My National Experience...A Quarter Century in the Making!!

[Moyni]

I wanted to give a recap of my experience at the National. I apologize in advance if it is boring and/or long. I have already posted this on some other forums, but thought the Net54 folks would appreciate my pickups a little more.

The last National I attended was in 1990 in Arlington, Texas. I was a sophomore in high school and I was trying to buy as many Darryl Strawberry cards as I could. Oh how things have changed.

Fast forward to this year. My wife and I are here in Cleveland. I have a VIP Pass so we went to the Sneak Preview today. Here are my thoughts...

One of the first people I recognized upon getting to the convention center was Gilmore. He was standing outside and I went up and introduced myself. I got to meet several other FCB members and that was great. Gilmore and the whole FCB contingent were tremendously nice and gracious to me even though I was probably bugging the crap out of them.

As I walked into the hall, all I could think was, Holy @#$% this place is huge!!" It just goes on and on. Row after glorious row of cards, memorabilia, wax, supplies, etc. It is truly amazing. I knew that I needed a strategy quick because I only have Wednesday and Thursday at the show. I decided to make the goal of walking the entire floor this first day, take some notes and return to do a bulk of my buying tomorrow. That was blown up immediately.

My first purchase was a 1951 Bowman Yogi Berra PSA 4. I picked it up for $110. Not bottom dollar, but I was happy.



I then bought a couple of 2014 Allen & Ginter hobby boxes to open tomorrow for the Topps Wrapper Redemption. I paid $90 each. I also bought a 2014 Topps Factory Set to continue my Topps set run for $37. I have every Topps set since my birth year of 1973.

My wife was the first in line for the free Dale Murphy autograph at the FCB Booth. BTW, they have a ton of great cards available at their booth. The line for Dale Murphy quickly got to 100+. There was some limit on how many autos he would sign, but as the first ones, we were in no danger of getting shutout. Gilmore was even nice enough to get my wife a chair since we were waiting well over an hour. I ended up getting a full size bat signed for a friend and my wife got a 1980 Topps card signed for me. He was really nice and talkative even though he had already been signing in the VIP Room for over an hour.



With that done, I continued to tackle the goal of getting through the whole floor.

I added my first HOFer auto of the show. I bought an awesome Satchel Paige auto on his Redbirds business card for $190. I have wanted one of these for a long time and I was thrilled to get this.



I then got a PSA/DNA slabbed Dave Bancroft for $130. Followed shortly by a Leon Day auto GPC and Red Faber auto GPC for a total of $60. They are both JSA and that was a great deal.







I then picked up my second vintage card of the show. A 1954 Topps Ted Williams #250 PSA 2.5 for $100.



In between all of the purchases is a ton of walking and looking. It was great to see dealers that I was familiar with through auctions or ebay. I got to have some enjoyable conversations with the dealers and most were very gracious. I was shocked how much they were willing to haggle given that it was the first day. I didn't pay sticker price for a single thing I bought today.

I saved the best for last. The first day was about to shut down and as I was heading out the door, I revisited a booth I had seen earlier with some great HOFer auto pieces. One in particular captured my eye. After some negotiating which amounted to me spouting out a price, him countering and me walking away before he said, "Ok, I'll do it." It was a PSA/DNA slabbed GPC auto of Jackie Robinson. I paid a cool $1,000 for it. The signature is fantastic.




So, I am tired and overwhelmed. Ready to get some sleep and do it all again tomorrow.