Ontario And Bust

I worked the four-day Ontario California show sponsored by Burbank Sportscards.  I would have posted daily, but this show is unusually long and I was just wiped at the end of the day.  Most shows run from mid-morning to 5:00 or 6:00.  The Burbank show runs until 7:00 on Friday and Saturday and opens at 9:00 on Sunday for VIPs. That extra hour or two just wasted me every day. 

Ontario is about 50 miles east of Los Angeles, a few miles over the county line into San Bernardino.  That’s 50 miles as the crow flies but at least 1.5 hours as the car drives except at the most extreme parts of the night or off hours on weekends.  No way could I commute that.  The good news is that there are several hotels right beside and around the convention center, which is more than we can say for the IX Center in Cleveland where this summer’s National will be held.  I chose the Doubletree because I am in Hilton’s honors program, and I find that Hilton runs the tightest, cleanest properties.  One of the benefits of the customer loyalty program is being able to check in via the app and get a digital key.  Guess what doesn’t work at the Hilton Doubletree in Ontario?  Yep. The app. All manual check-in at 3:00.  Which was the exact time that we were all kicked out of the convention center set-up for one hour what they called a security re-set.  Guess where everyone went?  Yup, to check in at their hotels.  Once I found out there was no digital key, I figured on a mad dash for registration at 3:00, so I left the convention center at 2:30.  I was fourth in line to register (two clerks) and got to the front around 15 minutes after I got there.  By the time I finished my check-in, the line had to be 30 people deep and growing.  Keep the damn cookie, Doubletree, and upgrade your software. 

That said, the hotel was good.  The room was spacious, scrupulously clean and updated, and they had a microwave and fridge in the room.  I was able to go to a grocery store just up the road and stock the fridge with some decent food so most of my meals were covered in-house, cheaper and better than eating out.  Internet was free, too.  Still banged us for $17 a night to park. 

The facility is nice, and the Burbank Card Show staff does a great job every time.  They really pay attention.  Rob (the store owner) and Donald were all over the floor all day every day.  This is my third time doing their shows and I come away impressed every time with how they run it.  This is hundreds of tables and vendors and there is a well-integrated website with an interactive map of the floor, ample staffing, 8’ tables with ample back-up space and wide aisles, and they always get the good chairs (with the thick cushion, though I bring my own butt pad, a lesson learned the hard way suffering with a stiff back and crappy fold-up chairs at shows).  The facility is modern and well-run, for the most part (the bathroom maintenance is lacking, though; you’re gonna want to drop that deuce before you get there).  

There were some bureaucratic snafus.  It started Friday morning.  I show up an hour before the show opens to VIPs, as indicated in the information I was given, and find a massive line…of dealers.  Some idiot in the convention center administration decided to force every dealer through the single metal detector they have.  After about ten minutes of that, the show staff was finally able to intervene and get the dealers in.  Several customers complained that there were concrete floors and no chairs in the aisles.  That needs to be addressed. 

One character I sold a card to I have to share with you. This guy was a walking “rob me” sign.  Picture a man in a brand-new Super Bowl souvenir jacket wearing a gold and diamond Rolex, other very expensive looking jewelry, and flashing a bankroll of hundreds that had to be at least $10,000.  I didn’t even want to stand next to him; I was afraid of getting caught in the crossfire when he gets mugged.

Everyone has been asking about two things: how were sales and how is the vendor mix?  Let’s start with the latter. It is apparent that the vintage SoCal community is starting to come out to shows again, which is great for the collecting community but not so much for me.  At the first Burbank show (the one in Burbank), I was just about the only one there with items made before 2000 and I did great.  At Anaheim, I still had one of the better mixes of vintage and did great.  In Ontario, I saw several tables with vintage selections similar to mine.  Several of them were dealers who are working the circuit again because I saw them at Pasadena, Woodland Hills, and Burbank.  Still not much prewar, though.  Anyone with a significant prewar inventory and reasonable prices would be unique at that show. 

As far as sales go, I think we are in a correction phase of the market but just the first part.  Attendance and especially activity have been down the last two shows I’ve worked.  My sales were down about 20% over prior year at the last two shows I’ve worked, and that seems to be one of the better outcomes.  Lucky for me that I deal in rare and obscure as much as possible, so I carry, and my base of repeat customers loads up on, things that they just cannot find elsewhere, difficult vintage sports cards, niche non-sports cards, and ephemera.  Several vintage dealers I spoke with said that their sales were so-so but they were there to buy.  That’s dealer-speak for “having a shitty show but maybe I can make a good buy.” 

Sunday was a horror show and it wasn’t the Stroller People or a big sports event that kept people away.  I think it is because the bigger spenders get in on preview nights and early in the show, and the last day is when the casual attendees come.  I don’t have a survey to back that, I just know that my sales were abysmal.  All I sold was nickel and dime stuff.  I decided to close early.  Easier said than done.  The loading dock was locked down until the end of the show on Sunday.  I had to haul my stuff out the front door and around the building because the dock was closed.  Why are the gates locked right up until the close of the show?  Is the goal to force hundreds of tired, hangry vendors into a Thunderdome-style battle for the fifty or so parking spots in the dock? If the show is slow, lots of us want to get out of there a few hours early and that would benefit the flow of traffic in the load-out so you’d think they would consider that.

A few collectors who read my stuff asked at the show whether we have seen an end to falling prices.  I don’t think we’ve seen a bottom yet.  I’m starting to see the same inventory at each show, primarily postwar slabbed cards in the 5-6-7 range.  Call me crazy, but if you are hauling slabs around show after show with no sales, you are running a card display, not a card business.  Shows are the ultimate in efficient market feedback loops: if your stuff is mainstream and isn’t selling, you are overpriced, period.  Once those dealers face reality and start repricing, we will be near bottoming out.  I try to read the tea leaves in advance, so I took a loss on a card that I simply overpaid for during the pandemic; I don’t hold zombie investments, I get out and move along. 

Now, before you get your knickers in a twist about the last paragraph, yes, I am aware that marquee cards seem to set new records every show.  So does the crème de la crème in every collectible field.  Those items are not the same market as the ‘meat and potatoes’ markets where 99.9% of all items are being bought and sold.  When I comment on prices, I am talking about the latter. 

Let’s talk buyers.  I also see two kinds of vintage buyers and you can tell them apart instantly.  First is the longer-term collector. That guy has a discrete want list and knows the difference between a Bell Brand and a Taco Bell.  Then there is the newbie.  There is growing customer demand for vintage among the newbs, but it hasn’t quite sunk in that old cards and new cards are distant cousins at best, and that what works tactically for buying 2023 Panini Chronicle doesn’t work for buying a T200.  Some of the new vintage collectors I spoke with were still in that “I am smarter than these old farts and I can steal a deal” phase of collecting, with little understanding of how rare some of these cards are and how unnecessary it is to cut prices to make sales.  I got lots of stupidly low offers on tough items.  No, I am not selling you a tough vintage $1,000 card for $400; I don’t have to because I know I will get my price.  The other thing I get from vintage newbs are the “let’s see how stupid this guy is” offers to sell.  One guy offered me a card with three examples on eBay right now for $1,100-$1,300.  He wanted $2,000 but said he might come down as low as $1,600.  Nope.  Another guy was wheeling around the show for at least three days with a Zion box full of slabbed vintage, trying to convince dealers to pay full retail for them.  I don’t think he sold one.  I was also approached about some vintage West Coast regionals, but the seller wanted near mint prices for poor to good condition cards.

So what is hot right now in vintage at the shows I’ve worked lately?

--Oddball, regional and non-mainstream vintage baseball cards.  When the right buyer comes along, they move. 

--Vintage non-sports cards, especially real photo postcards.  I sold a lot of offbeat real photo postcards.  I simply cannot keep my small stock of cabinets and RPPCs of people in Western attire; they sell out every show.  So do unusual trade cards, rock (especially punk) memorabilia, and cult movie stuff.

--Photos and premiums.

--Publications, with this proviso: there are a growing number of CGC pirates looking for newsstand editions (no mailing labels) of old sports magazines that they can send into CGC.  There is a growing awareness that the value of CGC-slabbed magazines is on an upward trajectory and that newsstand editions sell for a multiple of their mailed subscription counterparts.  Those buyers have yet to understand that subscription mags are the vast majority of the market and there is money to be made with them, just not as much.  You don’t have to hit a home run every at-bat. 

My next show is in May in Pasadena and I am glad to have a few months to regroup and consider how to best approach the changing environment and market.  I’ll keep you posted.