A Method to the Card Show Madness

Card shows involve a fair bit of chance.  After all, at this stage there are probably tens of millions of different cards out there (the Pirates have about 61,000 listed in Beckett).  Sure, some collectors come to a show with a very specific set, player, or year in mind.  I can't tell you how many times I overheard someone walk up to a dealer and ask if they had anything from a very specific, and often very obscure, sliver of this hobby.  No, the dealer with 60 feet of quarter and dollar boxes will not know whether they have any cards of Jean Sebastian Giguere, but thanks for asking.

In my eyes, it's all about casting a wide net at card shows.  A few years ago, I could walk into a show like Robert Morris looking specifically for my Pirates collection, and be pretty confident that I would walk home with a few hundred new cards.  My needs were all over the place - I only had a handful of vintage, still needed more common sets like 1971 and '72.  I even had holes in sets like 1991 Score or 1994 Topps.  It was a safe bet that when flipping through a box, there was at least a 50% chance any Pirate card I came across would be one I needed.

These days?  Not so much.  As the number of easily attainable cards I need has shrunk, I had to make a decision.  Do I simply go off of a much shorter want list?  Or do I casting a wider net?

 Any regular reader can probably guess which direction I went.  And to me the logic is simple - if I'm going to spend hours and hours killing my neck and back to go through boxes, I might as well come away with a decent pile.  If I were a showcase buyer, maybe it would be a different story.  But I'm not the kind of guy who is going to do a lap of the floor and then plunk down a few hundred dollars on a handful of cards.  It's all about quantity, baby.

And seeing all the great stuff everyone on the blogs comes across certainly hasn't dissuaded me from widening my collecting interests.  So at the end of the day, I came home with about 300 new Pirate cards, a ton of new Steelers, a couple hundred Penguins, and then...a gigantic pile of random stuff.

 Can you really blame me?  After all, no card here cost more than a quarter.  Most were dimes, or even nickel cards.  I found a bunch of 90's dealer sample cards, like the Larkin above.  Or what about Gary Sheffield with a gigantic fish?  How can you pass that up?

 And there's definitely another added benefit.  As much fun as I have buying, by the time I got home Sunday I was pretty quickly regretting the number of cards I bought.  Oh no, not for the dollars spent or cards acquired.  It's just that my process for slogging through all those new additions will probably end up taking more time than it did to buy them.  All the Pirates, Steelers, Pens, and WVU cards need entered into their respective Excel spreadsheets.  Then I'll need to find box space for them - not an easy task.  Eventually the cards will need to be added to their respective binders, which can be a huge hassle

 But the miscellaneous pickups?  They're so much kinder.  Sure, they will all end up in various binders for player or mini collections.  But they don't need Excelled.  They don't need sorted.  They just need haphazardly added into a 9 pocket page, stared at, and enjoyed.  I wish I could just do that with my team collections, but my collecting OCD would be very, very displeased.

 Speaking of which, did I ever mention sorta-kinda started a SECOND team collection a while back?  I've been migrating my Florida (not Miami, they're dead to me) Marlins cards into their own binders.  The Marlins were always my second team, and...who doesn't love teal!??!?!?!  So a show with cheap cards is always the perfect place to add some new additions to those secondary collections.

I love adding new cards.  And sites like COMC and Justcommons have made that easier than ever in the past few years.  But for my money, nothing can beat a show.  First off, only by flipping through random, unsorted boxes would I have ever stumbled across these cards.  Nothing about my online card shopping would send me looking for Cliff Robinson or Cade McNown cards, but those two additions are two of my favorite pickups from the entire weekend.  Secondly, while I gladly added the cards for a dime each, the cheapest copies of those two cards on COMC would run me a total of about $3.  They're awesome.  They are.  But never in a million years would I have paid even half that for them.  They just aren't worth that much to me.  But at a card show?  All things are possible.

Budgets? Who Needs Budgets?!?!

I almost stayed within budget.  Almost.  It ended up being a pretty crazy three days at the Robert Morris show, and I'll try to get a few posts up over the course of the week.  Originally I had only planned on attending Friday and Saturday, hoping to spend a little time at home (aka not on my feet on a hard concrete floor).  But the best laid plans are set to fail.  As I was getting ready to head out the door Saturday, a deal caught my eye that was enough in and of itself to pull me back for a third day.

Over the last few years, I have been progressively less impressed with the show on the whole.  Last year, Modern era cards were nearly impossible to find, and there wasn't a single dealer stocking cards from the latest releases.  It wasn't radically better this year - I picked up a few Gypsy Queen minis, but still need entire team sets from 2015 Bowman and GQ - but there were a good number of dealers offering cards from cards that didn't predate the Carter administration.  I jumped in, filling holes in my collection at any turn possible.  There weren't any new Jack Wilsons to be found, but there was some 90's gold to be found in quarter boxes.

 The haul from the show was the best I've had in terms of quantity and range.  I have probably about 1,000 new cards to sort through between my various team collections and odds and ends, covering everything from serial numbered, autos, and a nice stack of minor league team sets.  But the best part?  It was unquestionably the chance to catch with some collecting acquaintances.

 It was a great chance to catch up with folks I've met over the years.  Some I expected to be there, and a couple others were chance encounters.  But collecting is just so much more enjoyable when you have somebody to share your experiences with.  Kate is more supportive of my hobby than I could ever ask for, but she just can't get the excitement over adding a Bob Veale autograph to my collection the way a fellow longtime season ticket holder can.

 It's that sense of collecting community that I enjoy the most, and I probably spent as much time just standing around and shooting the breeze with dealers and buddies as I did actually digging through boxes this year.  One meetup that sadly fell through was finally getting to meet up with Matt of Bob Walk the Plank infamy.  Matt and I lived within walking distance of each other at one point long before either of us started blogging and collect pretty much the same things, so it's a shame our paths have never crossed.  But sadly he had a full plate during the weekend, and the meetup will have to wait until my next visit to Morgantown.

The big event of the weekend was Tom Barrasso's first US autograph signing since his playing days.  Barrasso has a reputation for being one of the least friendly human beings this side of the Gulag.  And while I ultimately decided not to spring for his autograph, I heard from a few people that he was actually quite pleasant.  I'm guessing the obscene amounts of cash he made over the weekend may have helped.

 The best part about a show this size is that you literally never know what you will find.  The state and zip code parallels from Hometown Heroes have been incredibly tough to track down for me.  And obviously Andrew McCutchen would presumably be the most expensive.  I nearly pulled the trigger on this card on COMC for about $2.50 earlier last week.  And of course there was a copy, sitting in a quarter box on Friday.  Yes, please.

 As a team collector, I love the out of town dealers who roll in with massive rows of quarter boxes are always the best.  I ended up adding about 60 Topps parallels from the past two years, all at roughly a quarter a piece.  When living in Ohio a few dealers always had tons of Wal Mart and Target parallels, but those areas of my collection have been nearly nonexistent since moving back to PA.  I don't think I quite completed the team sets, but I must be darn close.

 I was actually surprised how much trouble I had finding blowout game used and autographs at the show.  Large shows are usually a great place for high quality $1/$2 autographs.  But aside from the Bay and Woodley in this post, which I picked up for about $3 each, there was very little in the way of lower end hits.  It seemed a little strange to me, but I guess it just depends on who sets up and what they bring.

 The score of the day Friday was definitely this Clemente Kellogg's 3-D for a quarter.  It's pretty badly cracked.  But it's Clemente.  For a quarter.

 After being basically MIA at least year's show and the National, I was able to score some decent McCutchen cards this year at what I considered good prices.  This Prizm insert is /99, and was an easy add to my pile for $2.

 It was interesting that my pacing and buying was radically different across the three days.  All these cards in this post came from dealers on Friday.  I was on a buying flurry, spending about $20 with three different dealers and scoring a bunch of nice lower-mid range cards.

 Saturday was a little slower on the card front, and had a lot of standing and chatting.  And Sunday was more or less dominated by memorabilia, and while the additions weren't as jaw dropping as last year, I can't wait to create space for my newest additions.

 Overall the show was a huge win.  I'll be slowly posting over the next few days as I get everything scanned and organized.

It's Show Time!

Cards have been on the back burner lately.  But not that far back.  Today is the first day of my own personal three day holiday: the Robert Morris card show.

I've written quite a bit lately about the state of card shows in the area, and if you're new to the party I'll make it short and sweet - they ain't so hot.

Bit this is a different cup 'o tea.  The three day show draws many of the bigger national dealers, and is always a gold mine for cheap vintage.  The modern selection seems to be dwindling each year, which causes problems for me.  Last year, I don't think I found more than one or two dealers with decent selections of singles from the more recent releases.  I've finished my team sets for all the early sets this year, but will be looking to track down some Gypsy Queen singles for my team set.  We'll see how it goes.

The double edged sword of the show is the cheap vintage has allowed me to knock out the vast majority of my vintage team sets.  But the down side is that also means far fewer cards to chase.  Looking at my want list for this year, almost all of my needs are early releases of Maz, Clemente, and Stargell or pricey high numbers.  Numerous copies of each card I need will certainly be available, but it becomes a question of whether I can locate a copy that falls into the price range I'm willing to pay.

If I'm not a zombie by the end of tonight, I'll hopefully show off some of my haul for today.  I'll be running over to the show after work, and hopefully if everything breaks just right I'll get there a few minutes before the doors open.

Filling in the Team Sets

If I have one major complaint with Topps sets over the last few years, it's that they seem to always miss the bench/middle relief/end of the rotation type players, while guys who don't even make the team somehow end up in the set.

 In 2010, Ryan Church was supposed to be a veteran bench bat for the Bucs.  Instead he largely looked absolutely lost at the place until a midseason trade to the Diamondbacks.  He got overlooked during his time in Pittsburgh (aside from a Heritage card), yet somehow managed to get included in Update as a Diamondback, despite only picking up 55 plate appearances.

 But yet again it's custom card to the rescue.  Right now all my custom autographs are just sitting in toploaders.  But for some of these "extended team set" additions, I'm tempted to add them into my team binders right alongside the rest of the cards from that year.

Custom Creations

I've stalled out a bit on the custom making lately, but took some time this weekend to cross another one off my list of having a Jack Wilson card from each year of Topps cards.

Eventually I'm hoping to transfer this little Topps Archives project to one of the fancier processes I've been messing around with.  But for now I'm happy with the way this one came together.  It's tough to capture the spirit of many of the early Topps designs, since many used posed shots that just aren't as readily available as action photos.

FreeFreeFree

Things have been a little crazy for me lately.  The good kind of crazy.  The kind where you see friends you haven't seen in too long, spend your weekends out of the house enjoying the weather, and take your cat for a walk.  Yeah, you read the last part correctly.

I've had a bunch of packages filter in over the last couple weeks, but haven't had a chance to dig in yet.  So a big thank you to everyone who sent stuff - cards have been on sort of a long overdue pause to go back to enjoying real life.

And this weekend was certainly enjoyable.  On Friday, Kate and I met up with two of my best friends from Morgantown to see the Avengers movie.  They stayed overnight in Pittsburgh, and we reconvened early in the morning on Saturday to hit up Pittsburgh Comics for Free Comic Book Day in what has become an annual tradition.

I'll be bringing things back to cardboard in a second, so bear with me.  My relationship with comic books is a little unusual - I didn't read a single comic until I hit grad school, but since then have fallen in love with the medium for storytelling.  What can I say?  I'm a lit nerd.  But jumping into comics can be a bit daunting as an adult - I had decades worth of characters, stories, and choices to sift through while also having the time commitments that come with being a grown up.  So I pretty much stick to reading the collected graphic novels rather than reading individual comics each month.  And FCBD is prime time to take advantage of some deals, along with picking up the free comics.

But here's what interests me:  by pretty much all accounts, FCBD is a high hit throughout the comic book industry.

For card collectors, you may remember free trading card day, which lasted for a few years in the mid 2000's.  It was actually started right around the same time as free comic book day.  But on the card side of things, the promotion always felt like a huge flop.  I went and bought whatever I needed to buy to get my free cards, but there was really no excitement, enthusiasm, or marketing behind the event.  And I wasn't surprised to see it disappear after a couple years.

But how can one free event tank, while another flourishes?  After all, Americans love free shit, myself included.  And from what I understand, it seems like comics and cards follow a pretty parallel path.  They were basically kids entertainment in the early-mid 20th century.  As the speculator boom rose in the 80's, both saw huge surges in the market for vintage copies, which were then followed by a gilded era of overproduction and speculation.  By the 1990's, artificial scarcity, an over-saturated market, and insane production numbers caused the market to crash.  The result was the closure of tons of comic stores, which was only exacerbated as ebay entered the picture.

And both industries face many of the same conversations over how a physical product can survive in an increasingly digital society.  In fact, comics may be even more harmed than cards.  If I wanted, I could download a digital copy of just about any comic I want off the internet for free.  While things like Topps Bunt have added a digital component to card collecting, you still more or less need to track down the real thing (unless of course you have some kind of weird card image collection).

It's not apples to apples.  Comics are en vogue among the hipster crowd, along with vinyl records.  And comic book characters have become the hottest media property on the planet in the last decade.  And there is definitely a difference between a hobby that can have some intrinsic entertainment value - actually reading a book - than simply hoarding cardboard into your chosen box or binder.

But it does seem a little strange that one free giveaway day inspires absolute craziness, while free card day is a forgettable event that even many collecting at the time may not have known about.

The Art of Straw Grasping

I'm a little behind on cardboard news this week, so this may be old news.  But it looks like hobby dinosaur/block bully Beckett is now suing Zistle over checklists.

It's not too surprising.  Beckett has been trying to do the same to COMC after Beckett decided to abruptly end their partnership after COMC said they weren't interested in selling the entire company to Beckett.  And then a few months Beckett, hobby giant and destroyer of worlds, started offering a bounty for anyone who sniffed out a site that was using their oh so precious checklists.

From the legal analysis in the article, it appears that Beckett may not have much of a leg to stand on.  After all, the checklists are by and large public information that Beckett has simply compiled over the years.  And there was a time when they could do that service in ways that were tough to duplicate for the average Joe.  But today, them there fancy computers make it far easier to access information.  And Beckett doesn't seem to like that.

Even if the case gets tossed at some stage, I imagine sites like Zistle or baseballcardpedia may have difficulty taking on any kind of legal wrangling.  COMC is a fairly large, for profit business.  They have a vested interest in fighting any legal challenge.  While I'm sure smaller hobby sites may generate some ad revenue, I always viewed them as simple conveniences for collectors to connect rather than anything that was looking to reinvent the wheel.

From my perspective, Beckett looks pretty desperate.  It's pretty clear the hobby has moved past them in just about every facet but grading.  Sites like COMC and even Sportlots have passed up their Marketplace in terms of both selection, quality, and most definitely shipping price.  Print magazines?  Not exactly all the rage these days.

Maybe Beckett hopes they can turn the clock back to 1997 by shutting down as many hobby-related sites as possible.  Perhaps they're just desperately hoping to score a couple paydays in damages or settlements before the ship finally sinks.  Honestly, I don't really give a damn.

At this point, Beckett does far more harm to the hobby than any good they have done in the last decade.  The site is a joke, and each new ownership group seems to be progressively less competent than Dr. Jim Beckett could have ever hoped to have been.

In the mean time, I'd suggest offloading your Zistle collections to Excel if you have the time.