold it to him for a few bucks. The dealer next to me--pig man in a muumuu (lardass in an Aloha shirt)--threatened to kick my ass for taking a sale away from him. Never mind that the guy didn't ask him for the card. He came over and said, "that was really uncool; you took my sale." He thought that because the guy happened to be looking at his case, he should have dibs on the customer. I disagreed. He then came behind my table, raised a porky fist and said, "I could bring out old cards and break you." Now, I had at least 25 years and a foot on him, so I stood up, towered over him and gave him one of those 'you talking to me?' looks and he scuttled back behind his table and STFU for the rest of the day.

While I welcome a show promoter doing something about what is a real problem at shows, I don’t want that Lake Worth hot head as the spokesman for the movement. We have a saying in the law biz: bad litigants make bad case law. The promoter’s bull in a China shop approach ain't it. Let’s try moderation and good manners all around for a starter. People setting up shop in the showroom without buying a table is never acceptable and should be banned. Period. Do it and security will kick you out, take your pass, and if you do it again, you are permanently banned from the show. A simple rule that can be stated up-front and readily enforced. I am all for that. No dealer should have to watch some jagoff set up a table in the concessions stand and compete with him. There is also no way that any promoter should allow people to set up and deal on the floor in the aisles of a showroom. Believe it or not, show aisle dimensions are dictated by the fire marshal and blocking them is dangerous, especially since so many of the fat-asses at shows (I can say that because I’m not just president of the Fat-Asses At Shows Club, I’m also a member) can barely move in an emergency even if the aisles are clear.

What people do outside the showroom is really not the promoter's concern unless it is creating an access issue or there are unsold tables. If tables are unsold, I would definitely bar all customer to customer selling anywhere in the venue. Buy a damn table. If the shows are sold out, though, it seems to me that the promoter is going after a fly with a bazooka. You can't have people clogging the hallways, period. Nevermind safety concerns, it is not pleasant for the other attendees trying to move around the show venue. Trying to go to shows several months ago with a cane and a cast was really difficult, especially with people plopped all over the lobby floor dealing. Just tell them to get off the floor and take the deal outside or to the sitting areas in the lobby so they don’t inconvenience other show-goers.

People are going to BST at shows; the trick is to isolate it to a location where it will not really impact the show itself. A trade night is not the answer; as I've said before, I think trade nights should be age-gated to return them to the kids they were intended for in the first place. Otherwise, you are just running an ancillary card show as an afterparty with free set-up for the dealers there and we have the same issues for the paid dealers.

The National was an interesting experiment in channeling the Buy-Sell-Trade action. In Chicago, there were hundreds of people BST'ing in the VIP lounge at any given time. It was tacitly encouraged; there were 'trading zones' for various types of cards. It had zero impact on the show itself from both a crowd control and a sales standpoint. There was a bit of enforcement at the National. One guy I spoke to said that a security guard at the convention center tried to stop him from making a deal in the hallway near the VIP entry on Wednesday. The security guard backed off when he saw that the guy had a dealer badge. That was the only incident I heard about where security tried to cut off a deal off the show floor. I did not see much informal dealing inside the main showroom. I suspect that is because there were plenty of areas off the floor to make a deal, the place was packed, and the floor in the hall looked gross. I don’t think too many attendees had the nerve to risk catching the bacterial plague of the day by sitting on that nasty-ass floor. Of course, I would bet that at least 60% of them could not get down to the floor and get back up again without the fire department being called, so that helped deter misbehavior too.