I started Day 4 of the National with a little time travel.
Asked to be part of a live pack break with Vintage Breaks, I dropped by the booth to meet with owner Leighton Sheldon, who was set to open a beautiful pack of Exhibits baseball as part of the company’s ongoing live internet broadcasts.
We did pretty well, starting off with Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Robin Roberts being the card on the top of the pack. We later found Dodgers great Duke Snider, so that meant two out of the five cards in the pack featured Hall of Famers. Who doesn’t like opening decades old packs?
My wife and I are excited to announce that we officially have a rookie card, as we stopped by the Panini booth and went straight for the Prizm design. With the relatively light rookie classes across the board this year, our RC should be right up there in value with any of them.
We made our way back to the autograph pavilion and managed to see many of the cast of The Sandlot on hand signing autographs away from the main area.
I quickly jumped over to the Tristar autograph pavilion for one of the early rounds of appearances for the day. Former Detroit Lions megastar Barry Sanders was back for another National appearance and there were plenty of fans and collectors waiting for him.
The greatest closer of them all, New York Yankees relief pitcher Mariano Rivera was in attendance at the same time and had a long line. Rivera has one of the best looking, neatest signatures of any athlete, past or present. It’s one you can definitely read.
The greatest lead off man of all time was also the greatest autograph guest for this round in terms of fan an interaction and personality. Rickey Henderson was absolutely outstanding with fans and collectors, whether signing rookie cards, jerseys or photos.
The Saturday lineup was definitely star studded. Four-time Super Bowl champion Joe Montana was making his scheduled appearance at the very same time.
As you can imagine it was a huge line to meet Joe Cool, who later opened a box of cards on the main stage and pulled a Tom Brady rookie card.
Minnesota Twins great Tony Oliva was making his appearance at the same time as the other legends previously mentioned. There is a lot of buzz around and appreciation for Oliva right now with this recent induction into the Hall of Fame.
I managed to pop back behind the curtain again today and be a fly on the wall as a number of legends were getting ready to head out to meet the public. Paul Pierce, Lawrence Taylor, Dan Marino and others were getting things done in the back waiting for their time slot out front.
With all of the grails and the whales in this massive room it’s easy to overlook the minnows. I wanted to make a point to rifle through some five row value boxes as they were plentiful throughout the show. For all of the flashy high end showcases I’ve pictured there were just as many one, two, three, four and five row white boxes full of fun and interesting cards priced from 10 cents to $10. There were certain booths where you stand behind other collectors and wait your turn.
Certain booths were overflowing with collectors from open to close looking through these boxes. I’m happy to know that there are still plenty of collectors that dig through five rows looking to fill sets, find a card to add to an album at home or add some lower end cards to their PC. I know I do. That is the grass roots, salt of the earth piece of the hobby that we need.
Our day at the convention ended by seeing one of the more fun and entertaining interactions between a collector and dealer that we’ve witnessed all week. A young man who was literally a few minutes away from boarding a flight he booked (because his girlfriend was home cooking dinner) in the Dallas area, was trying to finalize a five figure deal with Aaron’s Sports Cards by phone.
I had to just stand and watch how this played out these two had a really fun interaction back-and-forth. They clearly had multiple interactions prior to this one, but this was one for the books. These two were trying ten different ways to get this deal done, as the young collector was looking to do a deal by trading a raw Topps Chrome Tom Brady Gold X-Fractor and a 2017-18 Topps Chrome UEFA Champions League Green Refractor Kylian Mbappe Beckett 9.5 for an 2005-06 Ultimate Collection Alex Ovechkin RPA and a sum of cash. This phone interaction went back-and-forth for probably 15 minutes before the deal ultimately fell through, as the dealer called the kid the best salesman he ever saw. It was a fun way to and the day.
As we were getting ready to leave this fun interaction, the mood changed. The girl behind the table discretely motioned across the way in shock. Once we got the full story it was pretty bad. I guess the guy at Aaron’s was driving through a rough part of town the night before and saw a gentleman from one of his neighboring booths walking alone. He knew this man was walking right into a potentially bad situation where people were waiting to take advantage of him. Unfortunately, he was past the man and not in a position to stop and warn the gentleman who was on foot. It turned out he had also targeted earlier in the week by cars cutting off passing motorists, trying to get them to stop and, one would assume, rob them. I doubt it was done in an effort to check comps. The gentleman sitting at the nearby nearby table had an obvious black eye, hand wraps and other visible injuries but had made it to the show. What may have happened to him convinced my wife and I to just drive back and hang out at the hotel for the evening.
I really wanted to give AC a chance because I had loved coming to this area for years and years but it’s hard to believe the show will make a return to the city anytime soon.
For full coverage of the 2022 National, check out our special section.
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