Anyone get a bargain at the National?

[Exhibitman]

Picked up an R309 Ruth premium for a very nice price. Made my day Thursday.

[buymycards]

I don't know about anyone else, but when I go to the National I am not looking for bargains. I am looking for items that fit my collection. There are some outrageous prices at the National, but many of the items that I was looking for were reasonable, especially when you compare the National prices to some of the eBay museum BIN's. I bought a nice Weil Baking card from Ed Hans. He had it marked at $100 and I bought it for $85. Now, I usually won't pay $85 for a D329, but this was a nice card and I wanted it for my collection. Once in a while on eBay I can get a graded Weil in this condition for $40 to $65, but most of the Weil's on eBay are $150 to $300. Most of them have been listed on eBay for several years, and the sellers are not willing to come down much on price. So, for me, I am very happy with the price.

Ed had 13 (I think), T213-2's, all reasonably priced. I already had all of them in my set, so I didn't buy any. Another dealer had 5 T213-2's, again all at good prices, but I had all 5. One dealer had 3 of them for $25 each, very low grade. I have all of them, but I regret not picking them up at that price. 707 had several, which were priced high, and again, I have all the ones that 707 had.

One dealer had a decent T213-2 Cobb for $950. I wish I had made him an offer for it, but I was going through a "cheap" moment so I moved on. It was a nice card for the grade and I thought it was a good price for a Cobb.

So, there were some good deals around, but it took a lot of searching to find them.

Rick

[cliftons8]

I bought a very nice group of 9 T206 with stamp hinges on the back. With a little help all of the hinges came off cleanly. I paid $100 for the group.

I also bought a t202 with the center panel "Lord Catches His Man"--This is the one that has Joe Jackson pictured. I would say it is Vg/Ex and paid $40.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

clearly you overpaid...

[edhans]

Thanks so much for the shout out, Rick. I forgot to mention that I had a couple pages of the T82 actresses with the Coupon backs. I don't remember if it was you you was collecting them or another board member.

I had a good show despite all the overpriced cards on my table. Even better than the financial aspects were the social ones. It was great to see the folks that I only meet once a year and make new friends along the way.

By way of commentary on the issue of overpricing, I would observe that it's one thing to have VG T206 commons at $75.00 a pop and quite another to ask full retail or even a premium for scarce and rare issues that are difficult, if not impossible to replace. Price data may be quite out of date simply because the cards hadn't been offered for date in years.

[Republicaninmass]

It's mostly all about perception. Once in a while you'll find a pricing error, but most dealers have scooped them up by the time the public arrives. However, there are those rare cards in which you cant find anywhere, and in that case, just finding it is a "bargain".

[timn1]

Everybody who bought cards from my table got a bargain

Seriously, I got what I thought were very fair prices for a lot of the things I bought. Most of these were tough issues and I didn't expect them to be cheap.