Popped my cherry!!!- Experiences at my first National-Any other first timers??

[mrvster]

Hello All!!

I know there are a lot of threads already about the national, but I wanted to start my own thread to let everyone of my experiences at the first national I have ever attended......If this was your first national, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.......





a tiny background about myself-


I have been collecting all my life and I am in my mid 40's.......the last 25 years of it being mostly T 206 and T 206 printers scraps......

My friend John Dreker re-sparked my collecting passion in my early 20's (after a brief hiatus of 6 years in my late teens) to start collecting again on prewar( I was collecting all the new cards for years......closets full of bowman chrome, topps finest, the 70's, the 80's , the 90's.....ect....ect....I accumulated tons of the stuff!!!)

Then, one day johnny D. was showing me his T206 cards....I Always wanted wagner as a kid, when my mom and dad took me to the flea market every Saturday as a kid hunting for 70's and early 80's cards at Collingwood auction in NJ...)

and I picked up a HOFER in the Early 90's to wet my feet(Roger Bres Batting ), but never picked up any pre war or T206(.....I always wanted a T206 Honus Wagner since I was about 9 years old, as it was the pinacle back then, and is to me today!!.....almost entire life has been centered on picking up a T206 Wagner one day.....)
It is almost my life work to own one, but I haven't got there yet

I starting collecting hofers after that briefly, but it nothing for me........then I picked up a "2 namer" same name T206......I starting collecting the errors, smaller ones....I contemplated putting the set together in 2 namers(as doug b is doing right now), but that fizzled out after about 20 or so of them..i loved T206 because of the Wagner always....then I started collecting the set in small errors(crop marks, print marks, caption errors, off register ect ect) anything I could find small error t206 in the early 90's on that old "dial up" modem .....checking ebay all day long .....
bidding against Jim R and some other competitors that I am now good friends with today




scrap passion interest "sparked"


one day I got lucky on ebay....I was picking up errors , when I picked up a 2 back sovereign error card.....it was a little "weird" at first looking at it when I got it.....it looked more "weird" than the normal little T206 errors I picked up ...when I got it in hand, the card front hard a hard color shift( Sov Butler Port.) on front , and it was hand cut......the back had 2 sov backs split, plus a wst offset sov back.....with big "wavy" borders.....I thought it didn't loojk like any T206 I had ever got before....I called Johnny D to come over and check it out.......he came over and confirmed my suspicion....A T206 SCRAP!!! It Looked Wild!

ever since then, I was hooked....The freakier the scrap, the better!!!

I was on the hunt as much as possible on ebay daily for printers scraps now....and the rest is history....although my taste have brought me into the rarer variations, backs, and iconic cards, my true passion is the scrap....

grand pappy scrap man... a few others had joined my passion.......we all started to research and share knowledge of what we had seen over the years.....
Johnny D turned me on to Net 54 early on, and I was hooked on this site also! Even when it was the "old board"....then Leon took over(yeah)








Anyway, I am extremely busy with work and family obligations, so it is very difficult to "get away" for any extended period of time.....I live in N.J., so the national coming to AC was very exciting for me, I had missed the last national when it came to AC some 10 or so years back....I have attended shows like Philly, Ft Wash....Valley Forge, ect, ect...but never a "national"


I planned on taking vacation the whole week......and attending every single day......(I live only about an hour away from AC)...I wanted to display my entire collection and show off "THE CIRCUS'.....and meeting everyone....having dinners.....going to the Casinos.....and having a blast! well, that was the plan.....


REALity-

work and family had other plans for me

the jist- I got to attend Wednesday Night and Saturday all day at least....


I am being pulled away right now.....but I will post my experiences about Wednesday and Saturday later this evening, or early tomorrow.....


Please feel free to post anything about the national until I return to post my first time experience attending....


sorry about the delay....


Sincerely....
Johnny V