Semi-Professionals
One of the things I’ve noticed in 40+ years of being a dealer is that so many people who try to make a living out of what is at its core a customer service business are just terrible at relating to other people. I am not saying everyone must be as fake-friendly as a used car salesman or a fraternity president during rush week, but there is a baseline of professionalism that should be the minimum. Instead, we get semi-pros.
When I was a kid, there was a dealer in Los Angeles who went by the improbable name “Goodwin Goldfaden”; really, I could not make up that moniker. Goody glossed himself as the first full-time dealer in the hobby. I went to his store once in 1977, had to beg my mother to drive me there (it was a long way from our house in the Valley to West Hollywood) and was confronted by the meanest, nastiest dealer I’d ever heard of or seen. There wasn’t a kid he didn’t hate. I actually had pretty good money to spend. I’d been trying to collect a complete run of Topps Hank Aaron cards and I was ready to pay up (for the times) for a rookie and a few other early ones. He was so mean to me and my mother that I left his 1954 Aaron on the counter and we never went back. If you are going to sell stuff face to face, be nice. It doesn’t cost you anything. Being a mean, crotchety jerk who acts like he just sniffed a broccoli fart is a terrible way to spend your days.
Speaking of mean dealers, card show version, I have to mention Irv Lerner. My late friend, Chris Stufflestreet, used to work for Lerner at the National, which proved that Chris was a genuine saint. For those of you who did not have the ‘pleasure’ of visiting Lerner’s table, Lerner was about 1,000 years old, has a gloriously rotten toupee (like a squirrel had a stroke and fell out of a tree and onto his head), and he and his wife screamed at each other nearly every sentence. His favorite expression was a dismissive “I’m too busy to look that up”, which he said every time there was more than one person at the table. It is a testament to Chris’s equanimity and good humor that he was able to work with the Lerners successfully. Had it been me, their heads would have been in bowling bags by the end of the preview night. A lot of money walked away from that table; it just wasn’t worth it to deal with the nonsense.
Being a tool can also cost you money because no one is going to help you out. I was at one antique show where a dealer had an entire case of sports cardboard and paper: cards, matchbook covers, postcards, premiums, even newspaper clippings. I saw a Jim Brown rookie in there and made the mistake of asking how much. The (old, nasty, wizened) dealer roared at me that the whole case was for sale, not individual cards. OK, I asked how much. He told me. I asked to look at the stuff, and he opened the case. I quickly spotted items with a market value of at least twice the asking price, so I knew I was buying the case. I then asked for a discount. Again, the jerk roared at me that someone else asked for a $50 discount and he told that guy to drop dead and take a hike and I better not haggle. Fine, dumbass, I will take your grotesquely underpriced case of stuff, happily. Any impulse I had to telling him he was underselling the cards went right out the window the moment he opened his cake hole. One of the best picks I ever made, and it was there for me only because this guy alienated everyone else at the show who approached him before I got there.
Then there are the guys who lose all perspective. It’s just cards, dude, chill out. Which brings me to Pig Man. I was doing a show in Anaheim one weekend around 1991. I had a mish-mash of stuff on my table, mostly 1960s-1970s Topps football, hockey and basketball from a collection I'd recently purchased. A guy approached my table from the left side and asked if I had a certain card. I did and he bought it for three bucks. The dealer next to me, a fat little middle-aged man in an aloha shirt that fit him like a tent came over and started berating me:
"That was very uncool," he snarled.
"What are you talking about?" I was genuinely befuddled by the hostility.
"You stole my customer,” he said. “He was looking at my cards when he asked you the question so you should have sent him back to me."
"You're nuts. He was at the side of my table and asked for a card I had in my case."
"You stole my customer.” He then waved a porky fist in my face and snarled “I could bring out old football cards and break you."
With that, I stood up (at the time I was 6'3" and 210 #), towered over him and said: "go for it." The pig-man in the mumu scuttled back behind his table and looked daggers at me the rest of the day.
Over a $3 card...
Another thing that unprofessional dealers do is mistreat people who they perceive to be inferior. The great sports announcer Nick Charles said: “Judge a man by how he treats someone who can do nothing for him.” I try to live that adage whenever I can, especially when I am dealing with someone who is new or obviously not quite there mentally, and I cringe at how frequently I see dealers doing the opposite. I get especially incensed when I see a vintage card dealer being short with a kid. It takes a lot of nerve for a young collector to approach a table and ask a question. We were all there once and we owe a debt to those who taught us with patience and grace and understanding.
Don’t bag on someone else’s collection, especially not when you are on the dealer side of the table. If someone is showing you his cards, he is asking for a little respect as a fellow hobbyist. Again, it costs you nothing to be nice. I was doing the World Boxing Hall of Fame induction and memorabilia show some years ago, hawking my boxing card book and selling cards. And meeting HOF fighters. Just that night I met Ken Norton, Roberto Duran, Carlos Ortiz, Terrible Terry Norris, Emile Griffith and a bunch of other guys; I even joked with HOF referee Joe Cortez that he was in my living room more often than my uncle. Anyhow, at one point during the show part a guy came up to show me his collection. It was a mass of 1990s very common cards carefully placed in an album. Nothing worth more than a dime, but he loved it and wanted to show it off. At that point, some dealers get rid of the guy. I took the time to look at his cards, compliment him, make him feel like a peer, gave him respect. He left pleased that he’d been heard and treated nicely. Not being a dick also makes good business sense. That guy may not have something for me, but he might know someone who does, and he won’t send that person my way if I mistreat him.
It is also unprofessional and counter-productive to rely for negotiating leverage on being condescending, obnoxious or critical. One show I worked, a guy came to me with a box of vintage basketball cards. I have a (proprietary; sorry, won’t share it) formula for quickly and accurately breaking down lots like that. I used it and came up with a price, and I explained it to him. He said he’d think about it, which is card-show-speak for shopping it around. Eventually, he returned to my table and took my offer. I asked him why and he said it was because the other dealers were so condescending and rude that they made him uncomfortable.
Whatever else you do, if you are working at a card show, leave your prejudices and your politics at home. There is a sizable group of people who will not deal with you if you make certain comments, and it is good practice not to lose that group and everyone they tell about what you said. Again, this is a business; you are not doing stand-up at a nightclub or rallying the true believers at a political event. You never know who is listening and how they might feel about what you say. I was at a National some years ago looking at cards at the table of a dealer. I’d bought things from in the past He was discussing President Obama with another dealer, and he used a vile six-letter racial epithet to describe the commander in chief; you know the one. I got up, walked away, and never dealt with him again. Although we had very different political views, we got along just fine until he thought it was OK to say that in front of me. I will never deal with him again, and this is a guy I’d purchased cards from multiple times.