dismonkey1
Verified Trader,
A little after the fact, but just wanted to share some of my National experience and my not so substantial "haul". Just returned from my real vacation in Aruba, so the reason for the dealyed posting. As for the National, decided to go for a Thursday and Friday. As many have said, the National is not great for hockey card collectors in general, but more so for the experience. On Thursday, got off an early morning flight and rode the CTA over to Rosemont (a short walk from the Convention Center). Was there for the 10am general admission opening and the line was....long. It reminded me of a roller coaster amusement park line winding around the barriers. To be honest, this year's National was bigger and very well attended compared to the few I had been at before. A lot of pent up demand I guess. They had free masks at the entryway next to the free ebay string bags, but suffice to say the Ebay bags were much more popular. If I had had any issues with the National, it was the lack of face coverings (although Chicago was in a mask optional indoor phase at the time due to low local numbers). Still, lets be real, many of these people travel from out of town and many come from areas in the US where Covid rates are much higher. Went armed with my mask and the vaccine and two negative tests (before Aruba trip and before return to the USA).
As for the show, it was pretty massive with tons of action (I believe 85,000 general admission tickets were sold for the show and VIP packages sold out in two days). For baseball and basketball collectors, it would be heaven. I would also say that there was quite a bit of soccer followed by other sports and non sports such as wrestling, marvel, and pokeman. PSA was everywhere. Everything seemed to be graded PSA... Very few tables were majority hockey; although many had at least some cards in the showcase. I saw a lot of high-end big name players and then some boxes to dig thru for low-end stuff. The hard part was finding those mid range cards. I personally wasn't interested in adding any more random low end stuff to the collection and the prices on the high end stuff were way out of my league. I did end up picking up a whopping four cards just because I was there... I also scored my Thursday night Giordanos Deep Dish which was a winner. Overall, I thought two days was plenty of time for a hockey card collector. I did run into Jeremy and a couple of other familiar faces, but there were so many people, that you could easily talk to them once and then never see them again.
And without further ado, here is a link to my haul (all 4 cards!)...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/189162597@N07/51353932014/in/dateposted-public/
Thanks- Kevin!
As for the show, it was pretty massive with tons of action (I believe 85,000 general admission tickets were sold for the show and VIP packages sold out in two days). For baseball and basketball collectors, it would be heaven. I would also say that there was quite a bit of soccer followed by other sports and non sports such as wrestling, marvel, and pokeman. PSA was everywhere. Everything seemed to be graded PSA... Very few tables were majority hockey; although many had at least some cards in the showcase. I saw a lot of high-end big name players and then some boxes to dig thru for low-end stuff. The hard part was finding those mid range cards. I personally wasn't interested in adding any more random low end stuff to the collection and the prices on the high end stuff were way out of my league. I did end up picking up a whopping four cards just because I was there... I also scored my Thursday night Giordanos Deep Dish which was a winner. Overall, I thought two days was plenty of time for a hockey card collector. I did run into Jeremy and a couple of other familiar faces, but there were so many people, that you could easily talk to them once and then never see them again.
And without further ado, here is a link to my haul (all 4 cards!)...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/189162597@N07/51353932014/in/dateposted-public/
Thanks- Kevin!
