[Exhibitman]

Partially logistics, Dale. A number of dealers I know west of the Rockies refused to travel to AC and set up, or brought only what they could carry on to a plane. Others did not see the financial value in the trip due to the cost of hotels; when the convention host hotels average over $300 a night (with taxes) on Friday and Saturday, it isn't the same dynamic as Chi or even CLE. I also got the feeling that there wasn't the commuter table-taking that you see in a great metro area like Chicago. The trip to NYC or even Philly is long enough to make it unattractive to do every day for 4-5 days straight. I tried a similar approach to the 1996 Anaheim show and decided after a couple of days that I was never going to do it that way again. When the show was there in 2006 I stayed at a hotel for it. The net result, I felt, didn't leave a lot of picking tables for me. I'd say about 5-7, and that includes some of the tables that were all mainstream postwar cards but presented at extreme discounts. I went home with over half my purchase funds intact. Not a good show for me.

Steve, it is to each his own. I go to the National to buy special items that I cannot buy on eBay or from the myriad AH's. Wednesday morning I picked up most of the better items I got: a Jim Thorpe strip card, 2 Diamond Dust punchboard cards, an oddball Koufax item. By Thursday those kinds of finds were finished. The rest of the time was mainstream because there just wasn't much of the other stuff to go through. Not that there's anything wrong with that, if that is who you are as a collector. Just not me. I came home with a stack of cards but they were all basic.

Still, as our co-member Robert S. is fond of saying, the worst day at a card show is better than the best day at the office.