The good, the bad and the ugly.. Your expo?

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Fury

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Came back from my first expo.. Snuck away from the family on Sunday, wish I had more time... The good was all the great vintage, found a nice Dryden rc to add to the PC, also got to see a case of 05/06 Cup broken, that was pretty exciting!! The bad, did not bring enough $$$.. Seems very few dealers want to trade, will know better next time.. The ugly, the smell, honestly, what happened to hygiene??
 
I had a fantastic expo. It was way busier than I expected it to be, (especially Friday) and the dealers I spoke with were mostly happy with their sales. I picked up some awesome pc cards, and I found most dealers very willing to trade (as long as you understand they are not going to trade equal bv for equal bv, they have to make some money too!

The only complaint I have is of dealers who left their tables to walk around in the hands of people who were not in a position to buy/sell/trade or in some cases even quote prices.

I understand most dealers are collectors too, and that they want to walk around the greatest show of the year, but it was pretty frustrating as a customer to be told, "I don't know what he wants for that, come back later, the boss isn't here etc..." If you want to be gone for a couple of hours, empower the person behind your table to make decisions, and ultimately sales!

matt
 
I had a great time. Other than getting lost in the fog on the way up, the weekend went off smoothly. I moved all my stuff which basically financed my weekend without having to significantly dip into what I had planned on bringing.

I spent a good portion of saturday just walking around and checking things out. Busted a few boxes of Score (super fun break) and 2 boxes of Certified at the Panini booth. Very fun time, got a lot more pics this time out.

Sunday was great for the common's bins. I doubled my haul on sunday in the quarter bin alone with lots of older shinies (I love me some shinies).

It'll be my last for awhile but it was a blast. Great seeing some familiar faces and quite a few newer ones as well.
 
I had a great expo, as always i left disappointed that it all had to come to an end. I look forward to both expo's in T.O with great anticipation and I have yet to be disappointed.

Highlights were watching the case of the 05-06 cup being broken, my own ITG Ult. break and meeting fellow collectors that have been on the boards for quite some time.
Bruce you are the man for giving me the right case :)

Draw back for myself was not being quick enough off of the hop getting down to the expo friday to pick up a case of score before the price jump. By midday saturday it had already hit $30 a box and by sunday the last two or three boxes were almost $40.

99% friendly dealers, one sure fire idiot in the mix but a great expo. It's really a shame that we couldn't do this every 3 months.
 
My wife and I only attended on Saturday and had a great time. We did a box each at the UD redemption as well as a box of score for the Panini both. ITG had quite the set-up as well. We got there early enough to get a goodie bag each from ITG. Met a few of the members here and got chatting a little and had a great time. That would be the good.

The bad, we had a budget to stick to since x-mas is in a month.

The ugly, doing the Panini redemption with Score hockey and getting a basketball player as the redemption...wtf?
 
cardz1976 said:
I had a great expo, as always i left disappointed that it all had to come to an end. I look forward to both expo's in T.O with great anticipation and I have yet to be disappointed.

Highlights were watching the case of the 05-06 cup being broken, my own ITG Ult. break and meeting fellow collectors that have been on the boards for quite some time.
Bruce you are the man for giving me the right case :)

Draw back for myself was not being quick enough off of the hop getting down to the expo friday to pick up a case of score before the price jump. By midday saturday it had already hit $30 a box and by sunday the last two or three boxes were almost $40.

99% friendly dealers, one sure fire idiot in the mix but a great expo. It's really a shame that we couldn't do this every 3 months.[/QUOTE]
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Did he happen to be a short chubby guy with a ball cap with all the nice Cup stuff?? He never stopped scowling at people!! That guy needed a happy pill!!
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The good about the expo was the ITG booth and most of the dealers. I was very fortunate to pull the Conn Smythe Lumbergraph. I was in shock. Additional good was dealing with all the wonderful people from this community.

The bad, there were a few dealers that artificially inflated the prices on their cards to show a discount. They would place $20.00 on a card and say that was "Book" price and their discount was 50% off of book price, when the card only listed at $10.00 in the guide.

The Ugly was the fog and some of the smell from certain dealers. Like Bruce said, they should be giving out deodorant at the door.

PS - More good, eating Tim Horton's for four meals out of a possible 6.
 
I had a great time at the Expo as always and I plan on having a full report with my UM 10 break up later today. The only negative was that I decided to be responsible and stick to a budget which meant I had to pass up on a Syl Apps RC that I have been searching for. As for the poor hygiene, I only encountered one really bad offender. Best Expo Ever in that regard!
 
This is by far one of the best Expos I have been to. Panini stepped things up a few notches with their fantastic redemption program and Upper Deck also seemed to elevate their game. In The Game had a FANTASTIC idea by creating In The Gameland and by bringing in George Chuvalo on Saturday and Angela James on Sunday, BOTH for free signings.

My opinion is that this Expo was all about the collectors. The dealers who had any success realized that and knew what to stock. The ones who got their asses kicked got their asses kicked for good reason.

Score Hockey rules the world. Standing ovation for Al Muir and company.

I still say someone should contact Axe and the Irish Spring people for corporate sponsorship. Unreal that grown men can smell so terribly. I know showering takes away from other leisure activities (like pulling the covers over your head and farting), but sweet crap, would it really kill you to rock a shower once...TWICE a week?
 
As I mentioned in another thread, I had a blast the two days that I attended. Great customer service from ITG and handing out a remeption per pack was just ridiculous.

I found that vendors were very personable and it was easy to talk prices (even if I thought some of what i was after was just going for too much.

I didn't find it difficult at all to do cash and card trades but i was willing to give up some quality and bucks to get what I ultimately wanted. A quick shout out to gamebreakers who i believe posts here. I did some business with him which i would like to think we both came out ahead in. Thank you very much Hans for being so reasonable. I've literally been watching that card on ebay for months. Now it is mine. :)

(this one)
IMG_4312.jpg


see my other thread for my other thoughts that one v

http://www.hobbyinsider.net/forum/showthread.php?t=268336&highlight=expo+1972

and finally a shout out to my LCS who was finally at the expo, 401 Games (located at Yonge and Gerrard) they are a good shop with fair prices.

Oh yeah and Pittsburgh had great prices as usual...

See my Ultimate 10th, trade and sale thread soon. Bought more today...

Cheers,
Brian

One more thing... The sheer amount of absolutely gorgeous high end (and other) cards blew my mind. There was a ton of amazing stuff.
 
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No mention of Tatanka being at the Expo? The leathery looking dude a few booths down from Virgil...

My Good:
- Bumping into about 30 people I knew in the two hours we had at the show
- Having my 11 year old stepson actually enjoy himself (he hates hockey)
- The awesome response of Panini and ITG to young collectors, and doing what they could to engage them in the hobby (free Panini stickerbooks! woohoo!)
- Evelyn winning a Pavel Bure bobblehead (thanks Erik!)
- Evelyn busting her free ITG packs and pulling her best ever game used from a BTP pack (it was a goalie I had never heard of, but it was a big long swatch with three colors, so she was floored)
- Quincy making Max's day with a set of Marvel vs. Villains cards
- All of the dealers who engaged my kids directly and talked to them and LISTENED to what they had to say
- Bruce for sponsoring the HI booth - we are very lucky to have someone understand the group we have, and realizing a central meeting and greeting place makes this site the awesome place it is.

THE BAD
- only having 2 hours on Friday night at the show
- having the HI booth hidden in the back!

THE UGLY
- all the grey hair Ryan is sporting now - don't worry man, you look distinguished. Must be all of those wonderful TTC riders.

Luckily, we made it out before anyone got to... ummm... 'funky' in their smell.

Cory
 
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We had a fantastic show! It was great to put more names with faces from the HI boards here (too many to name, but Connie is a hoot!) and make some deals.

Our best mover aside from cards were autographed 8x10s. This was our first Expo where more than 10% of our business was done through celebrity, wrestling and NASCAR autos, and I'm thrilled to being known more as a name in that side of the business.

We picked up a few sweet cards (including the Superlative Seasons Barilko/Kennedy/Broda/Watson 1/1!), ate some fantastic hot dogs (with just mustard and kraut, the choice of ALL true connoisseurs) and even had the family down for a night in the hotel room!

Fury, one note I might make about trading -- there were a number of times where people wanted to talk trade with me, but they came up when I was working on sales with other customers, which have to take priority. I would suggest trying to do trades toward the end of each day when things slow down -- I know I made two pretty big trades on Sunday that took a few minutes each, but we didn't feel hurried because it was a little quieter by then.

Looking forward to the Spring already -- thanks if we did business, or even if we just talked!
 
Had a great time at the Expo. I was only there on Saturday so I had very little time to do all that I wanted to do. I pulled some great cards, received some fantastic redemptions, said hello to many board members, and got autographs of Wendell Clark and Jean Beliveau. Overall, a great day. My only regret is that I did not have time to talk and trade with more people. The HI name tags were great (thanks Bruce). On several occasions someone would tap me on the shoulder and I would meet another HI member.
 
The_IceBox said:
We had a fantastic show! It was great to put more names with faces from the HI boards here (too many to name, but Connie is a hoot!) and make some deals.

Our best mover aside from cards were autographed 8x10s. This was our first Expo where more than 10% of our business was done through celebrity, wrestling and NASCAR autos, and I'm thrilled to being known more as a name in that side of the business.

We picked up a few sweet cards (including the Superlative Seasons Barilko/Kennedy/Broda/Watson 1/1!), ate some fantastic hot dogs (with just mustard and kraut, the choice of ALL true connoisseurs) and even had the family down for a night in the hotel room!

Fury, one note I might make about trading -- there were a number of times where people wanted to talk trade with me, but they came up when I was working on sales with other customers, which have to take priority. I would suggest trying to do trades toward the end of each day when things slow down -- I know I made two pretty big trades on Sunday that took a few minutes each, but we didn't feel hurried because it was a little quieter by then.
Looking forward to the Spring already -- thanks if we did business, or even if we just talked!
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The trading aspect was not the fault of the dealers, it was mine, I just did not bring enough of a variety of cards, just meant that it sucked for me, not that the dealers did. But your point is good advise and will be heeded in the future..
 
I was actually pleasantly surprised to find dealers so easy to trade with. And they were far from high-end trades. Common YGs seemed to be desirable commodities. I worked out a trade with Joe (can't remember his HI id...) that saw most of my 09-10 UD2 YG needs killed in a single swipe. Quick, easy trade that made us both happy.

This was the first time I took part in the redemption programs. Mixed luck at all, but enjoyed the quick turnaround at both ITG and Panani. The hour line on Friday for UD night sucked.... :|

The worst part about the show was how fast time goes by. I arrived at 1:15, then I checked my watch and it was already 3:30, and I still had lots to see and do. Then it was getting close to 5pm -- time to get in line at the UD booth. Then it was 6 (I was originally planning to leave at 6PM to bus my way back to KW). Then it was 7. Finally left at 8PM -- the longest I've ever spent at the show, and even then I felt I was rushing myself!
 
I will add one thing that did annoy me to no end and that was the fact that the line was cut for the UD redemption as time had run out and eventually there does need to be an end. I was standing there talking to Chris Carlin and he decided to let a father and son jump in the line after telling countless people tough luck..... then another father with two small kids. Now before any of you jump on me at this point i have no problem at all with the situation ... i love seeing little kids score some pretty good cards but when the second bunch walked in he let them, along with some older guy in his late 50's early 60's in and left me---who arrived before all of them --- out in the cold without a chance at a redemption. Now unlike my normal self who would have liked to voice my feelings in a loud vulgarity filled rant i choose to just walk on muttering a few choice things under my breath. This left a horrible taste in my mouth and i ended up selling my series 1 box that I had just purchased for the redemption to a buddy that was at the show.
 
Honestly, this is the most fun Expo I've had in ages. Dealers sounded positive, collectors sounded positive. There were scads of kids - more than I've seen in past shows - and they looked like part of the hobby instead of an afterthought. ITGland was a hoot, particularly the opportunity to meet notables like Angela James and George Chuvalo.

Best personal collecting moment: A trade, done with Action Coin & Card. It was done quickly, easily, and with absolutely no bitterness from either side. Both of us started smiling, both of us ended smiling, both of us walked away happy.

Beat that. :)
 
quincy said:
Honestly, this is the most fun Expo I've had in ages. Dealers sounded positive, collectors sounded positive. There were scads of kids - more than I've seen in past shows - and they looked like part of the hobby instead of an afterthought. ITGland was a hoot, particularly the opportunity to meet notables like Angela James and George Chuvalo.

Best personal collecting moment: A trade, done with Action Coin & Card. It was done quickly, easily, and with absolutely no bitterness from either side. Both of us started smiling, both of us ended smiling, both of us walked away happy.

Beat that. :)
Click to expand...

I'm sure there will be a few choice comments on that Steve. I dealt with Andrew almost every time I went to the expo and never usually had a problem with him. Though I have seen him at his normal best with other people..lol
 

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