Even the Best of Times Have a Season

At this moment, the National Sports Card Convention 2024 edition is about to kick off, and for the first time in more than 25 years I will not be there. 

The routine was the same for me for a very long time — arrive Wednesday, get settled in, head to the show Thursday, go back all-day Friday before heading home after spending the morning at the show Saturday.

It was always such a great time for me, too.

I’d see hobby friends, grab dinner with them and talk about cards and sports. I’d get introduced to new folks, who then became new friends who I would meet with the following year and so on…

At its peak, the group was over two dozen guys, all ages and backgrounds, from all over the country (and Canada) — every one of us with a real passion for sports cards. 

In many ways I, and this group, grew up at The National. 

When I first started going I was a kid basically, a freshman in college, putting myself through school buying, selling and trading sports cards at local and regional shows.

As the year rolled by I, and the entire group of friends who met at the show each year, got older. Some got married and had families, others moved around the county, settled into careers and lived life. 

Yet, we all seemed to find the time and a way to meet at this card show every year.

We’ve lost a couple of the gang, sadly, and since the pandemic, the group has dwindled significantly, but even last year, there were 11 of us who found our way there.

For me, after making the drive to Chicago last year, and dealing with that show, it became crystal clear to me that this is not where I belong anymore.

Now listen, I know I’m old, and I may be at a point in my life where I get very nostalgic over certain things — this show being one of them.

But heck, I was going when nobody was there. When it wasn’t a “thing,” to go to the National.  Back in the California days even, or when the show was in Detroit and St. Louis. 

I endured Atlantic City more than once. Enjoyed Chicago every time (except last year when the A/C crapped out), and even had a blast in Cleveland the last time it was there.

But the show has moved on, and frankly, it has left me behind. 

At one time, there were real deals to be had at the show. 

At one time there was a solid core of collectors attending, and fair trades were actually something people welcomed.

The last handful of years, however, opportunistic dealers have exploited both the trendiness of the show and the naivety of new people into the hobby, and they’ve jacked prices up to a level where it would be hard for me to sleep at night if I were the guy behind that table selling cards.

Wanna-be social media influencers and their cameras are everywhere now with fake smiles, and staged laughs and pretend hard-line negotiation tactics scripted solely for YouTube audiences. 

Last year, I actually stood beside a man (or a kid in his early 20s, if I had to guess), a camera in one hand and a fistful of $100 bills in the other. He tossed down the wad of cash, being sure to get his face in the shot, and told his audience of likely dozens, I’m sure, how he was not leaving until he made a deal to buy “every card in this case, bro… ‘cause that’s how I do it.”

Of course, when the dealer, which happened to be a shop who I’ve known the owner of for years, asked him with a chuckle if he had four or five more backpacks filled with $100s, the camera was not rolling. 

I saw two grown men arguing at a table to the point where one guy slammed his fist down on the showcase so hard it cracked the glass. They were shouting over the price of about five cards.

These are pieces of cardboard and a hobby designed to bring people joy. We’re not saving lives or curing diseases here, people. 

But the macho, tough guy, I’m-all-that, it’s-my-world-and-you-all-are-just-renting-space attitude is everywhere. 

It’s ridiculous, really.

Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way implying that the hobby is off the rails. It’s not — but The National is.

So, from now on I’m staying home the last week of July, deciding instead to recall a kinder, more civilized, more enjoyable National Sports Card Convention, one that now seems to live only in my memories and the small group of others who can remember those days.

Which really is too bad, because it’s a great show when it was an actual card show and not a place to be seen.

By the way, that group of us that met each year for the past two-plus decades, only two of them are in Cleveland this year, and both of those gentlemen own shops and are set up at the show. The rest of us are having a Zoom call Friday night to talk sports cards, just like we have always done the last week of July.