[Exhibitman]

Mike H: Understood. However, wouldn't it be nice if the experience was pleasant as a whole rather than tolerated for the cards, esp. since the costs are about the same? My point being that you don't have to do the premiere trade show in the convention center equivalent of a rec center basement. If you do that every other year, you risk losing your customer base. I know for a fact that quite a few collectors who are active on this board did not attend this year's show because they did not want to go to the IX again.

As far as cheap/readily acquired cards go, everyone collects what they like, and sure, they can probably buy on Ebay, but those who attended the show looking for common cards still wanted to come to a National. Which makes it all the more important to get those people an experience that isn't second rate. If the experience is seedy, unpleasant, unmemorable, etc., for the casual collector, they aren't going to come back, because they can do the same thing on Ebay.

Rich K: I don't think incremental changes in the admission and parking costs are going to deter any collectors from attendance or encourage anyone to come to the show solely on that basis.

Music is a horrible idea. In order to make it anything more than background noise it would have to be loud enough to be intelligible, which would make it too loud to converse over.