by Rich Klein
In our last column we discussed that with the National Sports Convention announcing their sites for the rest of this decade, there will continue to be no Nationals west of the Mississippi or south of the Mason/Dixon line for nearly 15 years. While some people may wonder why about today, I was drawn to thinking about some of the older National voting meetings of the past.

That bid, which was made by four of the leading dealers/hobby figures in the New York area (Mike Aronstein, Mike Gordon, Lew Lipset and Tom Reid) had widespread support and we expected an unanimous vote for the show. Imagine everyone’s surprise when a person from the San Francisco area showed up and make a bid for that area. I remember his bid was pretty reasonable but no one before that night had known he was going to bid so none of the details were available to us. I do not remember the young man’s name nor the exact vote but a vote for New York at about 156-21 sticks out in my memory.
If the young man had been even better prepared and really done grass roots work he might have come out of nowhere to win the National Convention. In comparison, when long-time hobbyists think of Ron Durham’s victory for the 1988 National as a surprise, the argument was that at least we knew about his bid through the hobby media.

As it turned out the Houston show would end maybe a week or two before the baseball strike which turned out to be a major sea change in hobby history. I was in Nick’s Sports Cards recently and Nick commented if you could survive 1994, you could survive anything in this hobby. But in 1993, that future seemed a long-time way.
Trust me, when you return to your hotel room at 2 AM and have not eaten dinner, you are not a happy camper about long National meetings and to that poster who asked to be able to vote on future locations for the NSCC, I would just advise him to be careful for what you ask for.
We’ll have other tales of National meetings and events in the near future as a run-up for the 2013 National Convention in Chicago.
Rich Klein can be reached at [email protected]