[Exhibitman]

I am always a bit surprised at how many people complain about the lack of decent items at good prices at the show, as my experience has always been that there is plenty of good stuff at good, even great, prices. However, to find the deals you have to actively work the show. I spend a full day, every day, on the convention floor to ferret out the underpriced cards and I tend to find a lot of stuff as a result. If I was to spend my convention time socializing, seeing sights, etc., I would likely also conclude that the show has little to offer. You have to be a "picker" to get the best deals at the show--you have to dig in the messy displays and dusty boxes of junk if you want to avoid paying top dollar. Case in point: I am working a postwar exhibit set and I needed the SP Yaz card. it is one of the most expensive SPs and the ones I saw on display were $200 or more [got at good laugh at the $350 one]. But by digging and scraping I eventually found a seller blowing out a whole album of exhibits, including the SPs, and got a nice Yaz for $3. Most deals weren't that extreme, of course [wish they were], but had I simply given up and gone swimming I'd never even have seen that album. I even went picking in the Olympics room and came away with a boxing-related ticket from the 1936 Olympic trials here in L.A. And timing can be everything at the show. Dealers buy stuff and put out new cards all during the show; if you aren't there you tend to miss new stuff as it comes out. I stumbled across some great cards that a dealer had just added to his table from an earlier purchase, and I got them only because I was there instead of at lunch, at Wrigley, at the museum, sleeping off a hangover, etc.