They say brevity is the soul of wit.
Well, if you think the opposite is true, then you’ve come to the right place!!
I'm not going to lie. If you walked
The National for four days straight, then had your eyes taped open and forced to watch seventeen reels of home movies from my family’s trip to
Fort Ticonderoga, that would take less time than reading this...but hopefully a smile or two will emerge.
Perhaps, you should read a single
observation,
(call back alert) digest it like a modern table, move on with your life and then come back later to read another one.
Or just ignore the whole thing entirely.
Collector's choice!
Here are my (uber-longwinded) observations from a recent show...
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1. The Best Offense is a Good Pretense
It seems that
the secret cabal of vendors that we damn well know is working behind the scenes against us collectors, had a clandestine meeting to determine the best defence
(wait, why am I suddenly spelling like a Brit?) against the constant barrage of complaints about every single dealer’s
crazy, museumic (is that a word?) pricing.
•
The meeting notes from their conspiratorial conference must’ve stated very matter of factly:
No matter what the complaint is about pricing, simply respond with,
“Of course, it’s a LITTLE (yes, use the word “little,” not the more precise “abundantly exorbitant times a million”) more expensive than other comps, but...(wait for it)...IT IS VERY STRONG FOR THE GRADE!!”
I can’t even count the number of times I heard that specific phrase, or a derivative thereof, during the show:
“A killer example for the grade!”
“There’s no 3 out there with corners as good as this one!!”
“That ain’t no 5, it’s a five plus plus plus!!”
“I’d sell my wife to find a better 7 than this guy!!” (In all honesty, a simple look at his huge gut told the world he’d happily sell her just for a bag of mini donuts, so that didn’t tell us much.)
They all said the exact same thing, and it didn’t matter if someone was actually questioning the price on their slab, they just kept repeating this
mantra over and over again.
If you had to do a shot every time you heard someone say it,
you would’ve wound up in the drunk tank before your first lap around the floor was half-completed.
One modern table guy even intimated to me,
“We all know that many tens are so much better than other ones.”
We do??
Under my breath, I muttered at one of them,
“Again with the ‘strong for the grade’ claim? Who are you, Arnold Schwarzengrader?!”
The funny thing is, not a single crazily-priced card I was shown by these
phrase-wielding sellers looked to be a supreme example for the grade - quite the opposite.
Bottom line...it’s time to establish a new
TPG called
Charles Atlas Grading (CAG).
I even came up with a slogan you’re free to use:
“If your card isn’t in an Atlas slab, then it’s weak as a chump for the grade...and so are you!!!”
2. An Excuse to be Touched by a Young, Hot Angel (not really)
This is so minor that everyone will say,
“Get a REAL problem, buddy!!,” but I urge you to follow my lead...
The front table was staffed by young women handing out wristbands
(for us to affix ourselves), but I took a stand and reached out my arm and
(referring to the wristband) asked,
“Could you please put that thing on for me? I’ll probably make it too tight and cut off my circulation.”
(I’ve done that before, so it wasn’t a lie.)
A happy smile followed with,
“Sure, lemme get that for you.”
Dirty old man, right? No frickin’ way!! A smart young (apparently, only to myself, so continue reading) man!!
Here’s why:
•
What’s the worst thing about a card show? (The crowd screams, “STUPID PRICES!!!!!!!!!!!!! DUH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!")
•
Whoops...what’s the SECOND worst thing about a card show?
Of course, it’s hurriedly trying to get that frickin’ wristband on in time.
After paying admission, but before you can enter, you only have one ‘free’ hand to work with and you have to
turn into a juggling circus performer as you attempt to keep all the crap you’re bringing inside -
bags, clothing, hard cases, reading glasses case (oof!), food and drinks, and perhaps also fumbling to get your change into your pocket - from falling to the floor while you desperately try to find the
edge of the adhesive section with your fingernail and get that damned thing attached to your other arm.
Wouldn’t it be helpful if they provided a few tables off to the side so showgoers could take a moment to put down their stuff and attach their wristbands??
NOOOOO, what an outrageous idea!!!!!!
Instead, they make it the live action version of those subway videos from
Japan you run across, where city workers shove the crowds onto the trains so the doors can finally be closed.
(Yes, that’s a reach, but I’m trying to make a point.)
Doing it my way, you avoid all of that, because it only takes a split second for her to put it on for you. A split second well spent - no delays and now it’s show time!!
Plus, no need to seek out a garbage can to throw out that pesky little peeled-off segment, because she has it, not you. Ain’t your problem no more!!
Of course,
(call back alert) we could avoid all of this by just stowing everything in a large backpack to free up our hands, but where’s the fun in that?
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3. Chairing is Caring...No, It’s Not!!!
The first table I stopped at had the usual assortment of boxes and binders and slabs
(“Oh my!!!”), so I was casually standing there taking it all in
(my ‘Collectorism’ for this is Table Tilt - the stationary pose of standing still at a dealer’s table with your head angled slightly downward as you examine all of the items there) when the vendor suggested that maybe it would be good if he got me a chair. Thanking him for his hospitality, I said there’s no need, and didn’t think much of it.
But...merely minutes later, I was engaged in the same activity at a different table, when the guy there immediately came up to me and said,
“Let me find you a chair.”
Looking around, I thought,
“Why is everyone from the get-go treating me like I should be in some “I’ve fallen, and can’t get up!!!!” commercial airing during the afternoon soaps??”
Later on, and directed specifically at no one but me, a dealer said,
“I got a couple of chairs at the ready.” (I guess he forgot to tag on, “...for a Methuselah-looking motherf*cker like you!!“)
This was the most seriously high
‘dealer to chair-offer ratio’ I had ever encountered. Why was everybody trying to be an usher?? All of these overtures came unsolicited, so what was I missing??
In the end, I wasn’t sure if like a restaurant host, they were just saying,
“Sit down and stay a while!!,” with the hope I’d put a few bucks in their coffers by ordering overpriced
jalapeño poppers and
cocktails, or was it that I looked like my
stasis pod malfunctioned last night and suddenly aged me thousands of years like
Stewart in
‘Planet of the Apes’???
The jury’s still out.
This depressed me so much that I needed to take a moment and sit down.
But then it got even worse...
4. The Reading Glass is Half-Empty!!!
Pulling out a
1972 Topps #32 Cleon Jones ‘In Action’ card to give a look-see
(it’s crazy hard to find without a tilt), and bringing the beloved
Met closer to my eyes, I exclaimed to no one in particular,
“Crap!! Need my reading glasses!” (Which I had recently started bringing along to use for close-up inspections.)
The couple working the table reacted with a good natured, hearty chuckle. Instant friends
(Spoiler alert: that changes).
I said,
“I still can’t believe I need these things sometimes. It’s all brand new to me, and it’s such a frickin’ bummer.” (Yes, people my age talk like that.)
(The WTF moment commences now...)
The
lady, who looked absolutely ancient to me, grinned and said,
“Yeah, my time is also going to be coming soon in a couple of years, as I had a hard time even reading the expiration date on the paprika (she pronounced it “pah-prick-uh,” with no slight hesitation between, or stress placed on, syllables, and not “pah—PREE—kuh” like normal people) jar last night. Right, hon?” (as she looked to her hubby to confirm her story).
My brain shrieked,
“Coming soon???!!! Wait, aren’t you years, even DECADES older than me??? Shouldn’t MY gradual vision loss be following YOURS, not the other way around???!!! I can’t possibly be older than you, you crypt-keeper-resembling crone!!! I still have my youthful, boyhood glow!!!”
(Oddly enough, her husband was clearly much younger than she was, so maybe they have a ‘sugar momma’ thing happening, but hell if I know.)
She was then able to hammer my coffin shut for good with a final,
“You should go to Bath & Body Works in this mall. I think they carry those chains that hold your glasses around your neck when you’re not using them. You know...attached like a necklace, so you won’t lose ‘em??”
It’s a rare occasion when I’m rendered speechless, but holy heck did she inadvertently
(God, I hope to hell it was inadvertent!!!) do a number on me that I won’t ever forget.
When exactly did I become a
“back in my day” saying, canasta-playing, butterscotch-carrying, sweater-smelling-of-mothballs-wearing, old biddy who plans on spending my final years down in Florida kind of person???!!!
5. Mourning Has Broken...My Heart
Like placing the
Thanksgiving turkey in the middle of the table so all can gaze upon its magnificence, so do
Willie Mays cards always occupy the center spots of cases out here as
reverential moneymakers.
Sadly, those middles sure got a lot girthier after his recent passing, with a ton of cards being added with
(Surprise!! Surprise!!) monumentally inflated prices.
One guy had every single card in his display -
all HOFers big and small - with
‘loud’ price stickers attached to them, except for the now overabundant number of
Willie Mays cards clogging the middle.
He purposely removed the stickers from those. Everything else still had
(literally and figuratively) large prices showing, but the
"the Say Hey Kid" cards were devoid of such trivial indications.
I cut to the chase and very politely
(swear!) said,
“You clearly want people to ask about these cards, so you can gauge their interest during this sorrowful time and then invent an obnoxiously high price on the spot...to see if they will bite, right?”
In a theatrical pretense, he frowned, shrugged his shoulders and spread his palms-up hands out in an exaggerated gesture of,
“Who-ooo...me??” (Although this was real life, I swear there was a ‘sarcasm’ emoji floating beside him.)
When I asked why he did that, a self-satisfied grin appeared as he scoffed,
“You know what they say about hot ironing, don’t you??!!”
Uh...I assume he was trying to trot out the standard, old time blacksmithing maxim,
“Strike while the iron is hot,” but he seemed to be referring to
pressing a dress shirt, so you won’t look like a schmuck at your friend’s bar mitzvah (true story).
Being none too fond of this guy to begin with, I replied,
“Yup, my mother says it sure makes the wrinkles in a skirt go away,” and left him with a puzzled look on his greedy face.
6. The Great Progressinator
Da Vinci...Edison...The Wright Brothers. Innovators??? Ha!!!! Mere tinkerers.
For my money, the title of history’s greatest groundbreaking mind goes to the dealer who
made my eyes give him a standing ovation when I saw his booth. He
(get ready for an overuse of adverbs) purposely had all of his
‘bargain bin’ storage containers illustrously on their sides, wonderously spilling out waves and waves of toploaders marvelously cascading across his tables. What an ingenuously engaging set-up!!!
There were scores of excited teenagers...
(whoops, since I’m so old now, I guess I should say “young whipper-snappers”)...surfing through the massive waves of shiny cards, building huge stacks to separate the
‘seen already’ from the
‘unseen yet,’ and smaller
(closely guarded) piles of
‘keepers’ to the side.
‘Twas an absolute beehive of activity. When a kid would leave, the proprietor would then ‘re-spill’ the left-behind stacks into and around the large bins.
I said,
“This is sick!! What a cool set-up!!”
He smiled hugely, and said,
“Thank you very much!! It is, right??!! There’s barely any really old stuff, but every card you find is only a buck!!” (Wait...was this yet another person implying that I look ancient...AND was that buck comment a dig to call me cheap???)
Like
Alexander Fleming accidentally discovering
Penicillin by stumbling across
contaminated Petri dishes, he told me how he unintentionally tipped over one of his tubs while loading up his
SUV for a show and had an incredible
‘aha moment’ (being an Archimedes fan, I would’ve called it a ‘eureka moment,’ but let’s not quibble), and he knew right then and there how he was going to start setting up his tables from now on!!
I should’ve snapped a picture earlier, but only got this one very late in the day, so it’s lacking the impressively eye-catching, beginning-of-the-show spillover, but it clearly illustrates that he sold a crapload of cards, because those things started off being fully packed...
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He joyously added,
“I want to patent the idea!”
I laughed and told him,
“Call your booth ‘Spillage Village,’ or better yet, ‘Spilladelphia.’”
The smile disappeared,
“No way! It’s gotta reference one of OUR teams!!!!!”
(Well, excuse the f*ck out of me for trying to help. I won’t even bother suggesting ‘Overflow Montana’ or ‘Buster Flowzie.’ Would those references be local enough for you, ya creep??!!)
As morosely as the interaction seemed to end, he still gets my
rubber bin stamp of approval for his advancement in the
cardboard sciences.
Reality check: I assume some
“Alexander Graham Bell wasn’t the first to invent the telephone!” decryer will chime in to say,
“I’ve seen plenty of dealers doing that same thing for years. It’s nothing new!!,” but I’m sticking with it. It was mah-velous.
7. Prologue: The C.H.O.M.P. (Creepy Hordes Of Munching People) Factor
As a complete aside, when the lunchtime pangs of hunger kicked in, it was time to take a break and meet up with my girlfriend for some grub.
I have to say it. Next to the
ungainly nerds (no offense, making fun of dweebs is never cool, because the moment you have a problem with your phone or computer, who’s going to be your best friend?) digging through the modern stuff, coupled with the
waves of balding middle-aged men with fat rippling through their stretched to capacity, sweat-stained shirts looking through the old stuff at card shows, is there a more repulsive group of people anywhere in the world than what is seen stuffing their faces in a mall food court??
No frickin’ way!!! BLECH!!!
Anyway, after overpaying like
Dean’s Cards for the privilege of eating a footlong
hero (yes, it’ll always be a “hero,” not a “sub” or “hoagie” or “grinder” or “torpedo”), I decided to cruise back towards the cavernous former
Forever 21 store that served as the show’s venue.
On this short walk is where our tale commences...
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8. Gunfight at the OaKland Corral
(This entire ‘event’ took a mere handful of seconds, and would mean nothing to other humans, but the enduring and misguided passion we have for our teams makes us baseball fans an entirely different animal.)
As I strode back, the mall’s drab, industrial-gray floor covering in front of me suddenly became empty...
deserted, like the street outside the saloon in a movie western. Out of nowhere,
a lone, silhouetted figure appeared in the distance and slowly began making his way towards me...with something
green on his head.
Are keys jangling in his pocket...or is that metallic clicking sound coming from a pair of spurs????? Wait, did a tumbleweed just roll past the entrance to Sephora???!!! What’s making those terrifying and echoing sounds...are there rattlesnakes in this shopping center????!!!!
(Cue the infamous Clint Eastwood movie “waaah wah waaah waaaa-aaaah” sound effect.)
Finally coming into focus and stopping a mere ten paces away,
this buckaroo looked about the same age as me and he was proudly wearing
an old Oakland A’s hat. It wasn’t some newer thing from the
‘Bash Brothers’ years. No, sir, its well-faded and weathered green and yellow told me it came from the
1973-era A’s!!!
Channeling Indiana Jones, I woefully grumbled,
“Why’d it have to be the 1973 A’s??” As I stood there in my faded blue,
1973-era Mets hat.
His quick glance at my head told him exactly who my team was, and he nearly imperceptibly squared his shoulders to face his enemy
(I’m sure I mirrored his movement to also face MY enemy).
As my brain growled,
“This mall ain't big enough for both of us!!” I imagined spitting a gob of tobacco juice at his feet.
Sadly, it was all just an act. Since I’m the only
Mets fan west of the
Pekos, I was alone. No one would be galloping in to help me circle the
orange and blue wagons.
Both he and I recognized this for what it was, an unavoidable duel between hated adversaries.
It was high noon in front of the Hello Kitty store, but we both knew full well that my
Mets had already lost this gunfight over a half a century ago in
The World Series...4 games to 3.
He didn’t need a
Colt ‘Peacemaker’ in his holster to prevail. The only thing he needed was already hanging inside whatever ballpark the
Athletics call home - signage boasting
“1973 World Champions.”
When
1973 comes up, my thoughts go to
Raquel Welch,
Pam Grier’s funbags
(no offense, I’m obviously referring to her purses), and
Ann B. Davis as Alice (yeah, sometimes my freaky tastes veer towards the matronly, but I won’t apologize for that). That’s what real men think about, but this guy wasn’t pondering
delicious 70’s babes...his reverie told me he was off thinking about
Darold Knowles and
Bert Campaneris and
Reggie, about
Willie Mays losing balls in the sun, and about his boyhood hero,
Joe Rudi, playing flawlessly even though the blinding rays in
Oakland made it feel like those long ago games were being played on the surface of
Mercury.
I searched his eyes for a hint of compassion, maybe a little,
“It’s all right, buddy,” to ease my pain, but he offered nothing. Not even bothering to meet my eyes, he only proffered a
deliberately slow and knowing tip of his green hat to say,
“Eff you and your Big Apple losers!!! 'Miracle Mets,' my ass!!!!”
He was silently laughing out loud as a smirk filled his hate-filled soul.
I guess there are none so loud as those who will not speak. (Whoa!! Someone call Bartlett's and get that quote in the next edition!!)
As he happily walked off into the sunset
(literally, the store was called “The Sunset Emporium”), I was left with the last vestiges of my masculinity destroyed by his
yellow and green stagecoach rolling over me.
I never stood a chance...you can’t change the past.
9. Epilogue: The H.O.W.D.Y. (Hotties on Walls Delighting You) Factor
As the dust settled
(see what I did there?), it was time for me to do the
‘walk of shame’ and mosey on back to the show. I was feeling as low as a horse hoof in mud
(ibid.), but then a saving grace appeared. Everywhere I looked, the same, oft-repeated
poster of a trio of soaking wet, racially diverse, gorgeous ‘fillies’ who were falling out of their skimpy bathing suits was visible. Don’t reckon I can tell you what in tarnation these ads were trying to sell to people,
but gazing at them made my diminished testosterone levels shoot up faster than a buzzard on a carcass!!!!
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10. The Apparent Unimportance of Nothingness
A young guy was doggedly trying to sell his card to a dealer, and he kept referring to the prices on his phone with choruses of,
“They always sell for $125. Always! I want $125 for it.”
The reply was,
“I’ll give you $80, and that’s being generous.”
“But it always sells for $125. Be fair! I need $125.”
After a few rounds of this same conversation were repeated and in the books, the seller finally said with exasperation,
“Only $80. Let’s see if you can grasp this. What does this card sell for?”
“$125. See?” (as he showed him his phone.)
“Okay, so if I buy it from you for $125, what price can I sell it for?”
“I told you!! $125!! Every time!!”
Pausing a few moments in the hope that
enlightenment would enter the kid’s brain, he asked,
“Do you really not see what I’m getting at???”
Now mumbling to himself, the kid huffed and puffed and stormed off.
Looking for support, the seller remarked,
“This is my job. The boy wants me to buy his card for $125 and maybe I can re-sell it for $125, but probably less. No profit. Nothing!! He can’t grasp that simple concept...and he thinks I’M the bad guy?? When did they stop teaching basic economics in school??”
I commiserated,
“You can’t teach common sense.”
11. Would You Like an Order of Despise With That?
As a pair of guys were happily digging their way through some bins, I could tell that one of them was brand new to the vintage game. His buddy kept explaining the differences in
Topps designs to him, and would test his newfound knowledge by pulling out a
1959 common and asking,
“What year is this one from?”
The other guy thought for a moment and replied,
“It’s the knothole layout. You said the 58’s have the empty colored backgrounds, like this one (as he pulled a 1958 card from the bin)...so it’s from ‘59, right?” (And the crowd roars!!!!!!)
Exclaiming,
“Very well done!” I gave him a fist bump.
(Both were really good guys, so we got to talking about all sorts of things.)
Being all giddy as they
pored through the final toploaders in search of gold, they readied their stack of
‘keepers’ to buy. The more ‘expert’ of the two enthusiastically focused his smile on the serious, bespectacled seller and said,
“Wow, all of this is incredible!!! It’s obvious you’ve been a COLLECTOR for a long time!!”
With an unmistakeable contempt in his voice,
and seemingly ready to rap the guy’s knuckles like a yardstick-wielding nun yelling, “Sinister!! Sinistro!!” at my left-handed sister in Catholic school (TMI), the seller dismissed him with a corrective,
“No I’ve been a VENDOR a long time!” As if to separate his lordly self from the common riffraff of the regular collecting community.
Note to self: Revise
Chapter One, Page One of
‘The Idiot’s Guide To Selling Baseball Cards’ to include,
“Always display derisive scorn towards highly-spirited customers.”
12. Random Funny Moment
As I was checking past sales data on my phone
BOOM!! the site went down. I hit refresh and hit refresh and hit refresh again, nothing. So I held my phone up high...I dunno, to
‘try to reach’ the Wi-Fi or whatever and get a signal.
Don’t think everyone’s completely reliant on their phones at card shows??
At the very moment I did this, people as far as the eye could see, everywhere across the floor, were all suddenly holding their phones up in the exact same frickin’ manner,
suffering the same indignity of having their Wi-Fi taken away.
In the old days, people used to hold their hands up to the heavens for
Jesus, now they do it to see what an
SGC 5 1963 Topps Manny Mota RC should sell for.
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13. Meet Me in the Middle...of Park Place and Fort Knox
While waiting to chat about a pair of
Jim Palmer rookie cards, I stumbled into a fascinating negotiation unfolding in front of me.
A pair of guys -
seemingly a lead negotiator and a ‘bag man’ with the money - wanted to reach a deal on a variety of slabbed cards
(I couldn’t see the grade numbers) spread out on the glass display. The two main prizes were a
1950 Bowman Jackie Robinson and a
1957 Topps Mickey Mantle. Among the other things were a few overly-colorful modern cards with blue
Sharpie signatures on them -
‘hot’ autographed rookie or chase cards or something.
Back and forth they went in a spirited and respectful manner, with the
buyer time and again offering a
(very large, but still too low) number, and the
seller (while explaining his pricing and punching numbers into a calculator) countering with a
(slightly reduced, but still much) higher number.
At one point
(referring to the Robinson), he said,
“This is literally the cheapest you can buy this card for in this grade anywhere on the planet. I checked. You can search your phone as long as you want, there isn’t a lower one on this great big, spinning, blue beach ball.”
(Quite poetic!!! Wonder if back in the day he was using his student loan money to buy cases of 1990 Score cards while studying for an English Lit degree, but that’s pointless conjecture.)
Finally, the talks reached the point where the two sides were close enough
(metaphorically, their beer bellies were bumping each other) that the
end game was imminent. Holding out his hand to shake, the
buyer said in a hopeful fashion,
“Meet me in the middle??”
Let me say this: When I ask a dealer to
‘meet me in the middle,’ it’s when I only want to pay
50¢ for a
1972 Topps Moe Drabowsky card he wants a buck for. I will say,
“Seventy five cents?” If he comes back with,
“I’ll let it go for eighty,” my reaction would be,
“That’s too rich for my blood.”
So, take a wild guess what the ‘meet me in the middle’ price was here??
It was a
“Holy guacamole!!!” (ugh, I can’t stand avocados) inducing $17,300!!!!!
YOW-ZA!!!!!
With the seller accepting the deal,
(earlier, it was agreed that this would be a cash transaction) a perfectly uniform stack of
one hundred and seventy three newly minted
(or is it “printed”?) $100 bills was slid across the table.
It was like a scene out of a heist film, and I expected the seller to say,
“The serial numbers are non-sequential, right?”
He handed the stack to his assistant who then disappeared somewhere. Returning only seconds later, he gave a
subtle nod to indicate the cash was the correct amount
(did he have a currency counting machine hidden back there???), and the sale was finalized with more handshakes.
Whatever the opposite of a monied collector is, that’s who your humble correspondent is,
so this transaction was so above and beyond what I’m used to that it was very cool to behold.
14. California...The World’s Mental Asylum
Complete randomness here, but how about a last minute giggle?
Driving back home from the venue, we spotted something that would be quite odd to anyone not forced to deal with the daily lunacy of
The Golden State.
A guy was pedaling his bike down a heavily trafficked
(shouldn’t that be spelled “trafficed”?) street with, whaddaya know, a giant
German Shepherd casually standing without a care in the world on his head and shoulders.
This is a waaaaaaaaaaaay zoomed in part of the only photo my girlfriend was able to snap out of the passenger side window (from a very far distance) as we turned off of the road, so at least we got something...
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(
Editor’s note: I did say,
“WTF!!,” and whipped a uey to wait at the light, so we could get back on that road for a better picture of the dynamic duo, but the intersection was a mess and by the time we returned to pursuing our quarry,
POOF!!! they had vanished just like my youth. You always regret the pictures you don’t take.)
Want further lunacy? Do I even have to mention that although it was a
balls-blistering two thousand and forty three degrees out, the bike rider was dressed from head to toe in thick, fully black
(heat absorbing) winter gear, as if he and
Lance Arf-strong (thank you, I’ll be here all week) were headed up to
Squaw Valley for a weekend ski getaway????
Until next time, my fellow table tilting dueling collectors!! 
Darn it, I hope there are no typos in thing. Where did I put my damn reading glasses??