[Harliduck]

That's a great story...I dug that. If I had a rookie card out there I would own like 200 of them...haha.


In 1990, the peak of the junk wax era, I was one of the rare guys in my area who had a decent amount of vintage. I had about 10-12 shops (only 1 is left!! wow) would call me when they had special requests from customers and I would either trade that for junk wax (haha) or consign. It was a good deal for both parties and I became good friends with all the shop owners.

My buddy and I got the hair brained idea to host our own show to make a few bucks and help our shop buddies. We rented the local elementary school cafeteria for $20 bucks (buddies with the janitor who ran it) and charged $25 a table and the goal was 20 tables. We ended up selling 30 tables and turned folks away (just word of mouth, and ran out of room) and honestly we were hoping to get maybe 50-60 people to show up. For $25 bucks the table owners figured if no one showed up they would still make enough money from the table owners to make it worth their while. I was ecstatic, we were already at $700 profit without doing a thing...a lot of money to a couple of 20 year olds at the time!

We put an ad in the local paper, and put up signs around town. Nothing else. We did however put up a sign by the freeway offramp which we found out was illegal, but very effective. So...we charged $1 entry free...mostly so we could just find out how many people came. The show started at 9am...and we had a crowd waiting! Shocked, we ended up having over 1500 people come through! The table owners were absolutely shocked, and most sold out of what they brought, it was a total frenzy. We also auctioned off a 1961 Mint Koufax for a dollar a ticket along with some free door prizes. Sold over 300 tickets for the Koufax, was shocked. (also found out later that wasn't kosher, but hey, we were just kids!).

Long story short, the shop owners for years bragged how our little show was by far the most profitable they had ever attended, and we were teased how much we should have charged for the tables and even had we charged $2 admission how much more we would have made. Just goes to show you how crazy that era was and being in the Seattle area how much Griffey ignited the hobby. Exciting and fleeting times.


We have a couple of local shows in our area now...fun to go to, never really much vintage. I love a good show, and it's been years since I have been to one. One day I would love to go to the National...