Pasadena Day 2

Attack of the Stroller People

The word for the day is “slow”. On Day 1 by the 10:00 VIP opening, the line for the show was out the door of the convention center and a full block down Green Street to Marengo and just around the corner. Sunday, it was just barely out the door of the building. The crowd mix was all wrong, too: the Stroller People arrived. There were dozens of them.

Stroller People are death. I sold six bucks worth of cards the first hour and a half during Stroller Time. My table is a picker’s space. Buyers need time to go through the boxes. Stroller People measure their time in short bursts between toddler needs and demands. If I am lucky a Stroller Dad (yeah I will be sexist because the active collectors are basically men) has five minutes to check my table. Sure as hell at the five minute mark the airhorn blows, er the child shrieks, and off he goes. And if there is a Stroller Mom behind him watching, Stroller Dad ain’t spending a dime regardless. He can’t. She let him come to the show for an hour but that’s it. He just flips through the cards perfunctorily, looking over his shoulder at his banker, er, wife, with the look of defeat in his eyes, then walks away empty-handed.

Stroller People, here is a suggestion: control your spawn. One kid, had to be about two, was like a song stuck on autoplay, except it was a high-pitched screech that would have signaled “sabertooth tiger” to early man but now is just a tantrum. If the child goes off, take it outside and let it run around. Don’t stay in the show subjecting us all to a toddler aria. I hate opera.

The stroller brigade left for the park by about 11:30 but it still was really slow. I would have closed up and walked the show looking for buys except that I had a buyer coming around noon to go through another box of cards I’d brought. He didn’t show up on time but did eventually and was the bulk of my sales that day.

I had my only two laydowns on Sunday but they were both of the liar variety: the guy who claims he doesn’t know what his items are worth and is trolling for an ignorantly high offer. The first had a small box of vg-ex 1970s stars. Big names but ‘meh’ condition. I offered him what I could pay and he walked. Clearly trolling for an ignorant dealer who would overrate the condition. Sorry, dude, a Nolan Ryan card that is $800 in PSA 8 is still worth ten bucks in raw vg condition. The second was comic books. As an aside, the show was a combo of pop culture stuff, comics and cards, and I am not sure the blend works exactly. The Venn diagram of card collectors, comic book collectors, and Disney/Sci-Fi collectors has a very small overlap, so the size of the crowd was misleading since a good percentage of them were from other hobbies. Anyway, I used to collect comics so I am well acquainted with Silver Age Marvel issues, and this guy had a few good ones in there. Most were anthology #1s or failed characters’ #1s. Interesting but limited. The best books were Star Wars #1, Nick Fury Agent of Shield #1, and Howard The Duck #1. Again, he doesn’t know what he wants, so I make an offer and then he starts telling me what they are worth. Ugh. Go away.

If you have never been to a large show on the last day at closing time, try it. Around 3:30 is Vulture Time. The dealers descend on each other and try to pick off deals before closing. One dealer came over and asked for Star Wars cards. He was wearing a Darth Vader Christmas sweater. Bought out my entire inventory. Another one bought what was left of my pin-ups; the ladies did well at the show, sold them out over two days. A third bought a few Koufax photos. The kids are hilarious during Vulture Time. One dynamic duo was hitting all of the Pokemon dealers trying to wheedle out a last minute deal, shamelessly promoting the cards they wanted to trade. Reminded me of me fifty years before. Or this kid who asked me once “what can I do to put you into this card today?”

Load-out was kind of nuts because there was an arts and crafts fair leaving at the same time and the traffic jam in the loading dock was bad. Took me an hour and a half from starting to box up my stuff to getting on the road.

Here is one law of nature that i will never understand: how can I sell a bunch of stuff, not buy more, and have a fuller car than when I started? It makes no sense but it happens every time.

Takeaways: There are definitely cracks in the market. I expected the show to be absolutely slammed, like Burbank in August 2022 or Anaheim 2023. It wasn’t. I did good business overall because lower-end cards always move if priced well, but the volume wasn’t up to previous shows. I had a steady trade on Saturday but a lot of downtime on Sunday. I think people are starting to feel the bite of high interest rates, at least when it comes to discretionary spending. I built a picker’s model because it is well-positioned regardless of the financial picture. I’ve seen several recessions and regardless of the situation, people are always at pickers tables. They can spend a few bucks on a card or two and not feel guilty about it. That said, people were definitely penny-pinching. I had multiple collectors hesitating to pull the trigger on relatively modest bundled sales and from chatting with them it was apparent that the hesitation was financial. Could also be timing. With the holidays approaching and credit card bills looming, we might have had a mistimed show the week before Black Friday. Regardless, the result on Sunday was not good. If not for my appointment with that one buyer and Vulture Time, it would have been a really crappy day.

The show did meet my expectations overall (my financial targets are realistic) and the location and infrastructure could not have been better, so I signed up for the January show. Worth $300 or so to see what happens. Does it build or does it become apparent that we are in an overall correction period? Tune in January 27-28 in Pasadena for an answer to this question. In the meantime, everyone enjoy your Thanksgiving. Back at you in December.