Mall shows
 

I have seen a lot of reminiscing recently on net54. Anyone remember card shows at the mall? I had one by me the first Saturday of the month. Great memories.

Any mall shows still around?

There are still a couple in PA. Nothing like they were in the early 90's, but you can still find them. You can use the Beckett show calendar to find ones local to you.

Other than packs at Acme and Stop N Go, mall card shows were the sole source of my cards as a kid. Other than trades of course.

I got my start (*as an adult obviously).. at a mall show in Plano, TX, 1995 ..in the old Garden Ridge Mall. Smiling Dave got me started :)
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My start was at the Golden Ring Mall in Baltimore County Cira 1987...

A fun part about it for me was the Kay Bee Toys Store and the Horn and Horn Smorgasbord.

Sadly the Mall is Where Shows go to Die

There are 3 distinct and separate periods to my card collecting:

As a kid, buying insane numbers of 5 cent Topps packs 1967-70. All complete sets those years. My mother almost daily gave me money to pedal my bike a couple of blocks to buy her a pack of smokes, and then keep the change to buy packs of baseball cards. The guys behind the counter gave no thought at all to selling smokes to me in those days. They somehow knew I wasn't smoking them.

In the Navy, 1981-2007. 1987-88 I was going through weather forecasting school with the Air Force at Chanute AFB, Rantoul, Illinois. This is where I got my Ruth signed ball, and 1933 Goudey Ruth #144 and Gehrig cards. 1993-98 I was at Charleston and Key West. Vendor's Mall in Charleston and Coral Square Mall in Coral Springs. Vendor's Mall was an antique mall on Rivers Ave. in Charleston. There was one guy who rented space, a retired Navy Chief, who I bought MANY cards cheap from. Then, when he decided to retire completely, he gave me a paper sack of fantastic cards! The monthly card shows at Coral Square Mall, off of Univetsity in Coral Springs were FANTASTIC! I got many, many great cards. 1958 Mantle for $70 comes immediately to mind.

Got back in during Covid, and built my 1953 Bowman color and b/w full set *** with A LOT of help from great people on this forum, which is the best baseball card-related forum on the internet. Thanks, Leon! ***

I used to love those shows growing up.
But as time went on they became less often and less stuff.
Then they faded away

I was there.......

Bought my 1975 Topps set at a Mall Show in Wichita Falls, Texas while in Tech School at Sheppard AFB in 1984. Still have it and NFS Forever..

One of my most vivid memories setting up at shows when I was a teenager as a weekend warrior, during the late 80's, was being set up at the Danbury Fair Mall in CT, the same week the Billy Ripken FF card was discovered.

89 Fleer had just come out, and between the FF card and the Griffey Jr. and Gary Sheffield Rookies, everybody was going nuts over it.

Looking back in hindsight, there was absolutely no shortage of it either. They were selling for over 100 bucks a box...but seemingly EVERYBODY had them......and this was just the first run of them, before they corrected or hacked the rest of the Ripken cards in the print run.

The FF card probably sold Fleer an extra 1/2 a million cases of cards that year.

Thing was, if you pulled an FF, you could throw it out on your table for $100 bucks, and less then 10 minutes later it would be gone, basically paying for your box. People literally thought, this was going to be the next 52 Mantle. :D

That was a wild weekend.

I stumbled upon one by chance a few years ago. I've been to a mall maybe 3x in the last 30 years. So, thought I was lucky. It was about 20 tables of reflecting, refracting shiny things. One guy had a '58 Aaron in vg for $1200.

The late eighties shows were a blast. Even small towns had more than one show to go to. Start at the flea market, head to Ramada or Holiday Inn and then hit up the mall on the following day. The '63 Fleer checklist was for some reason a hot commodity. I found mine at a mall show and traded a '58 Clemente for it. Thought I had scored big.

Got back into collecting at the one at Arundel Mills Mall in Maryland, met the only large vintage dealer there and have been working shows with him since, Mall show has been gone for a while, but made some long term friends doing shows with him.

Around me, most of the malls have closed or turned into strip plazas.

Mall Shows
 

In the mid-80's Columbus, Ohio at the Westland Mall. Remember one of us was old enough to drive probably four or five us of to the show. Great days looking for the any Reds cards we could get our hands on.

In looking back on the "good old days", to me they were the good old days. At the mall shows back then, as a buyer I fealt like I was the one with the upper hand. I would see something I wanted, and made an offer. You could negotiate. If someone was unwilling to dicker, I would walk away and move on. Really, really good deals could be made, and more often than not, were. It's pretty clear with the way cards are priced today that I would not have a great many of the great cards I have if not for the mall shows back in the "good old days".

Mall shows
 

Yep, they were cool. Upper Valley Mall in Clark County, Ohio in the 1980s.

Trent King

We had one here last month at a mall in a pseudo-free CA county. No masks required, held inside a former (huge) Forever 21 store. It was awesome, especially since there was a food court 100 feet away, and they had some quality autograph signers for people into that area of collecting.

I always loved those mall shows back in the day. In fact, I got back in to the hobby after going to a mall show to see Duke Snider in the late 80's. Fun times.

There used to be several regular mall shows in the Houston area. I made lots of them as a customer and a few as a 'dealer' if you can call selling some old Astros scorecards and a few cards being a dealer. My lasting memory of mall shows is wandering around a very sparsely attended one early on a Saturday morning in Almeda Mall in southeast Houston. Sitting at a small table by himself, waiting to sign for anyone who recognized him was Bob Feller. I think he was charging five bucks. A pretty weird scene for me as I was used to always seeing someone 'handling' signing requests for show guests but he was alone. For my $5(?) I got a signed postcard and a few minutes of baseball talk with a Hall of Fame pitcher.

The mall shows are still happening on the West Coast. There are monthly shows in Washington (Auburn & Everett) and Oregon (Portland). In addition the greater San Francisco Bay Area has been hosting both types of mall shows.... 1) Free admission accessible to the general public, and 2) Secured businesses within a mall with paid admission.

The recent show in Fairfield,California inside the former Forever 21 store, featured more than 300 tables on over an acre, and attracted more than 2000 people. They will likely continue as long as the interest in sports items (particularly recent issues) remains strong.

Can you get good stuff cheap?

I got a 58 Topps Mantle for $70 at the Coral Square Mall, Coral Springs, Florida. I remember that like it was yesterday. This was in 1997 while I was stationed at Key West. I went home (my wife and daughter were living on Flamingo Road by the Sawgrass Mall in Sunrise while I was stationed down at Key West) on weekends, unless I had duty. It was on a Sunday, and we went over to Coral Square. This was University and Atlantic, I think, near where my wife worked. Lots of restaurants. When we got therer, everyone was packing up to go home. I had $70 in cash in my wallet. The seller said it was giving it away, but yeah, he'd take $70 cash for the Mantle card.

Food Collectors?
 

Bingo! I'm going to a food court today and try to sell my autograph and offer fries with it.:D Honestly I've never had any success selling my vintage quarter pounders and PSA will not grade them.:mad:

Went to a few of those. I never really hit many mall shows other than Arundel Mills. Bought my first T206's there. There were some for a short time up at the mall in Westminster, MD. These were both circa 2009-2011 or so.

It was mostly LCS shops for me. I would hit an occasional show at the VFW in McHenry when I was in high school. That was small, but a lot of great dealers there.

In pennsylvania we have a mall
Show almost every single weekend.

And, Leon, it wasn't long thereafter you bought a few cards from me. I remember a '38 Goudey Joe D. in which you had a real interest, and we concluded a simple transaction. In the present card climate, the BST feature best resembles the simple way we used to conduct business.

Fondly remember the Golden Ring Mall shows. First time my parents let me drive on the highway was to go to one.

I was a teenager in the mid to late 80's and went to card shows quite frequently. The one I went to most often was held at MacDade Mall in Southeastern PA. Fast forward to the early 90's and I began to set up as a dealer there. I also set up monthly at Village Mall and Leo Mall.

While I've always remained a hobbyist, it has been a while since I've set up as a dealer. I've been kicking around the idea of getting a table at one of the small shows in the area...probably this spring.

Reminds me of this gem...

Attachment 492227

I used to run some mall shows that I just loved. At that time, the malls had something called a "Community Room." It gave us the ability to be located at the mall yet still have the atmosphere of a mall. I would often get minor leaguers or retired major leaguers to come and sign free autos at the shows. A few of the guests who appeared included Juan Bonilla, Rocky Bridges, Wally Moon, Alan Knicely, Ron Hodges, Bill Dailey and Tom Parsons. Free admission, free door prizes, you could barely make your way through the shows. We raised money for the local SPCA. Honestly, what killed them was that the malls shut the community rooms. When it got out into the main body of the mall it lost its intimacy and just wasn't the same.

I have set up at some smaller shows before, sometimes unexpectedly LOL....They were more a labor of love and shooting the shit with friends than a money making venture. Some of them were a fun for a while.
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In SoCal, I remember in the early 90's there were some struggling mall shows still being attempted. The problem was, most of the stores in the mall were vacant and you felt like you were in one of those zombie movies where only a handful of people are wondering aimlessly around the mall. It was a slow, sad death of the mall show.

I don't remember mall shows but I remember a baseball card shop in Prestonwood Mall in North Dallas in the early 80s Any chance that anyone here remembers the name of the shop or even has a photo?