I have been to every National since 2003. This was the worst. Logistically, it was a nightmare for anyone traveling from the West. AC is not near anything, really, and has a small airport that is served only by Spirit, which is the worst airline around. I had to split my trip into two pieces to get in and out of there and maintain my sanity in the process. It was an ordeal. It is actually easier to get to London from L.A.
As a consequence of the travel logistics and the higher cost of hotels for the show, a good many vintage dealers did not make the journey or did so but only with what they could carry on a plane. That was problematic for me. I tend to collect oddball items, regional cards, team issues, etc., so when the bulk is missing from the booths, so is my target material. I need to pick lots of random stuff to find the items I collect; little of that at the show. There was quite a bit of nice mainstream slabbery, but that really isn't my speed at a show. I can get that stuff on eBay or in any of the dozens of AH's.
I basically finished my real shopping by Thursday and spent the rest of my time filling in items in my postwar mainstream collection. Nice cards and cheap, but hardly worth a trip to AC. I really only got three decent prewar items, another Thorpe strip card in the Indian headdress and a pair of Diamond Dust cards (Grove and Vandermeer), both on Wednesday morning during set-up.
One more rant: there is no friggin' way that the National needs that much floor space. That is just nonsense. The sheer amount of dead space and useless area on that show floor was proof. The corporate carpet was vast and empty, and the pack break pavilion was also big and basically deserted.
On the plus side, I did get to meet and chat with Riddick Bowe, 2x heavyweight champ and HOFer, and get him to sign a ticket from one of his Holyfield fights:
And I got this graded:
And this too:
Plus, I was able to drop off my order with SGC for their August special and give them the Thorpe and the Diamond Dust cards in that order, a cost and effort saver.