Any news from the BIG SHOW?

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Posted By: warshawlaw

An interesting show. It was way better organized and in a much better facility than Cleveland. Anything pre WWI is on fire. Prices were much higher than last year and dealers were not moving on them much. Inventory seemed lower than last year. Those who did negotiate, or who had inventory that was not repriced recently, had their stuff gobbled up by dealers before the show even opened. The show was picked clean on set-up day except for full retail sellers and sellers with stuff that was just hard to go through. I heard lots of "you just missed it; another dealer bought it" stories and I was there on friggin' Wednesday evening! Most of the good prewar deals I got were from soruces that either hadn't updated large inventory prices or who had stuff buried in unappealing piles. I came home with a lot of cards, but nothing earth-shattering. It was more of a fill in the holes show. I did find some really great boxing stuff this year (unlike last year) but that's O/T. Some picks:

E135 Collins McCarthy McGraw
E105 Mello Mint Lajoie (thanks John Billingsley)
E90-1 Chance, Collins, Clarke
several 1930 and 1931 Zeenuts commons in ex-ex+
W517 Heilman [sic] and Wilson
W517 Mini O'Doul, Vance, Klein
1949 Japanese bromide O'Doul (thanks Gary Engel)
1926-29 PC back exhibits Scott and Meusel
1931 Exhibit 4 0n 1 Lazzeri-Dickey-Pennock-Coombs ad back
1922 Exhibit Ross Young [sic]
W cards of Kid Gleason and Grover Alexander
1947 Signal oil Ernie Lombardi
1952 Mother's Cookies O'Doul
1920s AZO PC of Christy Mathewson and Harry Greb (middleweight champ)

I also picked up a stack of exhibits about a foot tall.

The social scene was great. Put lots of names to faces. Went to dinner the 1st 2 nights at a fine steak house with several board members. Kudos to our peerless leader for the party on Friday night--very well attended (wait till someone posts the group photos), good food. We are getting old, though--most of us found the bar too noisy to stay at and went back to the hotel for drinks. I understand that some of the auction houses had some nice events but being a low-roller, I wasn't at those.

Next year we are kicking around the idea of an auction at the dinner for N54 attendees.