With the Super Bowl over and real baseball still several weeks away, it was a good weekend for a card show here in Texas as folks look for something to do on a weekend. On Saturday, we returned to the Southfork Hotel and the dealers who set up all reported good to excellent sales. As for me, I had 
my best day in that location as I sold several items which were “one-offs” to me and I will probably never own more copies of these cards. So the good thing was the cards sold and there were new people, at least to me, who bought cards at this show. It was a small but steady crowd all day.
Again, one of our vendors was very aggressive in using social media to bring collectors to meet him at the show and hopefully sell some of his inventory. It was good for him as he did draw some collectors and it was again good for us in terms of bringing more customers into the room. To me, that’s truly a win-win as many of those who came because of his social media efforts also stopped at the other tables and purchased cards.
We even had, as is our norm, a new vendor (who had been a steady customer) and his goal was to sell enough cards to buy more cards that he wants. He did succeed in that, but he commented that he was so busy it took till 2 PM for him to actually look at other tables.
It was nice to have customers but the monthly shows are relaxed enough give those of us who set up the chance to talk about great memories from shows we’ve been to during our lives.
Somehow the name of Jesse Barfield came up and I told the story of the “free” Jesse Barfield rookie I once gave away. Back in the mid-1980s I was doing an Albany, New York show and I had a few copies of this “hot” 1982 Topps card. Of course, when you are in your mid 20’s, belting 40 homers in a season and have a gun for an arm it seems like you’ve got great upward potential. Obviously, things didn’t turn out that way for Jesse, who had a decent career, nonetheless.
I was negotiating with a group of teenagers about this card and somehow I got very aggravated during the course of our discussion (of course I had to get up at about 4:30 AM to drive to Albany). Finally I just tore up the card in front of the kids and said: “Well, now it’s free. Enjoy your new card.” I’m sure they thought I was the craziest man they had ever met. I actually did that a few more times, more for dramatic affect than anything and some people got such a kick out of it they would ask me to tear up a card in front of them. And I always picked some 1980’s mainstream card so I don’t think, as we have discovered, any long-lasting harm to the card community was created.
But, even more importantly, Saturday’s results kept our forward momentum for the big March 8 non-profit show at Adat Chaverim (Plano III). We try to make sure everyone leaves with a bunch of free cards and thanks to donors, we are able to do that. In the past week, we received a huge box from our editor (thanks, Rich), and in addition, we also received a nice surprise from one of our former Beckett teammates who is now at Panini. They gave us some signed cards of Cowboys receiver Kevin Williams to use as door prizes. We were very thrilled, that even without asking, they again delivered some goodies for our cause.
In addition, we received another packet of inexpensive graded cards, this time with some autographs no less, to be used as giveaways at the front desk. If you’re promoting a show, we think giveaways like this are a great drawing card and I’d highly recommend it. When attendees feel like they were treated well and received something just for coming, they’re likely to come back next time.
In addition, our friends from Beckett Radio have once again offered to give us some air time on their program to help promote our event. And if you have never listened before, Derek Ficken came over to Beckett from CBS radio in Dallas and does a great job not only interviewing people for the show but also doing the production work. It’s a good listen.
And on a personal note, I take great pride in all the show ventures, but I really appreciate running the shows at Adat Chaverim because those give me a chance to give back to the community. To me, even though a “small” show, it’s one where we can get the whole DFW collecting community together and show we can all get along and help our community. We’ll have a little more on this show but I can assure you we will have some very nice door prizes and very nice giveaway…all for a $1 suggested donation.
