The Further Decline of Brick & Mortar...

[Exhibitman]

This is a different era; a shop owner cannot get away with ridiculous pricing. Information is easily found and prices are readily analyzed. I was at a show last year and had a potential buyer scoping out prices on his iphone to figure out what to buy from my table. A dealer cannot just slap a ridiculous tag on everything [especially mainstream cards] and hope that ignorance prevails.

The other thing I cannot understand is the unprofessional, short-sighted attitude. It just blows my mind how parochial the thinking can be. There is a local shop I go to for supplies and occasionally for cards [usually just a pack rip]. I and a couple of other guys are running a local card show in May [you've seen our banners here...I hope]. We are trying to revive face to face collecting, looking at starting a card collectors club for locals, and generally trying to revitalize the hobby as a personal and social thing. We are offering card shops cooperative advertising: carry our flyers for the show and we will put out your flyers for the store at our show. No costs involved, just an effort to build community. I explain all of that to the shop owner and he says no to the offer. Nevermind that the collecting base has declined markedly over the last 20 years and that part of it may be the loss of personal relationship-based hobby events, and that we are looking to get people involved locally and off their computers.