Lionel Carter on 1970 West Coast convention

[trdcrdkid]

Despite Bob Jaspersen's efforts to organize a national sports collecting convention in 1956 (as I recently posted about here: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=221393), the first successful convention of this type was the First Annual West Coast Sport Collectors' Convention, held in Brea, California at the home of collector Jim Nowell on August 23, 1969. I posted about that convention and the other very early ones here: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=218969, though without any detailed account of what happened there. It turns out that Nowell wrote a very detailed account of that first convention for the November 1969 Ballcard Collector, and I'll try to post that in the next day or two.

What I'm concerned about here is the second West Coast Sports Collectors' Convention, held in 1970, also in Nowell's home. I posted a very brief one-sentence account of that 1970 convention from The Trader Speaks as part of a post on the conventions of 1970 in general (here: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=219073), but at the time I hadn't been able to find a longer account. Nowell wrote up the 1971 West Coast convention in issue #68 of the Ballcard Collector, which I posted here (http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=218371), but he doesn't appear to have written anything about the 1970 convention in Ballcard Collector, unless he did it in issue #54, which I don't have. Well, Lionel Carter flew in from Chicago to attend that 1970 West Coast convention (the first day, anyway), and he wrote up a characteristically detailed account for the September 1970 Sports Advertiser's Journal (mailed on September 18, less than four weeks after the event). Here is Lionel's account, including the auction (in which a 1952 Topps set failed to attract the minimum bid of $210), and his sale of an E92 Keeler for 50 cents.

[tiger8mush]

neat read, thanks for sharing and the background info!

[Stonepony]

Fun read. Interesting they were having auctions with just a hand full of people in a house.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by Stonepony

Fun read. Interesting they were having auctions with just a hand full of people in a house.

I wonder if there was colluding? Did they have bid paddles?

Thanks for posting these, David.

[ls7plus]

Fascinating! Thanks for posting.

Best wishes,

Larry

[trdcrdkid]

Here is Bob Jaspersen's article about the same convention from the September-October 1970 issue of Sport Fan. It's not nearly as long or detailed as Carter's account, but it does include one of the group photos that Carter mentioned on page 5. Note that Carter is the only one wearing a tie -- such get-togethers were still a new thing, and I'm guessing he got dressed up because he wasn't sure how formal or informal it would be. I've also scanned the back page of the issue, which shows that it belonged to Ray Medeiros, who was also at that 1970 convention, and is third from the right in the back row of the group picture. A lot of hobby publications in my collection (including all the Sport Fans from 1970-82) originally belonged to Medeiros, who always wrote the date he received each issue in the upper right corner of the front cover. This issue was postmarked October 14 and reached Medeiros on October 18.