Dan Bliss of Front Row Card Show Returns! E394

Hanging out at the pool is great. Relaxing and playing Vegas style games on my phone at the same time. Drink in one hand and a blackjack in the other. It's all at spinquest. Over a thousand games including your favorite slots and table games. Be cool with this summer special new players get 30 coin packs for 10@Spinquest.com Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Grainger Knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, filters ready to clog H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 24. 7 support. Call 1-800-Grainger click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. Sports Car Nation the hobby is the people Weekly news and interviews. It's your number one source. Sports Car Nation the hobby is the people Sports Car Nation what is up everybody? Welcome to episode 394. I am back from a weekend trip to Philly where my nephew is a Philadelphia firefighter. Spent three days there Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Went to a FIFA fan fest. Went to the Mets Phillies game on Saturday night. Not a good result for hey Mets fan but the home crowd enjoyed it for sure. Carl Schwartz Kyle Schwaber three home runs. Bryce Harper hit for his first cycle in his whole career. So I guess that's cool to be witness to that if if you will. But a little tired but here we are and so glad to be back and glad that our guest this week is back for part two of our great conversation with him. Who am I spe of Dan Bliss of Front row Card show and I've got to get to one of his shows. They are highly spoken of and now starting to spread across the country even more so should be one closer to me to check out which you know, hopefully in the future, like I just said, I will. What I hope you check out is a front row card show and Dan Bliss on today's episode. This is again part two of our conversation. If you missed part two, just go back one week, check that out. We do them in two parts to keep them more consumable. So It's a quick 30 to 40 minute listen and we appreciate you and we try to do stuff like that too to you know, for the benefit of you want to thank our great sponsors, Iron Sports Card, Sports Collectors Digest, Hobby Hotline, Upper Deck, Card Ladder and CTCA Certified Trading Card Association. So with all that being said, let's not delay and get the show underway. Hey everybody, lady luck here and we're celebrating America's 250th birthday. Now all summer long I'm going to be celebrating by playing on spinquest.com which is an American owned social casino. It obviously features over a third thousand slot games and live blackjack, live craps, live bubble craps. Head on over to spinquest.com get yourself a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks. Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Grainger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, filters ready to clog. H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 247 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 0. It's a great point about right someone letting someone else buy the table and you have no, like it's just the wild wild west. I don't know who that is. And then, and then, and then John, we don't have empty tables at our shows. Like if a vendor knows shows, we will fill that table. And as a result, you know, we've all been to shows where some, some high school kids squat on a table like no vendor showed up. And then some kid shows up with his, his case of cards and starts spreading them out on the table. Now he's the vendor. We don't allow that. We don't do any of that. Yeah, you shouldn't. Like I, I, I agree. Like I, I've had a debate with actually a fellow which was kind of crazy to me, a fellow dealer, fellow vendor. He's like ah, it doesn't bother me. And I'm like, you know, did you pay for your table? Yeah. But like hey, you know, it was just happened, it's his lucky day was the way he sort of word. And I'm like no, because then why, you know why you know what we're paying and someone else is not. Like I'm not saying he shouldn't be Able to set up, like, you get a tax number and, and reserve a table, but just showing up and putting your stuff out, like, you know, you know, John. I mean, I don't. I mean, I could see the vendors being upset, the fairness of that, if somebody squatting on a table for free. But for us, we just view it more on the security side of things. Yeah. Usually it's innocuous. Let's be honest. Some, some high school kids or some young vendor sits down at the table and spontaneously and starts selling cards. It's usually innocuous. Right. But it's, but it's about being careful in case someone has ulterior motives. You know, that's what we're trying to prevent. Yeah. And if something bad happens. Right. That whoever got wrong, they're going to come to you and say, hey, that person at that table. Right. And we're like, I don't know who that is. Yeah. If you did that, that table's under John Newman. That's John's table. And, you know, it wasn't me. And so now double on time, it wasn't me. And then you don't know who it is at that point. I don't know who it is. So we just don't allow it. Yeah, I, I get it. This has been a hot, this is a recent hot button topic. I guess what happened was there was a, you know, someone on the sex offender registry. I'll make this story shorter than it probably is. Was set up at a show and, you know, the topic of, you know, safety for kids. That shows came up. And so now the debate is like, and all vendors should have a background check done. And, you know, I have a little working knowledge. I'm not a background check expert, but I do have a little bit of working knowledge. You know, it's not hard to do, but it's also not easy to do. It's somewhere in between. It's also an added expense. Now there are services where you, you can pay. Pay one fee. But again, what you already do so much of, like, what kind of. Where do you. How do you answer that? When someone maybe brings that. That. That's a good question. We, we're very careful with our vendors. Again, as I said, we, we, we check IDs for everybody. In addition to that, we have police on site at every event. So we don't. We've never had an incident where, you know, someone's gone missing or someone's been molested or, you know, we've had. Never had any inappropriate activities at Our events because of we have police and security on site now. That said we now, because we were made aware of that situation, we now make all vendors agree that they don't have a, a record on one of those registries. And it got brought to our attention about one of the vendors that could not acknowledge that. And so, so we've had to deal with that situation. And you know, and that's, I mean, something we take very seriously. And you know, we've got a significant female team that runs our shows. My wife runs our shows. Most of our staff is female. You know, obviously we have security and whatnot at all the shows, but most of our security is female. So they're very particular about making sure that, that nobody is a, you know, an offender at our shows. And, and we're very conscious of it probably more than most people because. Because we have such a predominantly female team. Yeah. And I think too right, you get to know, you do you know your, your, your vendors that do a lot of your shows like you said, and travel with you to, you know, I think you get to know them on a personal level. Like my, the local show I do here in, in Syracuse, it's a, you know, about 110, 120 tables. We have one show called the Mega Show. It's towards the front end of December. That might be 250 tables. You know, that's big for, for central New York. But I've done, I've done. His name is Lynn. I've done Lynn shows for 20 years. So he knows me very well. He knows a lot of the, the, the vendors who've done the shows for, for many moons and many years. So like anything you get to know, not even just a hobby level, but you get to know them on a personal level, including family and all that thing. So we also have a little luxury, John, of, of because we do so many shows and we, our shows are really strong and it's hard to get into a lot of our shows like it genuinely is because we have, we have long wait lists to get in and our shows sell out so fast. We have the luxury of curating our vendors. So we really do try to carefully choose what vendors are at our shows. And, and like you said, we have a lot of regulars. So we have people that travel and do a lot of our shows and we know them really well. Like we'll go out to dinner with them, you know, because we, we, we know each other genuinely. We see each other, you know, monthly or twice a month if they're Traveling with us, you know, so I think, you know, it, it becomes a community, you know, and I think that's an important part of the hobby too, is the relationships that are gained within the hobby. Yeah, no doubt. One of the things I wanted to ask you about, right. Much like a lot of things in life. Right. Things can be, can get competitive in nature and obviously with a lot of new shows and new promoters sort of entering the fray, you know, just the logistics. I know even here on a small scale, Dan, we have two promoters and they, they've. They're not really buddies is a nice way to put it. And so they're scheduling shows on like the same days, you know, maybe, you know, five miles apart or 10 miles apart, you know, for you, do you try to like get along with as other promoters or are you sort of like, hey, I got so much work to do on my own. Like, I really just need to focus here on know, just talk about the dynamics of, with other promoters and other shows and how easy or not easy that that is. We get along with everybody. So we don't, we don't trash talk anybody, you know, we don't talk about other promoters, we don't talk about other shows. Certainly not in a negative way at all. You know, you know, people spread rumors about us and you know, it's like, you know what, we don't counter it. We just, we'll just say, no, that's not true. And we'll tell people what, you know. Yeah, you have a right, you have a right to defend yourself especially. Yeah, but, but we don't defend ourselves by, by, by trashing someone else. We'll just tell them not true and we'll explain the circumstances because we don't want to get into the muddiness of it. We just don't care. We, our view is we're gonna put our heads down and run great shows. And if we run great shows, everything will take care of itself. And if people want to trash talk us or hate us because of whatever, you know what they can do that we can't. We, we can't address that. Especially with the Internet these days. There's always going to be people saying things about whatever, but we're not going to contribute to that. We genuinely don't. I can tell you once, a long time ago, when I was young and I was doing the shows, when I was in college, I organized a show and then another guy organized a show five minutes away, and this is a crazy John, he sent a person dressed as a chicken in A big chicken suit, like a San Diego chicken costume stood out in front of our venue with a sign directing people, no go down the street. The card shows that way. That's. Yeah, that's dirty tactics. That was crazy. It's funny, but like, that's just bad at it. Like you don't do, you know, you know. Well, I mean, look, I don't know if the chicken suit made it funny, but you still, you just don't do. You don't. Yeah, it's like we don't worry about it, you know? Yeah. You know. Well, here's the thing. You know, we run great shows. A high percentage of. A lot of that bad talking or besmirching comes from people who are jealous or wish, you know, they were. Yeah. Successful. And, and I think when you know that, you realize that. I think that makes it easier sort of to turn the other cheek and say, hey, they're just, just unhappy individual. And, and I, you know, I can't lose sleep of what I got to do and do the right thing and, and let the chips fall where they may. So, you know. Yeah, and that's it. Like, like there's a good number of promoters that, that we get along really well with and, and it's fine. And we, we pick up the phone and call each other and talk about dates and making sure we're not conflicting with each other and we get along great. We have. There's some promoters that hated us, hated us a long time ago. Similarly, there's dealers that hated us a long time ago. And they, once they get to know us, they realize, all right, you guys, you guys are all right. You guys run good shows. And we've got the dealers and the collector's interest in mind. We're not, we're not looking out for ourselves. We're playing a long term game. You know, we're looking out for the collectors. We're looking out. And that's. You're a, you're a dealer too? I'm a. As a vendor. Right. It's. It's easy. I don't want to say easy, but it's pretty easy to, to tell a promoter that's trying to do things above board, make the consumer and the vendors happy. And you can also tell when that's not the case. Sort of a self serving thing. Right. It's, it's. John, there's a lot of. You can't really hide that. It comes. Yeah, it comes out in the washes. Well, look, there we. John, we have haters because we don't let dealers leave early. Yeah, so some dealers don't like us for that. They don't like us for that. They, they get mad that we're telling them what to do. And you know, because especially if they have big egos, you got to have some, you got to have some sort of, you know, protocols and rule. And there's a reason, there's a reason for that too. I mean, one of them, I think you agree with this. And I, I don't mean is, you know, you're advertising so many tables, sometimes people can't get there till a certain time, right. They, you don't want a customer to walk in and see 10 empty tables. Like, hey, this was advertised as such, right, John, we've all seen shows that, that, that start falling apart on Sunday midday. You know, we've all seen those shows. And so we make a rule. And the good news, John, is that we have big crowds and we have the leverage to make dealers stay to the end. And as a result, they do. And then as a result, the attendees have a better experience. It's all about them. We don't make more money. It's not about money. It's not about us being bullies. It's about creating a better show for the attendees. And John, so many people, many dealers have hated us for that rule. I mean, not, not a huge number, to be honest. But there's a handful that really about us and, but eventually a number of them have come around and said, you know what, I get it now. I get it. Yeah, it's a better show. There's a reason, like, you know, like you said, you're not being a book, there's a reason for it. Right? Time to hear from one of our great sponsors. But Sports Card Nation will be right back after that. For nearly 50 years, Sports Collector's Digest has been the voice of the hobby, bringing you comprehensive coverage of the sports collectible industry from industry news, auction results, market analysis, and in depth stories about collectors and their collections. Sports Collectors Digest has everything you need to know about the hobby. SCD is also your leading source for listings of sports collectible details, dealers, card shops, card shows, and the latest from the industry's top companies. To check out all the latest news or to subscribe to the hobby's Oldest magazine, visit sportscollectorsdigest.com or call 1-800-829-5561. Hey, everybody. Lady Luck here. And we're celebrating America's 250th birthday. Now all summer long, I'm going to be celebrating by playing on spinquest.com which is an American owned social casino. It obviously features over a thousand slot games and live blackjack, live craps, live bubble craps. Head on over to spinquest.com get yourself a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks. Spinquest is a free to play social casino. Visit spinquest.com for more details. When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place. So nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickranger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. Let's go. You are listening to the Sports Card Nation podcast and here's the thing. If you're a dealer, if when I'm setting up at a show and I see the flyer or I already know like hey the show's 9 to 3 or 9 to 4. 10 to 4. We go 10 to 5. Oh that's yeah. So I know going in it's not like you're announcing the day of hey here's, here's the hours you have fair, well in advance notice like hey this is the hours of operation and if you want a table you need to be. You're signing up for that. That comes right. Exactly. They chose to sign up for it. You know, if, if they didn't want to do it. Don't book a table. You know, you don't have to be here. I'm not making you know, especially during the NFL. Right. Once those 1 o' clock games hit. Yeah, it thins out but you know what, that's a great time like you said to maybe make a couple buys with the people who are remaining, talk with your dealer friends, walk around yourself and maybe buy from. From fellow dealers. Maybe sort like you said, sort some cards like keep yourself busy if that happens. Right. And like you know what John and same here genuinely do. Yep. Nope. Same here. But it thins out even in the best of shows here it gets a little lighter just in the NFL. See on a Sunday show, let's say so but do you know that right. It's not a surprise. You can't act like especially if it's a show you're familiar with and you know how it go like I know what, what the hours I'm the Last. I'm kind of methodical and how I pack up. So I'm one of the last guys out to the point. Sometimes my, my friend who's the, the, the promoter would be like, come on Newman, let's go pick it up. I want to go. I want to go home. So I've gotten better with that because I used to. Here's the. I'll make this story short. I used to pack up in what my cards in alphabetical order by player. And I don't do. So that, that's saved a lot of time. So. But, but look, I think we all know that you sometimes make a deal at the end of the show. Sometimes. Yeah, sometimes it happens. Yep. No doubt. So like you, it's advertised what the hours are. You, you know, you know I, A lot of times when I see someone leave early and it, it's frowned upon at the shows but I don't know what the repercussions are. I don't do it. But I've seen. Sometimes there's no repercussions. And. Yeah, yeah. And John. There's a snowball effect. Yeah, it really. That's the thing, John. It was about two years ago we started enforcing that rule because we were at a show, one of our own shows, and we didn't have that rule yet. And it was 2:30 in the afternoon and several people started leaving and then literally an entire section left other than one guy on the back. So by 3 o' clock or 3:30 on a show supposed end at 5, everybody's gone except one guy. And that guy was angry. He was a dealer and he was angry because no collectors would walk over there because he's all by himself. Like, I'm not going to walk. There's only one table over there. I'm not going to walk over there. Yeah, that's a great point. I never even really thought and it wasn't fair to him. Well, I cornered the market but some people won't. Won't flow that way. They'll feel like that the show is where all the dealers are the heavy. Yeah. So that was the triggering point that we decided, all right, this isn't going to happen. It's not. Yeah. So it's a bad look. And when it does happen, that shows that I do. Dan. I don't want to say with a hundred percent. A lot of times you can see by the body language or how they're packing their stuff up or leaving like they're not happy. It's just, it's just, just a Bad display overall. It's like, yeah, like you said, but it's like a bad, it's kind of bad sport. It's like pouts. Well, you made, you made the good point earlier. It's that the, the, the, the attendees, like maybe, maybe, maybe they had church in the morning on Sunday. Maybe they had a family thing. Maybe their kid had soccer. Maybe, maybe they work on the night shift and they don't wake up till noon. Right? Yeah, everybody has their own things. Maybe they can't make it to the show till 2 or 3 in the afternoon and they really want to go. And then they arrive and then everybody's already packing up and that's just not cool. So we don't do that. Yep. Nope. I don't, I don't like seeing it. I don't do it. And I know why it shouldn't happen. Right? It's just. Right. It's not even a one sided thing. It's both sides. It's a dealer. It's more than two sides. It's the promoter, the dealers and the customers. Right. It just, it does, doesn't look good all around. And there's a reason, you know, you advertise, hey, the show is from this time to this time that's like, there's no secret, it's not a secret club where now we announce the hours, the doors are open. So it's not a surprise. Yeah, people can't, you know, and listen if you're mad because the day didn't go the way you wanted to. We've all been there at least one time, right? Like you can't take your ball and go home and act like, right. You just, you gotta, you know what I mean? Like they say, win would win with class, lose with class. Right? So you gotta, you gotta, you gotta, you know, I, I, I. John, I like that metaphor. You can't take your ball and go home. That's, that's so true. Because that's kind of what you're doing. You're taking that away from the collectors. Yeah, I'm gonna take my ball and go home. I never even. You point out that story about the one dealer that was left and, but no one would go that way. I never even thought of that angle too. So that, that's another ripple, that's another element that I, I didn't even think about. So like, yeah, someone might say, some dealer might say, oh man, I'm the only dealer now in this corner. I'm gonna corner the market, so to speak. But if people just think well, that the show's over here. That's not really the show that that person's affected by other people's actions unduly. So. Right. So I. It makes all the sense in the world. And it's not about being a bully. It's just about why the perception. Right. And how it looks and the experience. John. To us, it's about running a show. You know, like. John, think about. You go to a mall. You know, malls require every retail store to be open from all hours. You can't go into a mall and, and you go in there and half the stores are closed on a certain day. No, you. Everybody that signed a lease to open a store in that mall agreed to abide by mall hours. And there's a reason for that. It's just good business. And, you know, as you know, I don't. We don't want to dwell on this too much. It's just really one of the things that for us makes a show better, and that's why we do it. Yeah, and. And I agree with you. I think it's important. There's a reason. You're not doing it for the sake of doing it. You're doing it because it makes sense. And there's a. There's a logic, obviously, behind it. Right. Kind of. One, One final question sort of coming down the turnpike here. Listen, I'm a content creator as well as a show dealer. You know, we've seen the explosion. We've seen the explosion of everything in the hobby from shows to prices realized. And we've seen you know, even content creation on a show floor with people filming with camera crews. And, you know, you get. There's really two sides. There's no in betweens. People either love it or they disdain it. Right. I can't. As a promoter, how do you, you know, what's your stance and how do you approach that topic which can, you know, there's both sides of the aisle. There's two sides of that. Well, I mean, it's. You're always gonna have people creating content in today's world. I mean, it's just. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's everywhere. So, you know, we, we actually post signs, you know, in the lobby that, that explain that there's going to be, you know, filming and content created at the show. So just so people are aware and they're not surprised. You know, we. We allow people to do what they're doing as long as they're not encroaching or impinging on Other people. So, you know. You know, I just think that's part of. Part of life now nowadays, whether you like it or not. So we don't feel like it's a controversial thing generally. I mean, if somebody's getting in your face and, you know, filming you and you don't want to be filmed, you know, we've really never had a big issue with that before. I imagine if. If. If that's something that occurs, you know, we would handle it tactfully and professionally. Yeah, and I think you said it. If it. Like, I think most people go to shows now, Dan. I don't want to paint with a broad brush, but I think most people go to shows. It's sort of part of the terrain. Like. Right. Like, if you haven't figured that out now, like, where. Where have you been? And I don't. I don't mean that as harsh as that might have came across, but I think you said it. I think something you said really, you know, I noticed, like, as long as it doesn't, like, become an issue, like, like you said, someone's following someone around where they don't want to be like, hey, man, get out of my face with the camera. Well, and John, you might have seen this, too. I've seen people where they're doing a deal and they're. They're buying something or selling something, especially if it's something expensive, and they say, you know what? I don't want to be on camera for this. And then I've never seen that. Not honored. You know, yeah. If somebody's filming something, a feeling, a deal, they'll say, okay, that's fine. Not a problem. And, you know, obviously, if. That, If. If that person were still being filmed, you know, we would certainly step in and say, hey, this person requested not to be on camera. So. And I get that maybe they don't want that for their safety. Whether they're buying or selling something, that means they either have cash or a valuable item with them, and they don't want to be on camera for their safety. So I totally respect that, and we always will. Yeah. And I think that's. I think I want to say there's a right answer and wrong answer, but that. That for sure makes sense. Right? You. If someone's experience is. Is being affected and you know about it, you. It's easy for you to say, hey, like, you can film, but if this person is telling you they don't want you, please respect them and, and go to the, you know, move on along to some. Some Something else. Right. Or, or maybe you won't be allowed in if you can't do it so well. And John, vendors listen to us, you know. Yeah. Because they, they want to be in our good graces which is, you know, it, it, it's a nice position for us to have that, that, that everybody will respect and honor our rules and, and again, I think that that leads to a better card show. Yep. Well, listen, you don't need me to tell you this as a promoter. You've got your priorities in order and I think, you know, your vendors and your customers are, are all the more better off and obviously the shows that you put on are, are better off for it. So it's nice to see that and you know, keep up the, you know, to continue success. I don't know if you ever make it into the central New York, our markets maybe not as big as some of those other cities we mentioned, but if you do, let me know. I, I would gladly love to set up at a front row show and, but as always, I give the guest Dan give out where people can find out where your shows are coming and when and the times that they're open from website, social media, anything you want to put out there. Take your time and. Well, thank you, John. You can find us at frontrowcard show.com frontrowcardshow.com it's one word. You can also find us on, on Instagram and Facebook at front row card show. And you know, we're, we're all over now, so, so Vegas is our home market. We're in Pasadena, we're in Phoenix, San Diego, Seattle, Portland and then coming to the east coast in Atlanta and Orlando and newly Salt Lake City. And you'll find us in some other markets soon. So if you want to learn about us, find us front row card show and you can find our information everywhere. Well, listen, I know you're a busy guy. I appreciate you making some time for us here at Sports Carnation. Thanks Dan. And continued success. Great. Thank you for having me, John. Awesome having Dan on. We'll have to get to one of those shows and so do you if you haven't yet because they, they're getting rave reviews and he puts on a good show and has a lot of entities of the hobby in, in attendance and so doing it the right way. And we'll have Dan back on too for a future episode as well. So we're coming down the home stretch here. Let's hear from our hobby is the people announcer of the week. Love to hear if something you want to do, follow the directions after after it airs and hopefully we we get some new ones and you hear yourself on the show. Time for Our Hobby Is the People Announcer of the Week. Hey guys, this is Dylan from YouTube Double D Vintage baseball cards reminding you that the hobby is the People. If you'd like to be the Hobby Is the People Announcer of the Week, do a wav or mp3 file and send it to sportscard nationpcmail.com say good night Kane Hanging out at the pool is great. Relaxing and playing Vegas style games on my phone at the same time. Drink in one hand and a blackjack in in the other. It's all at spinquest. Over a thousand games including your favorite slots and table games. Be cool with this summer special. New players get 30 coin packs for 10@Spinquest.com SpinQuest is a free to play social casino. Boyd we're prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Granger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, Filters ready to clog H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 24. 7 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.