Places You MUST See At The 2026 National!! Extra Innings With Graig & Darren!!

Oh, what's going on, everybody? This is me, Greg from Midlife Cards and Darren. Return to collecting. It's our off topic extra innings episode for July. My guy, Darren, how are you? Hello. No, this, this is the month of the national and we thought for our extra innings episode we would kind of give some suggestions of dealers to check out at the national this year. Dealers that we will both be visiting we've had good experiences with. So people who are regulars at the national or maybe, you know, first timers at the national, these are some guys that we think you definitely want to make sure you hit their table because depending on how long you're there, there's a very good chance you will not get to see every single table. So these would be tables you want to hit. So I'm going to go ahead and pull up on the screen. Can I throw an asterisk up there real quick? Yeah. These are tables that we both will be going to, likely buying, potentially buying something from. But if you've never been to the National, I highly recommend going to the big auction houses, take tables and, and booths and areas and looking at that stuff. Not necessarily to buy anything, but to just see some of the most incredible cards you've ever seen. Yeah, that's, that's a, that's a great point. And there's a museum aspect to the national as well. So if you go to the national website, it's NSCC show.com. we go to Chicago 2026 and the fourth thing down is interactive map. And it already has a list, has a map of the show and then it also has a database where you could search in any of these dealers and find out where they're at. So I'll zoom in a little bit. When you come into the show and you enter right here, this is gonna, it's like a fountain, roundabout drop off for like taxis and stuff. And then there's going to be a main foyer in here with an escalator to upstairs, which we'll reference at some point along here as well. And then I'll zoom in a little bit more. When you actually are in the main lobby here, the main entrance to the show is going to be right here. This is going to be. And the reason that's important to know is because the dealers get to pick their location. And the location picking is done based on seniority. So if you're a vintage card collector, those are the guys that have been around for a long time. A lot of them are going to be in this main first section right Here because they have first picks and they want to be by the main entrance versus if you are a modern card collector, a lot of those guys will be upstairs and then a lot of those guys will be all the way around back over here here by the autograph pavilion because these guys have lower picks. So just for what that's worth. So I'm going to let you go first, Darren, who is somebody that everybody needs to visit if they're going to the National? Stan. All right, we got Stan's vintage sports card. So again you just type it in right here and then when you click on pulls it up on the interactive map. So I'm going to zoom in here. So the way to get to Stan is you're going to go in the main entrance. You'll hang a right. There will be this center room right here which is kind of small. So this big. This is a big room here. There's a big room way back here. And then between them is a smaller room by PSA and Stan is kind of near the PSA booth. He'll be at tables 1727 and 1729 right here and here. So why is Stan somebody that people need to make sure that they visit in your opinion? Stan has great stuff. I mean, if you're again, vintage. He has great vintage stuff. The last five shows I've been to the toughest card on my list at all of those shows I ended up finding and buying from Stan. He's. His prices are reasonable. He's fantastic to work with. And I would say he's probably, you know, I can't always pick a favorite. He's one of my favorite vendors though, for sure. He's at the very top of my list. He has just as people out there listening. I would say he specializes mostly in pre war. He has some golden era stuff, but he has lots of T206s, tons of cracker jacks, lots of gowdy stuff like that. He also has more than just baseball. In fact, didn't you buy. You bought it? I bought a sports king Grange from him and the sports king Thorpe from him. Yeah. So he's got a wide variety. So that's the first pick there. Stan of Stan's vintage sports cards. Again, booth 1727 and 1729. All right, my first pick, a guy who I met at the national because they did a deal with him is a guy named Andy Geller. And Andy is affiliated. His table is the sports world booth. So Sports world here. So he's going to be booth 1326 and 1328, which actually is very close to Stan. Stan was right over here. But if I hit enter you'll see it pops up. If I click on it, I guess is right here. So right next to the PSA booth. If we zoom in here, Andy, there's usually a couple of guys that kind of share a booth in. Andy set up, he's a really cool guy. I bought a cy young portrait T206 from him and I bought in Cleveland. I bought a Walter Johnson hands at chest T206 from him. He's got lots of T206s, lots of Goudies. He's an, kind of an eye appeal guy. So a lot of his stuff is very high eye appeal. I think that our, our buddy Andrew Nuff Said did a deal with Trade and Cash last year and got a really nice Gowdy Ruth, if I'm not mistaken, from, from Andy. So just as I noticed, both of that are both Andy's and Stan's booths are more or less where they were last year. That one of the things you'll find is a lot of the dealers are very similar location to where they are there were last year. I've, because I've kind of studied over this a little bit and we'll talk about a few more dealers and where they are this year compared to last year. But yeah, for sure you'll want to hit Stan right over here and then you'll want to hit Andy at Sports World right in here. Okay, second pick from you, Darren. Tony. E trade. All right, Tony, is it Tony with an E? How's he do it? E trade. E trade. Oh, well, we should have tested this first, I guess. Oh wow. I'm pretty sure he'll be there. I think last year also he didn't have, he might be under a different dealer or something. Yeah, he, he, I think he, I think last year also he, he, he was under somebody. So last year he was right in here. He was in there somewhere. Yeah, he, I, I, I'm trying to remember, I think the last two years when I looked him up, I didn't see him on the list, but he's there. That's one of the hard things. Bank vault behind his, behind his table. And he has, you'll know it when you see it because A, he's got the big bank vault and B, he has probably the best selection of like rare early vintage stuff at the show. Yeah, he's got really high end stuff if you have a chance to chat with him. I don't know if he's bringing it, but he has a really cool 52 tops Jackie Robinson that he can show you. He won't sell it to you. Well, in like a nine, right. He has to say he want to sell it to you. And I would assume most of, most of our viewers aren't going to want to buy it, but it's really cool to see. Yeah, he's got it in the nine. It's the best known example. The 52 tops Jackie Robinson. All right, my next pick is gonna be my boy Ash at Legacy Cards. So if I go to Legacy Cards LLC now, last year Ash was kind of, he was like right here. So he's very, again, very similar. So there's kind of like a wall right here. So Stan again was right in here. Andy Geller was right in here. And so right around that wall there's like a snack bar right here and some restrooms over here. Ash is going to be right in there. And you know Ash, he's been on, on. I've done some conversations with him on the Sports Card Clubhouse via podcast. I've had some other things I featured on the channel with Ash. But he's a good guy and he's got an incredible collection. In fact, I went on his website last night and was looking at some of the stuff that he currently has in his inventory and he had like a dozen Gowdy roots. He's got like a dozen 52 mantles. Like he's just got like. I've never seen his inventory as stacked as it is at this moment. It's insane. So. And one of the nice things about Ash is he typically is willing to negotiate with you. Some dealers don't really move. Ash is willing to negotiate with you. I guess it depends on the card, but for a lot of the times he's willing to negotiate. Tell him Midlife Greg and return to collecting. Are you liking it's way and you think it's like, yeah, it's too much. At least ask him, you know, you know, give. Offer him something and see what he says. Because a lot, I mean he, he's always very open to making a deal for sure. And tell him Midlife Greg and return to collecting. Darren recommended him and, and that'll get him in a good mood right off the bat. That'll save you 50, 75 cents off of. No, no, that's not true. All you had one more that you had mentioned to me. Yeah. Which was. Go ahead, Garrett. Ballpark memories. So Garrett's got a YouTube channel. Super nice guy. Yep. Garrett. Why is Garrett. Yeah, tell us about why you pick Garrett. So I've sold cards to Garrett. I've bought cards from Garrett. Garrett is. Let me just freeze real quick. He's upstairs. And the upstairs area, the footprint is over to the right here. And it's supposed to be significantly larger than last year. So if you click on it, it pulls it way over here to the right because that's the upstairs footprint. So he's in booth 40022. Kind of near fanatics and veriswap up there. So go ahead with Garrett and apparently a massive restroom I didn't know was there. Yeah, no, Garrett's great to work with. He's very fair, he's very reasonable. He's a super nice guy. He's got a lot, I would say Garrett, obviously, I mean he has a little bit of everything. But you know, I think, Greg, correct me if you disagree. I think Garrett's the guy you want to go to if you're looking for some golden age stuff. He's definitely a golden age guy. He also pays really strong for high eye appeal stuff. So if you're looking to sell to a dealer because you need some quick cash and got a card you gotta get out of to make a deal happen and it's a high I appeal card. He pays super strong on that. I've sold some stuff to Garrett before and, and several of our friends have as well. And so he's a good, a good guy to sell to as well. Yeah, I agree. All right. And then my last pick is gonna be Alex of Alex cards. And Alex is one of the main non sport dealers in the show and he's also upstairs. So Alex is in 10013, so. Right. A couple aisles down from, from our buddy Garrett. And so he's on the gmc, the Greg Morris cards row there. And he is probably going to be the, the have the biggest inventory of non sports stuff. So if you're starting to dabble in that and you want to look at some turn of the century, you know, political, you know, character cards like George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Walt Disney stuff. Alex does a lot of stuff there and it's, you know, he's, he's an interesting. You mean, you don't mean Pokemon stuff? No, no, no. He has Pokemon on there and he might have a few early Pokemon cards. But I think, I think that's just the, like the topic or the, the, the category, the category of vintage cards and then non sports slash Pokemon. But yeah, so, yeah, so he's cool. Yeah. He's got like Greg said, right. He's the guy you go to if you want to get, you know, all those historic, historic Americana cards. Yeah. And, and one of the. If, if. Even if it's not your thing, which I know a lot of people, it's not. But if it's not your thing, but you just want to kind of see some of it, you go, I want to see some non sports stuff just to see what this is all about. It's cool to just check it out. And he's super nice and knowledgeable and helpful. So that would be my, my third choice. So we've got ballpark memories. We've got Stan's vintage cards. We've got Tony E. Trade who I'm. I'm thinking that it's just he, he's probably under a different dealer who he shares a booth with or something. We've got Ash, Andy Geller and then Alex of Alex cards. Now I do want to shout out a couple of other friends of the channel if you go into that third room. So you go past Stan and past Ash and you make your way back here. My friends at Card Ladder are right here and their booth is cool because one of the things they've always got are phone charging stations. They've got kind of like a, a bar area where you kind of sit and hang out and chat and they've got phone chargers. So if your phone starts dying and you need a charge, you can go hang out with them. They also give out a lot of merch if you're looking for a hat or a shirt or something. I know for me, when I go to rest my legs a fair amount, I'm gonna probably hang out over at the Card Ladder booth because they're good friends of ours. The channel and us have become pretty tight and so they're not just partners, they're also friends. So I got Card Ladder here is one of the friends of the channel. And then we've got Just Collect. The Just collect booth in 301, 304. This is, you know, not just. Just Collect and Leighton Sheldon in his inventory, which is also a fan, fantastic vintage dealer, but also auction wire will be set up at the Just Collect booth. So check out him. So if you zoom out a little bit again, if you go in the main entrance and just hug along the wall, he's right on the edge there. So main room, main entrance, head on back and, and check out Just Collect an auction wire and then. CIA. Yeah, we're CIA. Where's our buddies. They got an amazing booth this year. CIA is right here. So you go in the main entrance and you're going to have a lot of the big auction houses right here and then you're going to have some of the old timers in here and CIA is right there, right in the main entrance right here in 9:13. They are going to have some cards on display for their upcoming August auction. And if you're looking to sell anything that you want to auction off with CIA, you can do drop offs there, so. Or if you want to get autograph, you can also go to that booth. Theo will probably. I would think Theo would be hanging out there a little bit, but Jeremy Donson's there again. Tell them, you know, Darren and Greg said hey and, and recommended them. So check them out. Yeah, had to, had to shout out my friends and, and friends of the channel there as well. So I don't know, what do you, what do you think? Any other big things you had mentioned? A few of the. Yeah, like I, I would say Heritage booth here. Yeah, go. Personally, I like to, I like to walk around Heritage and re. I mean all the big auction houses. Right. Because I mean sometimes I've been to, I've been to Nationals where you know, you have the huge auction houses and then you have the ones that are big and have been around for a long time but aren't quite, quite as big as like Heritage and REA and you go to their booths too. And you know, Greg and I have seen like T2600 Wagner and been able to hold it and it's some of those other ones. Right. So I would say check out all the auction houses, even if you're not, you know, in the market for that, you know, that level of, of inventory that they're trying to sell. Right. The real high end stuff. It's really cool just to see it. Yeah, I, I think it might have been at the Memory Lane booth last year that we saw that, that Wagner on display. Yeah. But a lot of the big auction houses are back here. Ken golden will be hanging out. You know, Heritage will be hanging. I think we held the Honus Wagner at Mile High Auctions, didn't we? That was at Strongsville. Yeah, that's right. That was the restored one. So that, that again, these are kind of to me museumy type stuff if you're interested in checking that out. Any other parting things, by the way, if you've not been before, Hotel Row is kind of across the street right here and then across this Other street right here has a couple of hotels. So these are going to be all your hotels. And then if you went down the street a little ways, about a half a mile down the street, this direction is where you get to Shoeless Joe's. So it's across the street here and down. That's where the YouTube get together is on Thursday night. Hosted by CIA. I know that we're both planning on going. We'll be a little bit late because we had already. We had already agreed to go to a dinner beforehand. So we'll be there. It'll just be on the later side at Shoeless Joe's. So any other last tips or shout outs of things that people should do? There's rei. I don't see rei. Am I missing it? Let's look. This is going to make it. We're going to do that. Huh? Let's see. Robert. Maybe it's under Robert. Yeah. No, I don't know. Rea auction, maybe? No. So rea. Not there. I don't know. If Aria is not my buddy. Tim Payne is another heritage booth. Tim Payne's another dealer who I've done a lot, lot of deals with. And I. I put his information. In fact, I just sent him a message earlier because I was like, why is he not. Why am I not seeing him on here? So he's not there. He's been doing the national forever. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not sure. I don't know. I don't know. All right. Anyways, again, we are happy to be contributors here to the sports card clubhouse on an extra innings episode. And Darren over at Return to collecting, he hosts one of our episodes each month, and I host one as well, so check those out if you haven't. And I guess that's it. We'll be back next month and next month we'll probably have some fun stories to tell. Yes. Post national. Yeah, absolutely. All right, well, looking forward to it. All right, bud, I'll see you in a couple weeks. I can't wait. It's like a week and a half, bro. Two weeks from today, I think. Or tomorrow, something like that. Yeah, two weeks from tomorrow. All right, see you. Sweet.