2025 National: a Buyer's or Seller's National?
 

Regional card show attendance (at least in Socal where I live) seems to be very robust in 2025. Couple months back, at a new promoter's show in Inglewood I showed up without buying early bird tickets and found a 3 hour line and was turned away once they reached capacity. I got the sense there were still very active buyers for modern and pokemon. And vintage where you could find it.

What do you think this year's Chicago National looks like? Will there be more buyer's or sellers?

Is it ever in the buyer's favor? Personally, only for really bottom of the barrel stuff or the odd needle in a haystack. With anything that's in demand and familiar to the seller, it's never been a "buyer's National". Again, just my personal, yet unwavering experience.

Just like the local and regional shows, most of the attendees nowadays going to the National are looking for the shiny stuff.

Yes. I predict that most tables will be sagging with tonnage of shiny crap and game cards, and a fortune will change hands. Among the vintage minority, people with great or unique stuff are going to kill; people with commodity type stuff (mainstream slabs) are going to do just fine too. They will get a ton of YOLO action from collectors who traveled a long way to be there and are not going home empty-handed. I am going with the expectation of finding nothing great but armed with a big want list for filling out and upgrading my sets in person. If I can close out a few sets and flesh out some others, great.

As far as the mechanics of attending a show goes, the 1991 Anaheim National is the new normal unless you buy a VIP admission in advance and get there early. VIP means earlier in line, not necessarily earlier into the show. Walk-up and general admission means you may not get in for hours. Or at all.

I think that for the younger collectors, shows have become cultural phenomena rather than simply card shows. For example, it used to be that the announcements were an annoyance. Now they are MC-ing, exhorting the crowd to give more energy. They run music all day and contests. What we think of as noise and distraction, they find entertaining. It seemed to me that this show had more of a vibe, similar to Fanatics Fest, of making the scene itself the event rather than the acquisition of actual material on sale inside. Even without purchasing items, I believe most of the (younger) people there were actually having a lot of fun just being at the event. Since many of these attendees are obviously Gen Z members and they generally prize experience over stuff, being there may be what it’s all about. Personally, I don’t see it, but maybe I’m just getting too fucking old for this.

FWIW, you did not miss a thing at the Los Angeles Card Show. 250 tables meant a handful with older cards, mostly overpriced slabs of mainstream postwar issues. I bought just two minor cards for my PC, a Dale Earnhardt Sr. PSA slabbed rookie card and a Jacques Villeneuve F1 relic card.

Come on, you painter
You piper, you vintage collector, and (start chasing the) shine...