Card Show Observations

 

There’s something in the air here in Gotham City.

            Spring, yes.

            Baseball is back.

            And so are card shows in New York City.

            Really since last fall.

            A steady stream of them when this place has been a card show wasteland for the entire time that I’ve been back collecting.

            We’re talking about 2019 here.

            Which shouldn’t sound like a while ago…but it kind of does now, huh?

            Since September 2025 I’ve been to five card shows. Have had to miss two card shows because I was working. Will miss two card shows over the next two weeks because of work/travel. And I have plans to attend at least two more card shows in the coming months. Last Saturday there were actually two dueling card shows in the city.

            WTF?

            I’m not complaining. I enjoy going to card shows. I think they’re great. I think card shows are exciting. I like buying cards in person over buying them online whenever I can. Card shows have proven to me that kids are still very much involved in this hobby even though it seems so out of their reach monetarily. Or maybe they’re all little rich brats at card shows. Regardless, it’s been a real joy attending them and walking away with some stuff like this.

            Having been able to attend a decent number of card shows lately, I’ve come away from them with the following observations.

            Over half the dealers at the card shows I’ve gone to have been Pokémon dealers. Now, I don’t have an issue with Pokémon or even non-sports dealers. Hell, I’d welcome a more diverse selection of non-sports cards, considering I’ve dipped my toe a few times.

            But it’s ALL Pokémon. 

            And dealers are paying for the tables, so…

            What I’ve observed, however, is that there are not nearly as many collectors at Pokémon tables as there are sports card tables. Which means the sports card tables can get pretty crowded. Which means looking at cards can become a bit of a jostling competition. Especially when all of the Braxtons show up.

            What’s a Braxton?

            A brief definition: A Braxton is a boy aged 12-14. He usually has a haircut that’s shaped like broccoli. He wears a hoodie. He calls all the other kids with him bro or brah.

            This is the part where you’re saying to yourself: hey, I thought this guy was glad that kids are at card shows.

            And I am.

            Except for the Braxtons.

            You see, the Braxtons are pushy. The Braxtons come in packs. The Braxtons all have these card-carrying cases that look like little safes. The cases open at the top and have foam lining to snuggly hold all of the graded/insert/numbered cards that The Braxtons are going to try and sell dealers, pushing a guy like me out of the way so that they can haggle and compare prices on their cell phones.

            Kids selling cards at card shows.

            I guess this is where my age is showing. When I was a kid, we didn’t have insert/auto/numbered/graded cards. We had the cards that came in packs. The best we could hope for was a good card not having wax and/or gum stains on it. If you had an autograph card, it was because you either met a player at the ballpark or at a card show signing. That’s obviously not the case now, when little Braxton gets a hobby box for his birthday and can pull out a number of cards that the collecting hoi polloi might be envious of him for having.

            Again, I’m not criticizing this.

            If I were a kid now, I’d probably be at shows with my broccoli-shaped haircut, wearing my hoodie and hanging with my brahs, toting around my Braxton box trying to make a deal like I was Monty Hall or something.

            Monty Hall?

            Showing my age again, huh?

            Vintage card dealers.

            There aren’t as many vintage card dealers at the shows that I’ve gone to. There are a few. And I’ve managed to grab some cards that I wanted from them.

            But they are few and far between.

            And the ones that are there…the cards are usually graded.

            Graded cards are a non-starter for me.

            For the record, I have nothing against graded cards. I’m not judgy about them. I don’t think grading is a scam. I believe that collectors should collect what they like. Graded cards just aren’t for me. I do feel the value is unnecessarily inflated when the card is graded. I’m not a fan of having cumbersome slabs in my collection. A nice one-touch works for me. And, you know what? I’d like to know that I can take the card out and actually touch it should I want to.

            My last observation is also my biggest pet peeve.

            Dealers who don’t put prices on their cards.

            This happens a lot with the vintage guys, graded or not graded. I was recently at a small card show that my local LCS put on at a church. It was a small but great card show. The dealers are awesome and I always have to leave early because I’ve quickly spent my allotted amount. They usually have one or two vintage dealers there. The last time there was only one. And he didn’t display the prices on his cards, which kind of bothered me. I’m going to shows FOR vintage, and it’s kind of hard to be casual when every few seconds you have to keep saying, well, how much is that? How much is that? And the dealer has to keep lifting his glass display case up and down and up and down.

            I’m sure the dealer thinks doing this leads to engagement.

            And maybe it does.

            But I tend to shy away from tables like that.

            I feel like I’m being a nuisance, especially when I don’t buy.

            And I don’t want to feel like a nuisance when I’m at a card show.

            Especially when I’m hanging out with all my Brahs!

            With all that being said, I did really enjoy the last card show that I went to.

It took place here.

And I came away with these.

Maybe my observations came across a little bit like complaints. I didn’t mean them to be. I hope these card shows keep coming and coming and coming and coming and…

You get the drift.

 

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

The Early Bird Gets the Worm: All Others Pay Cash

 

I attended a card show over the weekend.

            Right before the storm hit.

            Card shows ae becoming a regular occurrence for me, especially in my neighborhood or within my neighborhood. I attended a card show in September. I missed a card show in December thanks to my job. I attended a card show on Saturday. There’s one in Manhattan in February and another in my neighborhood again in March.

            WTF??

            I know, right?

            I don’t want to make any Mark Twain jokes about NYC, but it seems we’re getting a lot of card shows now, after that had pretty much been relatively normal for people living near or in other urban areas. Correct me if I’m wrong. But that’s the way I saw it sitting here in Gotham City card-show-less when many of the card folks I knew online were showing off their purchases.

            Well, I didn’t come to disappoint.

            This was my card show haul from this Saturday.

            Pretty good, I think.

            But it could’ve been better.

            At least from where I’m sitting on this bitterly cold January morning.

            You see, I’m one of those guys who procrastinates until he loses out. It happens in all aspects of my life from food shopping to card shopping to when I was younger with things like dating and where to spend a Saturday night. Recently I waited so long that I screwed myself out of the subscriber rate for the latest Dave’s Picks Grateful Dead CDs.

I’m both tight-fisted and cautious, which has worked to a huge disadvantage for me in this hobby and, to be honest, in most everything that I attempt to do. Up until now that mostly (in the hobby) meant not getting pre-sale deals on boxes of cards or leaving a card shop that I knew I wouldn’t be back to for months without the one card that I truly wanted.

            On Saturday that kind of lifestyle cost me this.

            Yeah.

            The card show that I went to on Saturday wasn’t huge. If I had to estimate it was maybe twenty tables in total, and several of them catered to Pokémon cards. But it was the first card show that one of my local LCS put on, and at 10 a.m. the place was packed enough that they set up another show for March before the day was even done. Room for growth, I say. Most of the card vendors were selling modern stuff, a lot of graded stuff, or insert cards. That’s fine. As a man who still worships at the altar of the base card, I get it; or I aspire to get why all of this flashiness matters more.

            My jury is still out on graded cards though.

            But there were two vendors right near each other that were dealing in vintage cards. That’s where guys my age and older seemed to position themselves. When I first saw the Williams card it was being examined (out of its sleeve) by another collector. I figured he was buying it, so I went and checked out some other tables, eventually making my way back. There was the Williams card. Still there. Under glass. Not purchased. And at the kind of price, I considered reasonable enough for me to buy and leave the card show with nothing else but the happiness that IS a 1957 Topps Ted Williams card.

            So, what did I do?

            I hemmed and hawed.

            I worried about the cost.

            I left and went to look at cards at the other vintage vendor.

            That’s where I got the 72 and 73 Reggie cards.

            But…

            I couldn’t get The Kid out of my mind.

            So, I went back to the other vendor.

            Maybe ten minutes had passed.

            And the Ted Williams card was gone.

            But not quite gone yet.

            Another collector was looking at it. I kept hoping that he would say no and that the card would go back into the showcase as it had previously. But that’s not what happened. Not only did I NOT get the Ted Williams card but I got to watch as the other lucky collector paid for it, extol its virtues to the dealer, thanking him for selling a 1957 Topps Ted Williams card at such a reasonable price, and then walk off into the sunset as happy as a pig in shit.

            Yep.

            I bought the 1967 Willie Mays as my consolation prize.

            That said, in NO universe is a 1967 Willie Mays card a consolation prize…except when there is a 1957 Topps Ted Williams to be had.

            Not to get political and stuff, but I know that in the grand scheme of things not getting a 1957 Topps Ted Williams isn’t a big deal right now.

            But as a collector, I’ll be kicking myself for this one.

            For.

            A.

            Long.

            Time.

            And I can almost guarantee that if there is a 1957 Topps Ted Williams at ANY of the card show I plan on attending it will NOT be available to me at the price it was for the condition it was in.

            Let that be a lesson to me.

            Let that be a lesson for us all.

 

Thanks for reading! Happy collecting!

George Hendrick

 

I think it was during the pandemic (2021?) that I came across uncompleted 1984 and 1985 Topps sets at the card store/comic store/action figure store near my jobs that acts as the closest thing that I have to an LCS. The sets were $10 each. Both came in a binder. And what I mean by uncompleted sets is that the person who sold them to said “LCS” had taken all of the star cards out (and Mets card), and essentially sold the rest for what they could get.

            I’m guessing less than $10 each.

            When I initially bought the sets, I didn’t realize they both contained that year’s traded set along with the standard 792-card set that Topps put out in both 1984 and 1985. And, yes, they were plundered of all the star cards and Mets cards as well. It was no matter to me. I wanted the regular 1984 and 1985 Topps sets and had every intention of buying the cards I’d need to complete the sets. But Traded Sets? As a kid, I didn’t even know about Traded sets until the 1985 set came out with Vince Coleman’s rookie card or extra rookie card or whatever rookie card in it. I certainly never considered Traded sets to be an addition to the standard sets. I considered them anomalies, if I’m being honest; a 132-card agent of chaos that muddied the waters of the rookie card.

But having once owned the 1985 Topps Traded Set as I kid, I had to flip through the binder pages until I came across HIS card.

There’s George Hendrick.

Smiling.

His ballcap backwards.

Seemingly happy.

In a Pittsburgh Pirates uniform.

George Hendrick didn’t have that great of a tenure with the Pittsburgh Pirates. To be honest, the team went 54-107 that year, so no one really had a good time playing baseball in Pittsburgh in 1985. In just 69 games Hendrick batted .230 with 2 home runs and 25 RBI. He was gone from the team by August 2^nd, traded to the California Angels, a team that won the AL West the very next season. A season in which George Hendrick batted .272 in 104 games with seven times the home runs he hit in Pittsburgh.

I didn’t like George Hendrick.in 1985.

Like other Pirates fans I took out our frustrations with the Pittsburgh Pirates organization out on him.

And maybe these guys too.

Thought I exclude Big Daddy from that bunch...maybe Orsulak too.

11-year-old me gleefully called George Hendrick “Joggin’” George, one of the nicknames that had hounded the 4-time all-star his entire career.

I was glad to see him go.

But…

There’s always been something about George Hendrick’s 1985 Topps Traded card for me. I can’t tell if it’s the happiness made manifest in the image. George smiling. Maybe joking with another teammate off camera. The idea that not all was bad between George Hendrick and the city of Pittsburgh in 1985, gives me a warm feeling. I wondered when the picture that been taken. Hendrick is wearing a batting jacket, so one can’t tell if this is a spring training game, an away game, or a home game. A lot of collectors can tell stadiums right away. I can’t. And the blurriness of the background image doesn’t help in determining where the picture was taken. I’m curious because I want to know if the picture of Geroge Hendrick was taken before the season started, with there still being hope.

Or maybe just lighter moment taken during a colossally bad Pittsburgh baseball year.

Regardless, the 1985 Topps Traded George Hendrick card is a favorite of mine. It’s only one of two officially released cards of Hendrick with the Pirates.

I like the George Hendrick looks like he’s having the time of his life playing on one of the worst baseball teams I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I like that unbeknownst to Mr. Hendrick that he’s going to be getting the hell out of Pittsburgh before that hellish summer ends. That he’d be shipped out to Anaheim. Maybe not too far from where he played ball at Freemont H.S. in Los Angeles. That the next season he’d be playing for something real, before his career finally wound down in 1988, after 18 years in the Big Leagues.

            Here’s to you, Joggin’ George!

 

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

 

 

Collecting...when your team...SUCKS

 

I’m gonna come right out and say it.

            I’m going to tell you something that you already know.

            …collecting SUCKS…when your team SUCKS.

            Okay…maybe it doesn’t suck.

            But it’s not as fun.

            For those of you who read these posts regularly (when this blog is, in fact, regular), you know that I’m a lifelong Pirates fan. Being a Pittsburgh Pirates fan almost defines “long suffering” at least in terms of sports fandom. The Pirates were 71-91 this year. They were 76-86 in 2024, and 76-86 in 2023. In the years that I’ve been what I’ll call…an active Pirates fan…the team has had exactly 8 winning seasons.

            In 45 years.

            Pretty Pathetic for the team of THIS guy: 

            What made collecting the 2025 Pirates such a sad task is that it just feels like promises unfulfilled at this point. This is year six of a rebuild. YEAR SIX. Most professional teams that aren’t the Pittsburgh Pirates usually see the fruits of their labor by now. A playoff team. Handfuls of that developing young talent getting voted to all-star games and winning awards.

            The Pirates fired their manager in May.

            They traded away an unfulfilled piece of their future at the All-Star Break. 

            The young talent failed to develop. 

            The team’s best player regressed and is now on the wrong side of 30. 

            I guess there’s still good ol’ Cutch. 

            …for now.

            Am a missing anyone?

            Oh…right…this guy. 

            I like Paul Skenes. How can you not? He’s an exciting overpowering pitcher. He seems like an alright dude too. But the Pirates didn’t develop Paul Skenes. That kid came to them as a gift. Fully formed. Almost no time in their wretched minor league system. No time for Skenes to regress like most of the Pirates prospects, who have watched themselves slip further and further and, in a lot of cases, even off Baseball’s top 100 prospect lists.

            God have mercy on Mr. Konnor Griffin and his stats should he get to the major leagues under this current regime.

            And as for Paul Skenes…any reasonable fan has to know that he’ll be pitching in New York or L.A. before the Pirates even gets close to sniff the playoff again.

            Provided they ever do.

            So…what does that mean for me as a collector?

            It means there’s nothing and no one to collect on the Big League team.

            And nothing and no one to really collect in the minors.

            Now, you’re probably reading this and saying to yourself…this guy is a Pirates baseball card collector: Shouldn’t he be used to all of this losing?

            Yes…and…no…

            I’ve been a Pirates fan for 45 years…but I’ve only been a collector for about ½ of that time. I was six when I got into cards in 1980. I had no clue what the Pirates record was back then. For the record it was 83-79. When I started paying attention in 1984/85, yeah, the teams were bad.

            I’ll admit I did have my personal favorites. 

The Pirates were bad. But the culture of losing wasn’t there the way it is now. In 1984 the Pirates were only five seasons removed from their last World Series win. Only a few years removed from a decade that they dominated…minus the goddamned Reds and their Big Red machine.

This guy had only retired a few years back.

 The Pirates were bad but the expectation wasn’t that they’d stay bad. And they didn’t. By 1987 the Buccos were on their way back toward greatness. They were on their way to being a great ballclub. The Pirates that I really collected as a kid were these guys.

            All-Stars.

            Cy Young Award winners.

            MVPs.

            Division Champions.

            Promises fulfilled.

            Unless you count the playoffs…

            When I got back into collecting in 2019, rebuilding into a winner was the trajectory that the Pittsburgh Pirates were once again on. Damn the decades of losing. By 2020’s pandemic season the Pirates had a new manager, a new General Manager, and they were going to build the club back into a winner.

            At least that’s what they said.

            What they always say.

            But the proof is in the tasting of the pudding.

            The owner is cheap and is bad at hiring.

            The clown of a GM is still employed despite the following:

            And the Pirates are a long way from winning anything.

            I’m stuck with all of these Ke’Bryan Hayes cards.

            Even Topps doesn’t care.

            Here’s the Pirates checklist for 2025 Update:

            So, what have I been collecting this year?

            I’ve been putting team sets together from doubles for other teams that I follow. I’ve been putting the base set together, despite my protestations at the way Topps collates packs under the Fanatics regime. I’ve been buying older players. If I’ve been buying Pirates cards at all; they’ve been older Pirates as well.

            There also hasn’t been much products. Or not AS much. We’re in October and there’s still no Stadium Club. No Allen & Ginter. No Archives.

            And that’s okay.

            Not buying cards and saving money not buying players from a team that doesn’t seem to care about its fans…

…that can be considered being a smart collector too.

 

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

           

 

                       

My First Card Show...Kinda....

I did it.

            I finally did it.

            It took 6 years.

            And a lot of stops and starts.

            But I finally did it.

            I attended my first sports card show since returning to collecting the September of 2019. It wasn’t a huge card show. But it was a good size. Maybe fifty vendors. Maybe more. The show was held at one of the local Catholic schools. In their gym or in whatever extra rooms they build onto churches and Catholic schools for social gatherings, or mass exorcisms, or whatever it is that Catholics do these days.

            I’m a lapsed Catholic and am not currently up on the goings on.

            But there was a card show.

            They’ve actually been doing them quarterly, but this is the first time that I had off of work when one was being held.  First thing: I forgot how overwhelming it can be when you first enter a card show. The room size. The buzz of other collectors milling about. All of the tables and showcases laid out in long rows.

            Yeah.

            I could feel a little bit of anxiety mixing in with the excitement.

            I kind of began walking up and down the rows aimlessly. Like a zombie maybe.  Yes, yes, I can acknowledge that there are cards. And people selling cards. And collector’s haggling over cards. Sifting through bins of cards. Talking about cards.

            But I felt kind of out of body at first.

            Like what am I doing here?

            What’s collecting?

            Wait…I collect!

            Where’s my list?

            That’s right…I made a list. A wish list. Something to ground me when I got to the card show so that I didn’t aimlessly wander rows like a zombie or alien observing an ancient ritual on earth.

            So much for the list.

            It was a dealer selling older cards where I finally found some semblance of balance. He had cards from the 1950s into the 1980s, all arranged by year, all in those flexi-sleeves, and all with the prices clearly marked on them.

            I got these guys from him.

            The 1964 McCovey was a nice surprise find.

            I kind of casually collect Willie McCovey cards. Which mostly has meant that if I find one at a flea market for a good price, I’ll get it.

            I also managed to stick with older cards. It’s not that I didn’t want newer cards but newer cards are way more readily accessible to me. Plus, a lot of the newer card dealers were dealing in graded cards. That’s not to say all of them did. But anything that I wanted that was newer was graded. I don’t do graded cards. I’m not against graded cards. Not at all. It’s just not a facet of collecting that I’m interested in.

            But I was interested in these guys at .50 cents a pop.

            And another dealer had this legendary guy right in my wheelhouse.

            Maybe you'd buy that 1975 card for Keith Hernandez.

            But I bought it for Phil “scrap iron” Garner.

            Made a small addition to the budding Lou Brock and Rod Carew collections as well.

            Oh, Captain, my Captain....I finally have some of your rookie cards

            And I did buy one big ticket item.

            The dealer who sold this to me must’ve been under the assumption that I was at the card show to buy and then sell. Or do we call this flipping? He said, well, I hope you get a good deal for it somewhere. I said…are you kidding? I’m keeping this.

      All in all, I had a great time. I forgot how fun card shows can be. It was nice to be around other collectors. Made me miss the collecting community that politicians and tech bro wankers have split up online into several social media outlets.

            I even had some card show spillover into the next day when I found these at a street festival in my neighborhood.

    

            I'm a sucker for massive Junk Wax sets

           Oh…and about that list.

            Here it is.

            I used it and didn’t use it.

            Maybe I’ll keep it for next time.

            Or maybe I’ll do as another collector advised me….to just wing it…and see where the show takes me.

            Anyway….

 

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!