The Burbank Show Finale
I finally got home around 8 last night. I am exhausted. Mostly because there was some GDMF labor unrest at the Hilton across the street and these jagoffs started banging drums and ringing bells at 4:00 this morning. Woke up everyone in the hotels that are NOT subject to the strike. I started the week sympathetic to the workers, but after being jacked out of bed three mornings in a row, I wanted some old-fashioned strike busting violence to take place so I could get some sleep. Oh, if you are traveling to Anaheim any time soon, don’t stay at the Hilton, Marriott, Sheraton or Clarion by the convention center or you will not be able to sleep.
Setting up at a multiple-day show like this is quite a learning opportunity. Main thing I learned is that I need to make some further infrastructure investments if I am going to do this regularly, primary amongst them purchasing a serious collapsible four-wheel cart. Bulldogging my showcases and display stuff to the car damn near killed me yesterday evening. It took me two hours to break down my table and get everything to the car. My dumbass two-wheel folding luggage cart is entirely inadequate for the task. Also learned that it is so totally worth it to pay for parking as close to the venue as possible. The extra 1,000 feet, each way, between the show and the Marriott garage, that gets really old really fast when you are lugging showcases. I also learned that there is no way to set up and work a multi-day show alone. I had a partner in the table and it was so helpful.
In terms of sales, it was a great show. My sales were nearly 50% better than last year, on a per-day average basis. Someone forgot to tell the collector base that the market is cold.
One of the potentially biggest reasons to do a show is to buy from walk-ins. It is a situation where you can control the narrative and pass on bad deals. Over the table, I bought a small basketball deal and a 1962 Topps football set. I overpaid for the set but after getting it home and taking a good look at it, the cards are quite a bit nicer than I thought. I guess I will see when I sell it.
I wasn’t able to get away from my table too much, but I did find a few good bargains to buy. I harvested a nice stack of 1969 and 1970 high numbers from a $0.50 box that a modern dealer put out without considering the relative values of the cards. Also found some nice error cards in there, miscuts with two cards showing. Friggin' catnip to me.
One thing I notice every time I set up at a show is how many people assume a dealer will pay them retail for their cards. One guy came up near the end of the show with an easy $50K in cards in hand but he wanted us to pay him 90% or better of recent VCP for them. Umm, no. Sorry, guy, the math is inexorable.
Lots of big fish story guys at every show. I must’ve had at least a dozen people tell me they had vast accumulations of vintage cards ready to sell, but they didn't bring anything to the show. One guy sent us a painfully detailed spreadsheet of commons. Another had (allegedly) a hoard of junk wax and tried his hardest (between racist screeds about BLM agitators outside his house) to convince me that it was worth $10 a box…while standing in front of a junk wax display I had with $5 a box pricing. Lemme see, if I buy junk wax at $10 a box and I can sell it for $5 a box, I will make up the loss on volume? My favorites are the liars. One guy has a small box of 1968 Topps Deckle and Game inserts, with a few metallic ‘cards’ from the 1990s and a pin or two. He tells me he doesn’t know what they are worth, then when I make an offer tells me that a pin is worth thirty bucks. Oh, so you do know. Move along, pal.