General Forum

There is a card show this weekend in Quincy, Illinois at the Quincy Mall. Saturday, Lou Brock will be there signing autographs from 1-3, tickets are free and limited to the first 225 people.

I'll be at the card show at some point since it doesn't sound like it will be freezing out this weekend.

That's cool ShoTime.  I'm on the wrong side of the state though.

And Brimose, where is the good Columbus show located?  I'm gonna try to hit 2 or 3 Crew matches while we still have them, and maybe I'll plan around that.  5 Hour drive for me, so I don't get there often.

Hilliard, at the Franklin County Fairgrounds. I have this year's dates on a flyer in my basement, I'll get it in a moment 

I go to a card show about once a month in the Detroit area. I only hit up two dealers though as I know what the have and that I can get some decent prices from them.

I sure wish I could be up there with Cory, waiting in line for a Brock AU! They just don't have card shows around here anymore. I'm sure the last one I went to was in the early-90's, at least one specifically for cards. I've been to a few collectibles shows at the Greensboro Coliseum that happened to have some card dealers. I rarely go anymore b/c it costs to park and to get in and if I find nothing worth buying, I wasted my time and at least $10 to gain nothing. The local mall had monthly card shows when I was in school, but that stopped before I graduated from high school. The last one I REMEMBER going to was the show that jumped my Ozzie Smith collection to over 100 cards. The 1st player (by far) to get that high in my collection. Even though I am #2 on the Ozzie list here with nearly 600 cards, that day was about 25 years ago. It is still the most Ozzie cards I've picked up at one time and I didn't even spend $15. I bought dozens for 10-25 cents each and a couple for a few dollars each. I sure wish there were card shows anywhere close to me. Heck, the closest SPORTS CARD shop is over a two-hour drive away.

Thanks to Cory, I now know about the show in Quincy...20 minutes from me. I'm gonna take a look at the Brock line at about 6:30 AM and maybe camp out, we will see. But I'm looking forward to hopefully meeting up with him! I'm going into said show with no expectations; looking for nothing,  searching for nothing, hoping for nothing. I'm looking forward to digging through some boxes and seeing what I come up with, and maybe getting a picture and soldiying my spot in C2Cigars "Meetings" subset with ShoTime!

Edit: Spaz, love the Arch photo. Got to go up in it this summer. I'm only about two hours north of St. Louis. Really cool experience.

Thanks Jason! I just couldn't bring myself to go up in the Arch when I was there. After previously being on the Observation Deck of the Hancock Center in Chicago AND the Empire State building in NYC, I just don't like that feeling in my stomach when I'm that high in the air. I did go down below the Arch into the underground Museum. That's a really cool museum. I'd love to go back to St. Louis to see the things I didn't get to see the first time and of course, go to another Cardinals game or two. But it's a 14-hour drive from home to get there AND I have to go through the Appalachian Mountains early in the trip. The mountains don't feel as bad to me as the man-made structures do b/c I'm on the ground. I'm guessing that queasiness of heights started with the Hancock Center. I'd never felt that way until I was in there, even though I was in the Empire State Building over a decade earlier. I was back in Empy a few days after the Hancock Ctr. and felt the same queasiness. Maybe it's that I was so much older the 2nd time. I really don't like looking dozens of stories down to see other structures or the ground. I got some really cool photos from both of those buildings though. I also have a cool shot from directly below the Arch looking straight up at the bottom surface of the top.

The show we are going to is in Eau Claire, WI. It will be interesting just to check one out after all these years. I'll check back in here with my observations.. I'll see if my son who is a Lions fan finds anything to add to his collection.

 There are three very nice card shows I attend in Ohio periodically. One is at the Sharonville Clarion in Cincinnati and the other is at the Wright State University - Nutter Center in Dayton. Both are monthly. Check the TCDB Card Shows link here for Beckett listings for dates. The last, and best, is the card show at Moeller High School in Cincinnati. It is twice a year. The next one is April 27-29. Check Cincycardshows.com for more dates. I have attended all three and do pretty well at each. In fact the Sharonville show is today. The only one that charges admission is Moeller. They also have several players there to sign autigraphs (mostly Reds alumni). Last year Frank Robinson and Tony Perez were there.

Well, almost time to depart to a card show 45 minutes down the road in Cobourg, Ontario (Canada). It is the first time I hear about this one but supposedly in runs once every 3 months.  I do hope to find things to buy but there are a couple of other reasons I am eager for thisone.  One my long time friend from Toronto will have a table there. And second, I hope to test out my tablet and the access to my excel files and / or TCDB to check on what I need.  Hope to no longer ever have to carry around a 3" binder with my lists rinted on them (and that is only for sets).

I am with C2, I don't pay admission charges just to find out there is nothing that interests me. Fortunately, around here the organizers seem to make their profit from the sellers and leave admission free. The other thing I don't pay for are autographs.

As for access to other shows near (?) here,there is a monthly one in Toronto and / or Newmarket which is 2 hours of driving and a monthly one in Ottawa which is a 3 hour drive.  I do attend the Ottawa show once in a while as my son lives down the street from there so I time a visit with him with attending the show. At that show, there is one dealer I have dealt with every time that has a lot of vintage stuff including OPC baseball.  Last year, I increased my OPC collection a fair bit from his table. He also got me 5 Kelloggs sets from the late 70s when he went to a show in NY. I know he will give me a fair price on what I buy.

Time to go....