2018 Cleveland National Report - Sneak Peak, Round 2 and Round 3 is LIVE

[bounce]

OKAY GANG! Saturday was my last day at the show, so this will cover that and an overall wrap up.

By Saturday morning, I have to be honest - I was pretty sick of baseball cards and memorabilia. I don't know if it's just my age, or possibly coming down off the high of acquiring the T204 Ramly Walter Johnson and thinking no way there's an encore to that, but upon entering the show Saturday there was literally nothing else I was particularly interested in chasing. As it was, that actually worked out pretty well for me because one of my buddies was at the show and had several autograph guests that he wanted to me to help him with.

Here are a few pictures, in all I got to meet Roger Clemens, Rickey Henderson, Daryl Strawberry and Cal Ripken Jr.






Thanks to my efforts, my buddy gave me one of the Clemens autograph tickets. On short notice, I had to find something to get signed. Being from Houston, I actually have several items signed by him already but there was one in particular I've always wanted and this seemed to be the perfect setup to get it. The other one I've had in my collection for awhile, but this is the perfect complement to it. 1986 MLB All Star Programs - played right here in Houston, and Rocket was the MVP.


I did manage to look around some more, and ultimately decided I just couldn't pass up on a couple more items for my Presidential autograph collection. I got these from a dealer I've bought from now for the past four Nationals and done a couple other deals in between. He is someone I really have enjoyed getting to know because of these shows, and I can honestly say in the non-card and really non-sport space, he is one of the absolute best. He even said to me that he was disappointed that we hadn't actually done any business yet and was wondering if something was wrong. I told him of course not, I'd simply been noodling on several of the items trying to decide my course of action. We settled on prices on for these, and we will soon be discussing another couple items as well.

These are signed by Grover and Frances Cleveland, and Zachary Taylor.



As was the case Friday, I was even more of a wanderer on Saturday especially considering I was wearing down. But my eye was still pretty sharp, and I saw this sitting on one dealer's table who obviously didn't deal in unopened. Pretty sure he took as part of a trade, and I got what I felt like was a smoking hot deal on it. 1981 Topps Football wax box, BBCE wrapped.


Shortly before heading to the airport, I took one last run by the BBCE booth. I wanted to see the results of the 86 Fleer box break, and also just wanted to see what might be left in the cases. This one caught my eye. Just WOW!


And finally, dumbest thing I saw today. My buddy and I literally stood here for AT LEAST 5 minutes, but to no avail. No one ever showed up, no one yelled from a short space away to say "coming". An empty booth, with a free phone and lunch. I could say a lot of different things here, but I'm just going to be quiet and let you decide the word or phrase you'd use to describe this scene.