Share with us some great card show experiences.

Living in Canada, I rarely attend shows; the ones that I have attended have always been 90% hockey stuff. I'm hoping to make it to Chicago for this year's national, but for the time being it would be great to hear about experiences people have had at card shows in years past.

Could be a great deal that you made.

Or maybe some amazing cards that you saw.

Or a great conversation or swap you had with a fellow collector.

first national after i got back into the hobby in '03 at Atlantic City was pretty fun. Picked up a bunch of nice caramels for real cheap from TIK (he overprices his 19th but back then dealers hardly knew anything about caramels).

Saw a bunch of OG n54'ers...

I actually attended the 1st informal n54 dinner.

Midnight blackjack with Vorthian at Caesar's last night, flight leaves at 5am...(actually won using my "system" )

Don't think anything will top that first show....lots of cards, lots of bargains, and lots of fun.

That sounds like great fun, Quan. Hopefully the '08 national can come somewhere close to that experience, even if the bargains are fewer and farther between.

Anyone else have a great card show experience they'd like to share?

Willow Grove Spring 1982. This was the first card show I went too other than the Mansco Perry show at the Thunderbird in the Twin Cities area. The amount of vintage material was staggering. This was truly a vintage show, top to bottom. There was some new material, but literally every table was filled with 50s and early cards. I remember someone having close to a comlpete set of t3s available, I bought a complete set of t201s, and there all sorts of other goodies.

Jay

One of my most memorable shows was when they had a National in Houston circa 1990ish. I remember seeing some great stuff at that show. Tik was set up with some great stuff like always. He had almost a complete set of S81's, He had a darby's Chocalate box with Crawford on it, Numerous N173's with about 3 different poses of Duffy. Other cool stuff I remember was a mint Chief Bender L1 Leather, Mack N173 Black Mount, Duke Nash Cabinet and a bunch of other cool stuff.

Memoralbilia was unbelievable also, I almost bought a Nice 1910 Brown's Panorama Photo with Wallace & Waddell. Actually, I asked Josh Leland for advice on the Panarama and he told me that nobody cared about that team and kinda talked me out of buying it. It was 700.00 before haggling. Wish I had it today.

I got my S81 Matty (My Avatar) & a T3 Johnson that turned out to be a PSA 5 at that show..

i love live shows in general...you never know the next bargain might be around the corner, and you don't have 50 other people on the watchlist like ebay...also there are no surprises at shows, you can see/touch/hold/feel the card so either you are real happy with the card or you take a pass

my 1st national was early 90's in anaheim...i knew nothing of t's and e's but had a blast picking up auto'd pippen jersey, a jagr signed sweater, a couple signed pucks/balls and some opc hockey cards. was fun for a guy in high school...wish i had foresight like zach/macrae/lifson etc obviously they're way smarter than me.

I miss being able to go to shows, always alot of fun. I once saved up my money to buy a Ruth or Gehrig card. There was a dealer from Wisconsin that always seemed to have some of each. I ended up buying a 33 Goudey no. 92 Gehrig (still in my collection).

I ran a card store from 89-92 and we went to SF for the largest show ever, 2 buildings it took a day to look in each building. After we got back, I found out I was on CBS Nightly news but was never able to see the news broadcast.
I had a customer tell me what I was saying and remembered the transaction. Lots of neat and interesting stuff.

Lee