No Internet at a card show.. Disaster or Opportunity?

Welcome to the Sports Card Lessons Podcast with your host, Big Ken. A retired teacher bringing you lessons each week. He's learned in the hobby by taking you behind the table and inside the mind of a dealer and a collector. Sit back and relax. There won't be a test. The only thing being graded here is the cards. Welcome to the Sports Card Lessons Podcast. I'm your host, Big Ken. Whether you're watching on YouTube or listening on a streaming service, please, like subscribe and hit that notification bell so you'll be notified whenever I drop any new content. Welcome. Thanks for being here. Happy Sunday. So excited to come home to a package on the front step of a card that popped up on an ebay search like a week and a half or two weeks ago that it took everything I had not to smash, buy it at an inflated price, but just to send an offer and and hope I didn't lose out on the card. Offer was accepted. The card arrived today from China. And I'll share that. I'll share that card at the end of the episode. You don't want to miss that one. Two shows this weekend, the 518 cards and collectibles at the time, same Celtic hall in Albany, New York on Saturday and the Hamden Card show on Sunday. I can start by saying sports cards were definitely the minority at the two shows I was at this weekend and talking to other people from around New England, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, even as far away as Florida in California. It just seems like the TCG has just been dominating all the shows, all the card shows. And Tom, I can already read it, Tom, I know you're gonna say I was at the Enfield show Saturday and it was all sports cards. Yeah, I believe you, sir. But every other show in Connecticut this weekend, everyone I talked to said tcg, Pokemon dominated the rooms. Shows like Enfield Plainville that have been running for many, many years have long tradition. They retain mostly all their dealers. Hard to get into those shows. So with such little turnover, I would imagine it's hard to get TCG tables in there. But with so many other shows, so many new shows popping up every week, and it's not just here in Connecticut. Everybody I talk to met getting messages from everybody that shows are competing against shows, competing against shows, competing against shows. And I'm not talking about, you know, 15 or 20 tables or a 25 table show. I'm talking about 70 tables, 80 tables, 100 table shows all sold out. And most of those tables are being sold to TCG dealers. It's amazing the growth in TCG over the last five years. And for those who foresaw this coming, I'm sure they've done and are doing very well. Has TCG taken over the card shows? I think that's a great discussion for a Thursday night Hobby Chop episode. But for today, we're recapping some of the shows I did Saturday morning. Up early, off to Albany, New York, two hour drive, easy drive. I would rather make that two hour drive than a one hour drive towards Westchester. Easy drive that way. Get up there, set up my table, including my new banner, the one that sits up over the. Over the table. I bought that for the national, but it came in so I wanted to try it out, set it up, looks great. I got there early so I could walk around and possibly do some shopping. Saw some cards. I went to comp the cards and because I've done this show before, my phone automatically connected to their WI fi. But the WI fi immediately told me there's no Internet connection. Disconnected, reconnected. They have a sign that says, here's the WI fi and the password still, same thing, same thing. I'm like, oh, no. My cell service, AT T, one bar fading in and out. And usually when that happens, I just assume it's a good day for the Verizon customers because I usually, you know, I'll set up with Bill and Billy who have Verizon. And if my phone, I don't have service, they usually do or vice versa. But after talking to some of the other people in the room, they said the cell service is just horrible in that area. Super weak. Not only for AT T, but Verizon too. I said, I heard somebody asking the promoter about the WI fi and he said, yeah, yeah, we're waiting for somebody to come in and fix it. Okay, long story short on that, sometime around 11:30, 12:00', clock, the promoter came out and said, all right, try the Internet now. It's working. And it was for about five minutes, I think. Just crashed again. But that by that time, I mean, the day was over, half over, right? So if you figured out what you, you know, if you, you had something figured out or you were doing something and it was working, you're going to continue doing it. I mean, having that come back and go back out again did not slow you down at that point. I discovered early on in the morning that if I just stuck to my cell phone service, turned off my WI fi and I opened card ladder. If I typed in a certification number like a PSA cert, it was giving me the comps on it. But if I tried to search, like by card typing in what the card was or whatever, it would just spin and spin and spin. So. Needless to say, I did a lot of comping of graded cards. It was tough. It was tough to comp raw cards. So for most of the day, as far as having access to comps to make purchases, I was in good shape as far as trying to sell to attendees and other dealers that they weren't able to come up with comps. They were much more hesitant to make offers or purchases on cards. And I'm not just talking about my cards. I'm talking about even the people around me talking to all the people around me. That wasn't for me. I mean, I. It was. It was like that for a lot of people in the room. It also affected people trying to receive electronic payments like Venmo or PayPal. I could see people saying, did you get it yet? No, I didn't get it yet. Oh, I sent it. Well, it didn't come yet. Let me walk outside. Let me do this, Let me do so. I know it was definitely affecting a lot of people transacting in the room. We were set up close to the door, and I noticed people were just going outside to comp cards. And it happened to me as well. Somebody took. Took a. Came in, just took some pictures of my cards, and then just walked outside. Came back in like 15 minutes later, 10 minutes later, you know, and said, oh, okay, you know, can you do this on this or this on that? And screenshotted what they found out there so they could come in and show me or, you know, have. Have some. Something to back up their. Their offers on cards. Although this show could have been a disaster. I mean, I have my cards priced before the show. Everything gets priced, so. And I usually price them the day before. So I'm very familiar with recent sales on all the cards. So I'm happy to, you know, I know the way I price my cards, and I know what I. I need to get what I want to get, what I'm the lowest I'm willing to take on the cards. So being able to do all that for, you know, having it already done before the show, I mean, I was easy for me, and I was able to look up comps on cards that I was looking to buy, and I had cash, which made for a pretty successful day for me, more buying than selling. But as I've been talking about, I don't. I don't have that much. I. I can still say my Case is trash. I mean, I'll be the first one to say the case is trash. I don't have a lot in there. I mean, everything I've been buying, I'm holding and, and going to Chicago with me in July. So. And that's, that's all I'm doing right now. So I, I mean, I'm not gonna. I would not get upset saying, oh, God, I didn't sell anything today, or I only sold one car to two cards. No, I mean, I'm. The money I'm making is. I, I'm, I'm. I'm making the money when I'm buying all these cards. And, and I've talked about that before, that it's, you know, you don't see it. I, I don't have the cash in hand now, but at some point I will. And, and, and this weekend, both shows were, were days that I was just able to really buy well, that, you know, people were selling cards. And, and I think at this show in New York, I think people were thrown for a loop, not having the connection, you know, to not only sell but buy cards. And I think what was happening was people were coming around and, like, people would come up to me because they saw me with somebody and they're like, and I can't even tell you, I wish I had a dollar for everyone that said, do you actually have Internet can? Do you actually have a signal? And because I was pulling up stuff and saying, look, here, here's the last price on that. Here's the last price on this. This is my offer on that. And I think I was just able to make offers on cars as the day went on. As it got later in the day, that started to slow down. I started to see other people figuring out ways to. But I was happy with all the cars that came to my table with the big buying sign and people being like, you know, and I say, do you. You know, I always say to people, what are you looking to get for this? And like, nine out of ten times people, even though they know exactly how many, you know, how much everything's sold for and exactly what the comp is, the most famous word is, I don't know, comps are all over the place. In other words, hopefully you're going to make me an offer higher than what the card's worth or what the last three guys that offered me so I can take that offer and not, you know, and I try to tell people, like, you're selling your car, you should know what you want for it. I mean, I, you don't show up to a show not knowing and saying, oh, I just have this random card. I don't know anything it's worth. I, you know, and I, and I hear people around me and they say, I don't know, make me an offer. And they'll say, oh, a dollar. When you take a dollar. Well, do you have a counter offer? Right. And, and, and it's joking, right? It's joking. But I, I can understand it gets frustrating all day when you're asking people like, hey, you know, and it's not that I want to know. And people would think too. It's like, I want to know if you know what your card's worth. No, because I don't know what you're into the card for, right? You may have bought the card for $10 and now it's $500. Maybe you only want $400 for it. Maybe you want 450 for it. Maybe you want 550 for it. Maybe you're thinking it's going to go up. Because a lot of times if I say to somebody, what are you looking to get? And they say, ah, I need to get 550 or 575 for that card. And, and I look up the last few comps and they're in the fours. Like, I know we're, we're really far off. I, I don't, we don't need to waste any more time, right? If they say, hey, look, I'm, I'm into this card for this much and I, this is what I need to get out of it, okay, fine. If I can do it, fine. If not, just take it back. I'm, you know, we don't need to waste anybody's time here. But so a lot of this, a lot of this time that we, we spend this back and forth, I, I always hope that we can, you know, narrow it down so it doesn't have to take as long to do it. And you got, you guys know how I feel about these long, drawn out negotiations. They, they are not for me. I am like, I, look, I know, I know what I'm willing to pay for a card. I'm going to make an offer slightly under that because I know you're going to come back. Whatever I say, you're going to come back and want to come up higher. And I am, it's just the way of the card show. But yeah, I don't have a lot in my case for sale. So I'm really right now just buying, you know, Just buying for, for Chicago. In fact, some of the trades and purchases I made only on a few but are just, just cards that I'll be able to put in my case next weekend. Like at some point this weekend. I'm like, you know what, I really just need to put some, some, some decent cards in my case. I'm not saying I don't have decent cards. I've got, I've got all this high end WNBA stuff that people just aren't buying right now. And then I have another case with some soccer, with some basketball, some, a couple football cards. You know, not a lot in there. It's, it's and, and I put cards in there that have sold already and I'm kind of, I'm looking at cards that are in my case now that you know, it's going to take a special person that walks up on one case to buy some of these cards but the other just any WNBA person and they would, they could probably find any card they want. So yeah, I made some purchases this week, this weekend of cards, some baseball, some basketball that I could put in my case next weekend. So I have some cards to sell as well that, that they won't be traveling with me too. Well, maybe if I don't sell them they'll travel to Chicago, but I think they'll, they'll all sell. When I, when I set up at this show last time, I sold a ton of wnba. There was so many WNBA fans coming in super excited. Like I, I, I thought I was going to be able to move some WNB WNBA cards on Saturday. And this time around, all those people that I saw that I expected to see that I hoped been back for this show, I didn't see any of them. And even though this was, it was the same show, this show had a different feel to it than the last show. There were more sports, sports dealers, sports car dealers at the show. Certainly not enough to take over tcg. But, and I, and I knew that's, I knew this going in but definitely some, some new dealers that, that were not at the last show that I knew that were at this show setting up. So and what I understand this show competed directly with another show last time. So that's why some of these dealers weren't at the last one. Again, it was a great buying show for me just stocking up for the national. I'm just going to share just a few of the, the picks pickups. So if you are, if you're on YouTube, I'm holding up the Paige Beckers Is the Don Russ the red to 399. Asia Wilson case hit Abstract Colston Loveland. This was the Phoenix Bronze to 50 ton of Colston Loveland this year. This was such a cool card that I picked up that it was so hard to comp. I think I did well. It was probably not often do I buy a card and I say and I tell the person I'm buying it from, it's like I have no idea how well I did until it comes time to sell it. Like there was no other sales on the card. One for sale with. With an astronomical price. But it's a, it's a Tyler Warren, it's a vortex lava to 10 and it's a cool color match card. And then these were three big cards I picked up. Shador Sanders, Downtown PSA 10, Calvin Johnson, Downtown PSA 10 and Jerry Rice, Downtown PSA 10. So happy to have these cards. These will dress up my case in Chicago, especially those downtowns. So happy to have those. Today I was up early again, headed to the Hamden card show. This commute was a little different. And Saturday morning, Saturday morning I said two hours. This morning, 20 minutes. It's definitely a better commute this morning. And again, another room dominated by TCG Got the setup next to my guy, Jason. The cardboard collaborative. Always nice to have somebody to chop it up with throughout the day, Especially if you go. If I'm setting up at a show that usually all the shows I set up as I'm going with somebody and I'm setting up next to them. And this is a show that I just on my own to this show and happy that I set up with him next to him last time. Happy to be there again. This show felt busy in the morning with sports cards. It's. It's almost as it was weird this morning because I made a joke saying, saying all the sports cards people were up early and they came to the show. And then, you know, by mid to late morning, early afternoon, it was really busy with the TCG people. I said they all needed to sleep in and then come a little later to the show. But there was definitely good foot traffic all day. And look, there were five shows in Connecticut. Five shows in Connecticut where every table sold out, right. And. And I, I don't. I don't know the numbers. I know one of the shows has a hundred tables. This show I was at today, I think it's a 40 or 45 tables, right? And now there's three. Three more. Even if it was 50 tables, right. I Mean, just you do the math. It's just unbelievable that all these tables were sold out at all these shows and there was still that much foot traffic coming in the room all day. Again, another show, I did not sell much, but I was able to trade and buy into a bunch of cards. I know having the TCG dominate the room bothers a lot of people. Honestly, it does not bother me. I know when I was setting up my own show, I was fielding calls, you know, from people saying, what's the percentages of TCG dealers to sports cards? And this and that. And it really made me think, like I. I would never make that call. You know, I. I think. I think you. You could look at it in a negative way, but equally in a positive way. And maybe I'm a guy that's glass half full, but I see the advantages of going to a show to do sports cards that is dominated by tcg. That's just me. Those percentages do not bother me. I think there's probably arguments either way, but there's always something to be said about a big fish in a little pond, right? I would. I would rather be on the less than the more side, whether I'm a dealer or an attendee. The Hamden card show, I've said this before, has a family feel to it. A lot of moms and dads bringing the kids in, walking around the show. I was able to trade and buy into a bunch of cards. Shout out to my guy Joe, who brought me some cards to look at. I did purchase some cars for him. Excited about. It's always great when you have people come look for you and say, hey, I've got some stuff for you. Listener of the podcast. We've. We've done deals before. Shout out to my guy, Phil Musella. Apparently I've never shouted Phil out, so it's still, Today's your day. I'm shouting you out. He was set up at the show. I see Phil at all the shows. Set up some of the pickups. I had really cool pickups from this show. I talked about saying I've. I picked up some basketball and baseball, so I'll have them here. Talked about building just a box with numbered cards, you know, just football cards that are all numbered. And this is what I'm gonna throw in that box at the Joel Rookie purple number to 99. Two basketball cards I bought here. I think I'm gonna get it right. I had to ask somebody so I could say this right on the pod con canipple Cooper flag. These are Blackouts from the Black Friday boxes. Charles Tillman Finest greats. This is autograph number to 10. He is a Chicago Bear. Probably if he was not I wouldn't have bought this card but I figured it's a great card to bring to Chicago. This is Bryce Young a tri colored prism Rookie field level Brock Purdy Century materials. This is numbered to 20. It's National Treasures number to 25. Dominique Malanga Orange fireworks number to 75 Rome Adunze this is Mosaic Scripts auto and then you'll see a pattern actually I'll show you this1 for cj str select cj stroud red prism number 299psa10. Shohei otani Bowman Chrome PSA 10 Caleb Williams Rookie Variation Prism. This is a PSA 9 tops now Caleb Williams PSA 10 and Panini instant Caleb Williams PSA 10 again going to Chicago. Why wouldn't I pick all these up and bring them out there? I'm sure everybody has that same idea but if the price is right. Lastly I talked about getting a pickup of a card. So I talked before. I love inscriptions on cards. I have a bunch of cards that really is starting to become just my PC as inscriptions on cards. So I just want to share these cards first before I show you the card I got. So these are all Michaela Blakes. These are event autos. The other McDonald's Chrome event autos. They're all graded and they're inscriptions. So you'll see there's the little heart. If you're watching on YouTube you see a little heart on this one, smiley face on this one and again a smiley face on this one. These are all graded. I love these cards. Any of the ones that are inscripted heart smiley face I'll go out and buy, I'll just smash by them them because. Just because I want them. Because I know they're different than all the rest of them. So I thought that's that was as good as it got with her. Like some of them if you, if you've seen the juju Watkins ones that say hi mom and hi dad and one says mix something on it McFlurry or make something, you know, she just got creative just writing whatever and you see some other people have some cool things. But as far as Michaela Blake goes, only, only I've ever seen is a smiley face and the hearts. So this card comes up on ebay the other morning and I was blown away. I knew I needed to own this card. So not only do we have hearts and smiley face. We have the Vanderbilt V. We have obviously her autograph and the anchor down. Everything that she's inscribed on all her cards, she inscribed all on one card. So if you're watching on YouTube, I'm holding this card up and I will put it on, on my Instagram, I will put a picture up of this on Instagram. But this is unbelievable. It's unbelievable because I had no idea this card even existed. And there's no way of knowing. There's nowhere you can go look and say, oh well you know, this one has this inscription, that inscription and that. You have no idea. You have no idea. I don't think they, they ever even kept track of what they had when, when these things were getting inscribed. But this card came up, so excited to have it and I've talked about right, I'm PSA how much I hate them and everything else. I know this, this card will not gem. I can already see it's off centered but I am going to spend the money, send it in, have it graded so I get add it to my other inscriptions and put them right up here on the wall. Next week, only one show. Thank God, I'm getting tired. Just one show next week on Saturday going to the Causeway show, one of my favorite shows that I do and another reason I picked up some basketball and baseball here, just to have a few more cards in my case something to sell while I'm up there. Thursday night I'll be back with zip on the Hobby chop and I'll be back next Sunday with a brand new episode. Until next time, take care of yourselves and everyone around you.