[HittinLikeCarew]

Hey,
So I recently got back into collecting since the early mid 80’s. It’s obviously is a different world, and after some expensive mistakes w ultra modern, I’ve chosen to stick w vintage.
I’ve been buying off eBay originally, and have ventured out to some card shows and local shops.
I’m really trying to support local shops but it’s really hard and am struggling w different dynamics. One is a merger of two shops, and is new and really nice, however they don’t seem interested in vintage (they say they have 100’s of thousand cards but all in storage), and seem to make their big business off being a distributor across the country which is another topic. Another has a ton of vintage in a cramped shop of 40yrs, but his pricing is not even remotely doable. He showed me a recent box he bought and wanting to show support I asked about a 1963 Mantle in ok shape (maybe a 3 if graded). He told me $2250 firm. I offered him $325, and showed him comps that over $2k isn’t even in a ballpark. No dice. Last shop I kinda like bc they have vintage boxes, to go through and usually commons are reasonable but HOF’ers he looks in some book and comes up w pricing that is always 30-40% higher than what I can get on eBay. When I bring up his opinion of condition it’s gets very tense etc.which is unfortunate.

So all that being said, am I missing anything? Am I being unreasonable? Are they sick of competing w real time pricing vs long pricing? Am I wrong to just stick w GM and some of the others that I’ve chosen to buy from on eBay?

I will say the small regional shows I’ve been to, I’ve always walked out w something.

I’m in sales, so I want to support brick and mortar but can’t do it out of guilt.

Any advice to a old newb would be helpful!