National Report:___

What Day Is It???

After a few days of this I tend to lose track. Today is Friday. Tomorrow is Saturday.

I got in a few more hours of sleep Thursday morning and went to the show feeling somewhat normal.

I started out the morning comparing notes with other collectors about our acquisitions at The Booth yesterday. All of the vintage guys hit it and all of us missed things that the others picked up: you can’t be expert at everything after all. Some of us simply miss things because of the speed at which we had to move.

I skipped breakfast, just peanuts, electrolytes and coffee midmorning. They had the taco in a barf bag Doritos thing at the show, but I chickened out and had the normal tacos instead for lunch. Not terrible.

Unlike yesterday, I did not have any most-favored-nation status to get me into the show early, so I was just a VIP badge bitch standing in the lobby with a thousand other losers.

Standing there I thought that will be interesting to see the surge from inside the crowd. I wondered if it will be as intense as a Green Day concert? The floor crowd at the show I went to in Pasadena literally carried my daughter and I forward 50 feet towards the stage before it settled down. Gonna have to watch my shins in this one; lots and lots of hard cases being swung by people with no conception of where their bodies are in space.

8:45 and they are opening the doors early again: no surprise since the line down the road was already a couple of blocks long as I walked over. And here goes the surge. Fortunately, it’s a lot of fat people in this crowd and they don’t move all that fast unless there’s a pizza at the other end of it.

One new phenomenon about these shows in the post Covid era is the number of people roaming around with highly customized very large containers of material: slab cases, customized packs, and so on. Another sign this has become a serious business rather than idiots in a church basement doing God knows what with old toys.

I’ll give you one guess where I went. Yup, The Booth. I had to retrace my steps yesterday and look at some of the boxes that I skipped. Good thing I did, too. I found two vintage signed snaps of one of my favorite players, Don Newcombe, as a Montreal Royal. Very pleased to add those to my collection. There were several early Japanese postcards that I passed up yesterday because I can’t read Japanese. I was so tired that I forgot that I could use Google Translate. I did that today and ended up with an outstanding bromide of HOFer Kaoru Betto. And bunch of other odds and ends that I missed yesterday including two H804-10 Corner Clef baseball trade cards. I found two other booths worth picking, a huge glop of crap piled in each without any semblance of order. Just the way I like it. Best item there, for me, was a signed card of comedian Jonathan Winters.

Here is my story about Winters: I had a Hollywood memorabilia business around 35 years ago and I used to set up at a movie show where a lot of C- and D-List celebrities would sign for pay or drop in and get some free adulation. Winters came to one and wanted a Chuck Jones-signed Wile E. Coyote sketch that I had for sale. I remarked on his identity, planning to get an autograph, and he denied he was Jonathan Winters. Steadfastly and vehemently. He was a true performance artist, and a little off too, and he would not break character no matter what I asked him. He then tried to negotiate a discount on the sketch. I said I would give Jonathan Winters a discount. He got a twinkle in his eye. He knew I’d cornered him. I could see he was thinking about it for a few seconds, but he didn’t want to give in and break character, so he didn’t get a discount and I didn’t get an autograph. I got one now!

The show is insanely big and the cash sloshing around is crazy. I sat down in the VIP lounge for a breather. This morbidly obese young man sat down across from me at the big roundtable, opened his case, and started counting out $65,000! Seriously, six bundles of Benjamins in bank wrappers and a loose stack that he was counting. “I had a big sale,” he said. Yeah, I can tell. As can anyone else in the space looking to rob someone. Never count your money in public. When I returned to the hotel to chill for an hour before dinner and write this, I saw two guys in the lobby dividing at least $30,000 in cash. Right in the lobby in plain view.

Someone told me that PSA was so overwhelmed with submissions that they had to shut down all further subs for on-site grading. I would not be surprised since there were people who spent hours in line to get in and then hours in line at PSA’s booth. Reminds me of Disneyland; stand in line for 45 minutes, have a five minute ride, repeat.

Prices…wow. I wish my cards were worth the marked prices I saw. I would liquidate. I did not see a single vintage Babe Ruth card under $1,000, no matter how beaten. Prices have risen so fast and so far that many dealers use the “K” instead of writing out the prices; must get tedious writing “,000” over and over. The few booths with good prices were swarmed with collectors and picked clean quickly. The ‘action’ is at the shiny sellers’ booths. Lots of interest, lots of money. What is also amazing is the trajectory of certain 1960s and 1970s iconic nonsports cards. I saw this starting last year, but it has reached really crazy numbers. 1966 Donruss Marvel and the various keys in 1966 Topps DC are through the roof, even in middle grades. The stuff I sold six months ago has doubled or more. It is just a boom. One dealer had an impressive array of 1960s and 1970s soccer at 4x the standard prices. Funniest one I saw was a 1958 Remington Pele signed matchbook cover from The Pele Collection with a long explanation of the Heritage sale of the piece at a very high figure. Too bad the most recent sale was only 15% of the sticker price.

More tomorrow.