My wife and I were at the National all day on Thursday and Friday. I thought it was really great. My only regret is that we couldn't come back again on Saturday and Sunday.
Here are some of my observations:
On Thursday we arrived about 15 minutes before the doors opened. There were probably a thousand people already lined up waiting to get in, and by the time the show opened there were another thousand line up behind us. Everything was well organized and it didn't take us long to get inside at 10:00.
We saw, literally, 1000's and 1000's of T206's. Dozens of T206 Cobbs. Dozens and dozens of 1933 Babe Ruth cards. Prices were unbelievably high. I bought 2 cards for my collection at reasonable prices, but I passed up others that were 3-4 times ebay pricing. Dealers would negotiate a little, but not much. For instance, a T213-2 low grade common, which can sell on ebay anywhere from $25 to $40, was priced at $90. The dealer came down to $70, but I didn't want to pay that much.
Many of the SGC10 T206 and raw low grade T206's were in the $30 to $45 range. These are cards that would be $15 on the BST.
I did see some great deals at Deans tables. I expected his prices to be sky high, but he had a binder full of low grade tobacco cards that were reasonably priced. Maybe I should have bought the entire binder?
I saw 2 Magie error cards, 2 or 3 Planks, and the PSA 2 Wagner that was at Scott and Leon's table. One of the Magie's seemed to be priced reasonably at 6K, but that is way out of my league. I also saw a Peck and Snyder in one of the auction house showcases.
There were many, (several thousand?) T205's, and some of the dealers seemed to have some decent pricing on the raw, off condition cards. I asked just about every dealer about T213's. I saw 1 T213-1, 1 T213-3, and maybe a dozen T213-2's, of which 5 were Cobbs. I bought a T213-2 Baker and a Leach.
If you collect other sports, this would have been a good show for you. I was surprised that several dealers seemed to deal exclusively in vintage hockey cards. One dealers case had 40 Topps and OPC Gretzky rookies, ranging in grade from 2 to 9. The prices seems very reasonable to me.
Several dealers had vintage football, one had mostly boxing, (I think we know who that was
), and there was some vintage basketball.
If you are a non-sports card person you would have loved this show. There were 1000's and 1000's of non sports cards. There were many boxes of low grade $1 non sports cards to pick through, and some beautiful vintage sets.
There was a large crowd on Thursday, and many times it was impossible to get to a particular table to see what they had. Several times I went back to a particular dealers table, only to see many people standing there so I couldn't get close. Most of the dealers were friendly, although on Thursday it seemed like many of the dealers were more interested in chatting with their friends rather than taking care of their customers.
On Friday morning the crowd was smaller, so it was easier to engage the dealers and they seemed more inclined to interact with their customers. The crowd started to grow in size as the afternoon wore on, and by 5pm the place was crowded again. My wife and I (God bless her!) covered the entire show and nearly all of the 600 dealers on Thursday, and then we went back and did it all again on Friday.
If you collect modern cards, modern auto'd and gu cards, or open packs, there were an unbelievable amount of these cards at the show. There were a couple of dozen dealers who had nothing but box after box of $1 modern cards, and they appeared to be doing a tremendous amount of business. There were several dealers who appeared to have nothing except many boxes of 10 cent cards and one dealer with a lot of 5 cent 1980's baseball cards. Customers were flocked around these dealers and they seemed to sell a hell of a lot of these 10 cent cards, although I can't believe they would be able to pay for their show expenses and make a profit by selling dime cards. That works well at small local shows, but with the high table fees and travel expenses at the National, it doesn't seem profitable.
I was able to talk to several board members. Some were selling and some were buying. Two of the high points of the show were checking out Ed Hans Mothers Bread and Tango Eggs cards, and Rhett taking the time to show me a portion of his incredible Holsum Bread collection. It would be worth the trip to the National even if you did nothing other than spend some time at Rhett's table and see what he has.
I thought it was a great show, and I am already starting to think ahead to Atlantic City.
Rick