The Burbank Show 2

Why Won't The Dealer Discount My $2 Purchase

And now a friendly screed from your favorite Hobby curmudgeon.

Here is a primer for the non-dealers out there wondering why that dealer won’t cut prices on a single item sale from the pickers boxes, or why prices at card shows are not as low as rock-bottom eBay costs.

Table fees for the show were $600 for an eight-foot table. OK, that’s really good for a four-day event. But I gotta go to Anaheim. It is only 40 miles from Burbank, as the freeway drives, but anywhere from 1:20 to 2:00+ hours any time of the day except extremely early or extremely late, when it is a 40 minute trip. I left at 6:15 a.m. and still got rush hour on the way down. If you’ve ever spent a few hours in the murderous rush hour traffic of Los Angeles or in the infamous Orange Crush commuter traffic near Anaheim, you know why commuting to the show is miserable. Four hours on the freeways in traffic does not leave me in any mental state to handle customers. Add in the fact that VIP night ends at 10:00 and the other nights end at 7:00, and there is just no way to set up, work the show, and go home and back each night.

So I decided to book a hotel room at the host hotel, the Marriott. The convention room rate for three nights is a total of $597. Sounds good. Then the add-ons. You want to park your car? Another $30 a night. You want to use the internet? Add another $14.99 per. Then the tourist taxes add another 20% to the whole. My $597 stay becomes an $880 stay (rounded). Add to that at least another $50 a day to eat, and my overhead leaps to $1,030.

Say I did a really good job of buying and I make 50% for each card I sell. Add that overhead to the costs. For those of you tracking it, the first $1,030 of my net profit (excluding the cost of the cards I sell) goes to overhead. Do the math: if my profit averages 50%, then $2,060 in gross sales is my break-even point. But wait, I also have to pay sales taxes since I am doing retail and I remit my taxes like the good citizen I am; render unto Caesar, etc. Add about 10% to the total, pushing my break-even point to $2,266. That’s the risk I take when I set up. Every sale goes towards covering that nut.

Now, there are other reasons to set up at a show, to be sure. Getting rid of stuff that cannot be sold otherwise in an economic manner due to shipping costs, for example. Buying chances come your way. It is also a great way to catch up with friends. Most of all, as my buddy Robert Silverman says, your worst day at a card show is still better than your best day at work. None of that alters the financial picture, though. If all I want is a vacation, I can just go to the show and hang out. But I want to make money and enjoy myself, greedy fat bastard that I am.

When you go to a show, my advice is to think about what it takes for me to be there, and not get your panties in a wad when I don’t cut the price on a $2 card. I can’t afford it. Given the math, when you ask me to knock a buck off a $2 card, you are literally making it financially impossible for me to set up because you are cutting the profit I need to pay overhead. If I do that, I might as well just donate the cards to Goodwill. Buy a stack of cards and maybe we can talk about a discount. Buy a thousand bucks worth and I will definitely cut you a break.

And now for something completely different, the show report.

Friday was the first general admission day of the show. I arrived at the convention center to be greeted by security metal detector wanding everyone like at a rock concert. While I appreciate the effort, why wasn’t it happening on preview night too? Are the VIPs just a better class of people? I also noticed that they quit the wanding after the initial admission rush; so much for that.

I had no idea what to expect. Preview night went well for me due to a few big sales, but the pace was mellow. Well, we opened at 11 to VIPs (noon for the rest), and it started out pretty slow, people just trickling in. Turns out it was a security bottleneck that caught everyone, even the dealers.

Once the security checkpoints got rolling, the show really filled up quickly. And no wonder. I heard that the line for the show was around the building. I can’t say for sure since my table got absolutely slammed. I literally could not stop for nearly two hours. At one point, I had customers three deep, wallets out, trying to hand me money. I exceeded my expectations for the day inside two hours. That said, the space was comfortably open and stayed cool. The main exit aisles were at least 20 feet acrss and most aisles were 8 feet or so, so even with backpack fat-asses at each table, there was a clear corridor down the middle of each aisle. Not so the dealer area between table rows; it was a mess. Some people just do not know how to police their space. One idiot left a big rolling cart unfolded across the walking area. I tripped on it twice and tried to find the owner, but no one would fess up to owning it. Probably didn’t want to be chewed out by a big, angry fat man.

After the rush, I got a chance to walk around the show. it is just huge. I would say 90% of the tables had nothing of real interest for me, but there was substantially more vintage than I expected to see. I did find one card in the sea of shiny crap, a 1976 Topps Ed “Too Tall” Jones RC. The Cowboy was just sitting there, forlorn, surrounded by glittering junk. Perfectly centered, nice and clean condition for the set, ideal for my collection, and all of five bucks. Sold. That may well be my big show pick-up. Just too busy at my table to go spelunking. Unfortunately for me. My friend Mark stopped by the table late to show off his find. Some dealer with little acumen for vintage put out a box of old cards at ridiculously low prices. Mark dredged up a stack of 1956 Topps HOFers from $2-$8 (the Aparcio RC) each. Had I seen it, I would have cleaned out the entire box at those prices. So there is vintage and there are bargains. You just have to look.

The promoters brought in half a dozen food trucks and parked them right outside the doors. It was a nice touch and definitely a giant improvement on the dreck we are usually forced to eat at the show concessions. I had a good brat with all the fixins, courtesy of a German sausage truck. No curry, unfortunately. Food does present a bit of an issue in the show. Just a thought here: finish your damn beer before you come to my table and start flicking through my cards.

We did have a bit of excitement down the row from me. A woman tried to steal an expensive card off a table. She got grabbed, held, and Anaheim’s finest were there in a minute (I counted at least half a dozen cops patrolling the facility all day long) and hauled her thieving ass off to jail.

More tomorrow or Monday (depends on how beat I am).