1572 - National Recap Chicago 2026

Foreign. Welcome Dr. James Beckett Sports Card Insights. Thanks Sponsors Topps Panini Upper Deck Heritage Auctions Hugging the Scott Auctions, Mike's Stadium Sports Cards, burbank sports cards compse.com and Beckett Media Beckett Grading Beckett Authentication Recap my experience at the 2026 National Sports Collectors Convention held in Chicago this past week. I am back and I'll get back to normal in another week or so. But it was great. Very crowded. I don't want to say too crowded. I think it was maximally crowded. I don't know that it can get any bigger in that facility. I think we have outgrown that facility. I've been to every national and to my way of thinking and observation, this was the biggest one yet. Organizers, they don't normally announce official attendance figure and I think there's gotta be some financial or political considerations for why they don't because I think they've got a lot to brag about this year, whether it was 150,000 through the turnstiles over the five days or 200,000. Maybe it was a lot, but maybe they pay extra if the attendance is bigger for services or something like that. So for some reason they one-of-one publish the number. But the energy was unmistakable. Again, the biggest one ever in Chicago for sure, and bigger than the Anaheim show from back in the early 90s. That was a madhouse as well. But long lines when you walk up in the morning. If I came around that way there'd be long lines outside all the way down several blocks. It was as much as the Stevens center the Rosemont facility can handle next year. I don't think it can be bigger. I hope it can be better. The atmosphere inside was electric, but it was also cold. That's a lot better than heat. When the air conditioning didn't work very well five years ago. That's no fun. But I always stuck a pullover in my backpack and obviously I wear very comfortable shoes. I'm sitting around at dollar boxes for half a day each day it seems like. But I'm still getting in 10,000 steps every day and a lot more some days I don't regard it as so physically demanding. But you're tired when you get back to the room and you want to go to sleep. I bring water with me. I've got energy bars, so I'm pretty self contained and I'm generally working with dealers that know me and I know them and so it's very compatible, very enjoyable. So it started on. I know some guys will get there Tuesday, but not Me, I've got my hands full with getting there Wednesday after lunch. The flight was delayed So I missed 45 minutes. And I'm not going to get mad at American Airlines. They got me there safely, but I don't need any warmup. I've told you. My warmup was two weeks ago at the Dallas card show. So I hit the ground running. I am ready to go. The first stop was the singles club. A standing appointment for me. In fact, a lot of people on Wednesday, they know that's where I'm going to be and so I have some good visiting time there. Singles club gets me a chair and kind of puts me on the corner where I'm not disturbing the other people. People can walk by and I can interact with them without disturbing the other dollar box searchers. But singles club's been great. They'll bring me boxes, they give me a chair, they gave me some water, so it's great. Faithful to them, they've been faithful to me and I look forward to next year because they spend the whole year picking up material and they act like they're just picking up material for me, but they're actually picking up material for everybody. And I have a certain thing I'm looking for and they're getting the gist of that, but they buy huge collections but basically they're rolling it out their stuff. Wednesday is the first tranche and then Thursday is some more and then Friday is the last. The Wednesday stuff was good, the Thursday not as good, the Friday stuff was really good and that's it. And then Saturday they're looking to sell out and so they sell it all out. They have other stuff but their dollar box quality stuff is what I go for. So they're my guys. There's others, but they're my first choice when I go there. And after that I'm a free agent. I am not for sale, but I am a free agent. I am semi retired. But every dollar box dealer is different. They have different strategies and you can look if they've got a quarter box and a dollar box or if they've got a dollar box and then a five dollar box, you kind of get an idea of what they're going to put where. And I'm pretty quick at sizing things up. Again, I'm more on the supply side than the demand side. I know what I'm looking for. It's hard to explain. They think they know what I'm looking for, but then I'll pick out some stuff that. Why would you pick out that it's because it's the tougher color variation or some kind of different back that's harder or background. But every time when I go to a new place, I just pull out a handful of cards and I'm milliseconds on each card. But if I pull out a handful of 50 or 100 cards, I. I'm expecting to pull some cards out of every handful that I go. I don't know. They pick out 2% of the cards. But I'm disappointed if I'm not picking out as I'm going through. Especially when the cards are random. In fact, I like random better. It's more of a challenge if it's multi sport and if it's all a big run of something that I know. Another. I just can make quick work of that. It's just not for me. So I have good discipline. As I've said, I run out of time before. I run out of money. Bought from about six dealers, but I generally don't buy one or two cards. I want to buy groups of cards. So I'm going sit down, look through the box. There were a couple other dealers that looked promising, but I went through a whole row and I Beckett out two cards. That's not enough if you're pulling out two without a 600. So I thought if I have time, I'll come back to. I'm not going to have time for that. Interestingly, two of the people out of the six that I bought from live within a hundred miles of me here in Texas. So I went all the way up there. But it was either different or more than what they usually bring when they're set up in Dallas. So that was great. And the national is unique. There's more competition, there's and more buyers there too. But that was great. I'm realizing the beginning of the show and the end of the show should be my primary buying periods. In the beginning, the boxes haven't been Beckett over and at the end, some dealers are marking things down quite a bit. And I'm not at the point it would be very rare. I've done once I bought out a dealer's stuff. But that's probably not something I'm ever going to do again because I'm really trying to reduce what I have. But when the markdowns go way down, I'm eager to get in there and see what I can get. So Wednesday and Thursday buying Sunday buying Friday and Saturday would be a mix. And especially I'm seeing that Friday. This time Friday afternoon I had A bunch of meetings and did some roaming around, catching up with people. Did a little bit of that on Saturday as well. So people time Friday and Saturday and obviously in the evenings. Okay, so Wednesday was taken up by singles club and then Thursday in the daytime I hit some more boxes again. Those are my prime buying times again with some friendly interruptions from some nice collectors, some of whom I already knew and some of whom I haven't. Rarely meet anybody in the hobby that I don't think is a nice person. The Thursday night I went to this YouTube content creator gathering in shoeless Joe's not really a YouTuber in the Velocity sense because I'm an audio guy, but I do post my episodes to YouTube and some people prefer that and they can make comments there, but it's pretty static. But at that YouTube gathering, again, I'm not really watching on YouTube, but one of my favorite podcasts is Jeremy Lee's Sports Carts Live. And so there's Joe Perot, I could recognize him and David Chase who are regular contributors with the Jeremy and really enjoyed that. And there were a bunch of others too. So it seemed like a couple hundred mostly content creators. I don't think they were checking credentials at the door, but it was very nice. Sponsored by CIA, Jeremy and Chris Sewell. But at that event and during the week, I've decided not to do interviews during the show. I want to buy cards and I want to not have necessarily a prescribed interview. I want to connect with people and basically I bumped into some people that I really want to have on the podcast and we'd be catching up and they'd start telling me a great story. So hey, I want you on the podcast. I want to hear that for the first time on the podcast. So in the next month I've got a few of those that are teed up and that's going to be great. That's going to be great. Friday morning with some more buying. Friday afternoon was the meetings. I had a good meeting with Tim Getch over at Comp C. I've been a long time Comp C user and their podcast sponsor, but I see those discussions a little bit. As former owner to current owner, I was owner of my business and so I kind of look at things vicariously and so Tim's got a tiger by the tail. He's great, but business is complicated and I'm a pro bono consultant. So happy to help my friends and friends of friends that's spent a lot of time with that and I really enjoy that. Thank Tim. Has success challenges. He doesn't have survival challenges, he has thrive challenges because they're just doing more and more cards and getting bigger and bigger. And that size is a challenge in and of itself. It's an opportunity. Friday night, after all that, that's become my night of the traditional dinner. Cannabis in a private room, nice restaurant. I got a nice steak and some nice one-of-one Sat next to Kit Young, one of my good buddies in the hobby for 50 years. That was great. Acoustics were better. Jumping ahead Saturday night, I'm realizing that every other night I'm no longer going to go to a dinner that requires a car to get there because getting the car out of the convention and hotel complex and driving there and all that, I'm just not gonna do that anymore. John Newman was so kind to give me a ride. He's done that number of years. But I'm gonna encourage him to find a place for our hobby hotline dinner. That's walking distance. I love to walk and it's walking off a big meal is funny. That was great. That's been a tradition as well. So I don't one-of-one lose the tradition, but I one-of-one lose the driving aspect. It's a great thing about the Rosemont area there. So many choices. So surely we can find something. Saturday before that included the Shark Tank presentation. That was very well done. There was a dress rehearsal in the morning which is on brand for Jeremy Lee, who's the most prepared podcaster and content producer in the industry, I think. But then the afternoon held the actual event and Jeremy did a great job. The four companies with the individual presenters, they did a great job. The video production was very professional and I was pleased. They weren't asking for a certain amount of money for a percentage of their company, but they were presenting their idea and they were very open to receiving reactions, suggestions and any contacts and possible help. And of course I'm next to Scott Locke, the Inferno Red and Ed Snyder as right hand man. And I'm long time in the hobby and I am a pro bono consultant. So I've done a lot of consulting, mostly outside the hobby, but certainly I'm happy to help anybody that's trying to improve the hobby or trying to improve the world. My only negative is I don't want to help companies that are competing or antagonistic to my former company, to the brand that has my name on it. But other than that, if you want trying to help make the hobby better, I'm happy to give some of my time. So after the Shark Tank again just lingered there that was a highlight. Again, thank you, Jeremy. And one of the highlights of that was I got to make some opening remarks just very briefly and I got to do another Tribute in front of people. I'm on the Mike Burkus memorial stage and I'm thinking, I don't know if the other people knew Mike but he was a close friend of mine and he's passed away now and certainly a giant in the industry and a co founder of the national and I knew him from before that. I've been to every national but before that he and I talked about this idea that he and Gavin and Steve had and I thought you got my full support. And we did fully support it. So when I'm done with that, I've only got an hour left and so I'm walking back through and I passed this dealer that he had half off on his table and I'd walked by before and I thought not going to do it and everything was half off. So I thought I'll look into it. So I jumped in there for better part of that last hour and I thought this is going to work, I'm going to come back on Sunday. I did have a prior obligation for early Sunday morning. I said I'm going to come back Sunday because this guy had good stuff. The main problem, he had too much good stuff. So I really Goldin get through it all, which bothers me but I did the best I could. So that Sunday morning I visited this dealer I've been to before and he is the maximal write offs. On the last day I Beckett up a bunch of cards. The lower the price the more cards I could pull. But I get to the end of it and I Beckett a whole bunch of cards and I said, you want to count them? He said no, you can count them. So I counted them and then he got out his calculator and he said that'll be $223. And I went to my wallet and I pulled out $200 bills and I was kind of like. And I didn't know what to say, I didn't have a name tag on. And so I pull out two hundreds and then he's looking at me as I pull out a 20 and three ones. I put them down on the table. I thought he's just gonna say, Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh just thanks for your business. I thought he'd just pick up the 200. He said, no, he Beckett up all 223 and he said, thanks for your business, I'll be right here, same place next year. And I thought, maybe I will, maybe I one-of-one It didn't leave me with a good taste in my mouth. But again, I'm not going to say what state that guy was from, but he was from a certain state and it wasn't Texas. So a little small gesture on the end there. He could have said 220, but I thought for sure he was going to say 200 and he said, not 223. No trades. So that keeps it simple. No trade night, no trades. I don't sell anything. I'm just buying, visiting, reconnecting a few meetings and contemplating future podcast conversations. Signed some stuff. No problem with that. Several baseball Volume one number ones of the magazine, a couple of books. One guy tried to give me 10 bucks for my autograph. He said, would you autograph this? And he held out a 10 bill and I frowned and he I think he was thinking, oh man, I've insulted him by being too cheap. And I said, no, I'm not insulted that this is $10 too much. I don't want to charge for my autograph. I'm honored to be asked. I've been so blessed by this hob. So I don't want to charge. But there were other thoughtful gifts. I don't know that I'd call them random acts of kindness because they were like a specific thank you and I really appreciate that. Good mix. At the show, there was some Pokemon and other TCG stuff, but it wasn't overwhelming. To the sports side, there's some Pokemon stuff in the dollar boxes. There could be something great in there and I wouldn't know it if it's Pokemon. I haven't seen it. I can't use the same metric if it's baseball or football or basketball or hockey or soccer. Even if I know I don't usually see it, then I can pick it up. I lost my voice on Saturday morning, so I don't know if that was from Friday, but I got Shark Tank coming. I thought they gave me a lapel night microphone, which really helps. Plus I drank a bunch of water. Can't do trade nights. The cards I buy, I need to do a little bit of processing when I get back to the room, so I don't want to be back so late. I'm not a trader, I'm a card collector. Didn't do much on the cellular service or Yu-Gi-Oh Fi. It slows me down if I got to look up the card. It's just I don't do it. So again, I'm a Price Guide guy. So I gotta cop a dollar to make sure I got a good deal. I'm saying it just doesn't make sense. It's pattern recognition, looking for attributes. There's a few players, obscure players do well for me. So that's my lane and back variations and color variations and things like that. My packing was almost perfect. I bring the collapsible duffel inside my regular luggage. When I go home, I pull that out and it fit the extra cards that I had that wouldn't fit in my suitcase and my backpack. I even had a little bit of room left. So I. Very mathematical. I calculated it. I could have bought a few hundred more cards. But you don't want to go too much. The cards are sloshing around and have any problem with checking the bag. I know to check the bag that has cards that are not very valuable in it and dirty clothes and things like that. So on my carry on, I'm putting what I think are the better cards. So what am I gonna do with the cards? I got my comp c, I've got ebay, and then I've got stuff that's just for me that I just enjoy that I can put in the back here in my card cave. But I'm a card guy. I like having cards. I love sorting cards. I don't love selling cards, but I love buying cards. So this is good. It's a game I play at the national, and I one-of-one this year. Other people can one-of-one too. I'm not competing against anybody except myself. I came home tired, but not too tired. My voice a little worn down, but that'll come back. I went to a voice doctor and he said when you're straining to talk in a crowd, it really strains your vocal cords. So plus not drinking enough water, I think so. Made some new relationships, renewed some friendships, got some podcast heat up, got home late Sunday night, unpacked, jumped into bed with my lovely wife, and I am back. But I'm going to start thinking about next year's national tomorrow. I'm going to give it another couple of days, but it was great. I will never miss if I possibly can make it. If I'm not there, then something's wrong. And I hope it's not the hobby. I wish the promoters good success and the hobbies really at a high point. I don't know how Chicago could top it next year. And Detroit. You better get ready for 2028 because this hobby is a freight train. So thanks, everybody. Be back again with another episode as soon as I can.