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!