ddearing / ABCSportscards 2025 National Recap

[ddearing]

Let me begin by saying thank you and apologizing to all my fellow Blowout Cards Forum friends who came by to say hello again or to introduce yourself for the first time. It was great to see old friends (TBP, TheShowAndMe, etc) and I'm sorry that I didn't get to spend more time with you. I get to see some of you at other shows during the year that are less hectic, but the last couple of Nationals, I have not been able to come up for air from open until close.

Also - a big thank you to our forum hosts - Blowout Cards. They had a top notch presence at the show and are always very professional in everything that they do. I bought 24 of their MegaMixes and haven't had a chance to open them yet. I'll share results later. I meant to purchase more, but I could never leave my tables to make it happen. They are good friends and good people and I wish them all the success in the world.

For the 4th year in a row, this National was my best show ever. This is my 14th National as a dealer and since Covid, each year just keeps building on the previous one. If you didn't have your best show ever at this year's national as a vendor, you need to take an introspective look at how you are doing business. The show was sold out of all passes well before it opened and attendance records were set early. Some people are there to just see things and enjoy spending time with friends, but there were also plenty of people there spending money if you have good inventory and fair prices.

I had my normal 4 booths. Two of my booths had 25 showcases of $100+ cards. It is hard to quantify everything that happened here, but rest assured that we sold 50%+ of what we brought and constantly reloaded these cases with things we purchased at the show. More on that later.

The other two booths were setup with my $1 and $4 boxes, all sorted by team. We had about 150,000 $1 cards and maybe 20,000 $4 cards. We also bought about another 50,000 cards during the show that will go into the $1 boxes for next year. We also set up 5 "value showcases" and 12 Value boxes at our $1 and $4 booths and those were very popular. Everything was stickered at a reasonable retail price and we started the show at 25% off and kept lowering it until 50% off Sunday, but there was not much left at that point. Those boxes/cases were very popular. Before the show we had about 12 2 row graded shoeboxes and we left with maybe 2 boxes.

I think it is fair to say that during the course of the show, I completely turned over most of my showcases. I am coming home with some of the things I took with me, but I also probably sold cards purchased at the show enough times to fill 35 cases.....

For the second year, I set up a dedicated buying station with a big orange and blue sign that says "Buying 75-85%" and I typically had a line of 5-8 people waiting to sell to me. I was non-stop buying almost every minute of the show. My staff worked very hard to make sure that they were selling so that I could keep buying. It was lots of fun and I will post some pics of some of the things I picked up during the show in posts below. I forgot to take pics during the show, but I'll share what I find that I came home with. I wish I had documented it as I went, but there just wasn't any time. I think it is fair to say that I purchased around 75 Downtowns/Kabooms/colorblasts at the show and nearly all of them sold quickly. Each night, I would come back to the hotel with 2-5 graded shoeboxes of purchases that I would price and put out for sale the next morning. Next year, we are putting systems in place to have 3-4 buyers working at the same time and others to get the cards out immediately. I definitely missed some buys/sales because our line was too long.

With regards to buying - I am going to get on my soapbox for a second here. We (ABCSportscards) pride ourselves on honesty and fairness. I will show you the comps I am looking at. We are not trying to steal from you. I am paying 75% on what I think of as "inventory". That can be just about anything of value, but I try to only buy things $50+. I'll pay 80% on liquid cards (graded Ohtani, Judge, Jordan, Kobe, Mahomes, etc). Paying 85% on Downtowns, Kabooms, ColorBlasts. I also paid 95% of comps for a Jordan and Kobe auto at the show.

I am fair about this and many people come to me year after year and I am thankful for them. What I get frustrated about is a small percentage of dealers making others look bad. I had a deal where a guy brought me up a couple of liquid downtowns that had a realistic comp value of $2000. No reasonable person would comp them differently. Lots of recent sales, almost all at the same prices. I told him, I am paying 85% on these and offered $1700. He was upset because another dealer said he was paying 95% on downtowns. I respectfully encouraged him to go take that deal because I couldn't match that percentage. An hour later, the guy is back in my line because the guy paying "95% on downtowns" wanted to comp the cards at $1700 and pay $1615. It's just a waste of everyone's time. It's dishonest and makes honest dealers look bad. While it is true that I would pay 95% on Kobe, Jordan, Mahomes and Brady autos - it would be misleading if I had my buying sign say "Buying 75-95%". It would be true, but misleading. I had 1 Jordan auto, 1 Kobe auto and no Bradys or Mahomes autos brought to me all show. I probably lose out on a bunch of deals because I am not willing to create a misleading sign like others. Anyway - sorry for my rant....

Our $1 and $4 boxes did really well. The National is the only time during the year that we bring these out, so getting to them early, you can find some cool stuff. We cover all of our expenses for the show with profits from these boxes.


Comments on the show -
- Attendance was great. Biggest days from my perspective seemed like Thursday and Friday. I was surprised Saturday felt smaller. Sunday was pretty light. Interestingly, I was able to buy more Saturday than other days. I don't have an explanation for that. I did have 2 different shop owners bring me entire suitcases of inventory that was all stickered at realistic comp and I just bought all of it. Probably about $30k spent on those two deals and everything was pretty much $100-$500. Perfect sweet spot for me. I assume they had been accumulating it for months and were just ready to start over. It was all good stuff.

-Air conditioning was good this year. On Sunday, it was actually cold in there because there were less people.

-Internet was great this year. No issues.

- There is a fine balance that the board has to reach between protecting the "old-timers" who have been doing this for 40+ years and also allowing the more current people who are actually full time in the business to be present. No solution will solve all the issues, but I think they are doing a fine job of compromise. The upstairs tables were a nod to allowing the "new kids" into the show without displacing the long-time dealers. Many of those "new kids" probably did 10X the sales of some of the "old timers". Without naming names, I don't know if the guy setup across from me sold anything during the show, but I'm sure he's been there a long time and uses the show as a reason the catch up with friends from decades past. I have mixed thoughts about this.

- I don't know exactly how many different dealers are at the show. Maybe 400-500? I can say that about 30 showed up for the dealer meeting on Thursday night where they elect new members to the board. Just like the rest of the world, if you want to effectuate change and have your voice be heard, you need to show up and vote. The four incumbents on the 12 person board were all re-elected out of the 10 nominees. This is not the place for me to share my thoughts on this topic.

- The guys who took over running the show last year (Joe Drelich, Brian Coppola and Jim Ryan of JBJ Corporation ) are top notch. Very competent. Very knowledgeable. Very receptive to ideas, complaints, etc. Al Durso, is the president of the Board and I feel the same way about him. Always willing to listen and very professional.

- I went to the Panini VIP party Saturday night again. Similar to the last couple years. It's fine, but my wife has asked that I stop getting her tickets to it. She doesn't think it's worth it. I typically have 4-6 tickets every year. Next year, I may just get 1 for me to keep my streak alive. I am one of 3 people who have been to every Panini Vip party. You don't get to meet any of the athletes anymore. No chance to take a picture with them. I have PC'd Andre Dawson for 30+ years. He was at the party and I'm wearing an obscure Dawson jersey over my collared shirt and I never even got to see him other than when he was on stage with the other athletes being introduced. I've met him a lot of times, so not a huge deal, but I wanted a picture of him with my kids who have heard me tell stories about him for years. I paid $16k for my VIP ticket....


I'll try and add more comments as I think of them.
Looking forward to Chicago again next year.