reports from the 2017 National

[buymycards]

My wife and I were at the National all day on Thursday and all day on Friday. We stayed until the closing bell on both days. My wife is a saint!

I have to say that I enjoyed every minute. The cards were awesome, most of the dealers were friendly and I was able to find a couple of cards for my collection.

We were able to see the Ty Cobb w/Cobb back that was on sale for 1.2 million. I thought about buying it, but was about 1.19 million short on funds. I bought a nice Weil baking card from Ed Hans, and I met Ted Z for the first time, which resulted in two separate, delightful conversations. I regret passing up a low grade T213-2 Cobb for $950, and I can't remember the name of the dealer who had it in his showcase.

There were 1000's of T206's available. I tried to get a rough count on the T206's in Levi's showcases, and a rough guess would be 1200-1500 cards.

There were 100's of T206 Cobbs, and 100's of 1933 Goudey Ruth cards. It is hard to believe that the prices don't come down when so many are available. I saw more 1952 Mantles than I had seen in previous years. Many dealers had one sitting in the middle of their showcase.

I generally start the show by go to the back of the room and looking at the tables of some of the smaller, non-corporate dealers. They are mostly easier to talk to and some nice deals are available. They come to sell cards, not just display them and talk to their friends. I went to Tony Gordons table, which was way back in the corner. He was close to the Topp's area, which was noisy all day long. I'm glad that I didn't have to listen to that noise all day.

The show was smaller than it was 2 years ago. There was a large area of the convention center floor that was unused and cordoned off by a curtain. I

There is one thing that amazed me. There were dozens of tables that were filled with box after box of 10 cent cards, or 25 cent, 50 cent, and $1 cards. These tables were always packed with people going through the boxes. It was difficult to get near the tables to take a look through the boxes. It is hard to believe that someone can pay their show expenses by selling 10 cent cards, but there were a lot of people giving it a try.

The dealers that specialized in modern cards, especially autographed cards, seemed to be busy all day long. Many of their tables were packed with customers, and these dealers seemed to be focused on selling. I can't tell you how often I went to a vintage dealers table and the dealer was chatting with a buddy and didn't care that he had customers at his table. Also, there are still a lot of dealers who aren't pricing their cards, so, unless they have something that I really want to look at, I just walk past their tables.

Like I said earlier, I enjoyed every minute. We had a free shuttle from our hotel to the convention center and back, and we used Uber every evening to take us to a restaurant and another Uber to bring us back to the hotel. Another thing that we did differently this year, to avoid the traffic congestion in Chicago, is that we got on the Metra train in Harvard and took the train to a station that was 2 miles from our hotel, then used Uber to get the to hotel.
It was cheaper to take the train and use Uber than it is to drive down down the tollway and pay for tolls and gas.

My only regret is that I was only able to stay for 2 days. I have never been to Cleveland, but I am thinking seriously about going next year.

Rick