- This topic has 6 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 8 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
-
A few weeks ago I took the Amtrak for Philadelphia to Chicago for the National Sports Collectors Convention. The convention was in Rosemont, just outside the city, but I love exploring new places and decided to get a hotel in the West Loop. I prefer an Airbnb but couldn’t find a better deal on one in the city. During my trip planning, I found a listing for a large three day book sale in the city the same weekend and thought maybe I could double up and pick up inventory in my two favorite niches.
I got off the Amtrak at about 9:00 AM on Thursday and after about thirty minutes of walking, my luggage was safe at my hotel and I was on the L headed to a stop about a ten minute walk from the convention center. I had a few boxes of cards in my backpack to drop off at various dealers and consignors and took care of all that within the first hour. Then I didn’t have anything else planned to do at the show, so I walked around a bit and took everything in. The National show has been getting bigger and more popular over the last four years and this was my third time attending, the other two times when it was in Atlantic City.
I’ve never had much success at all buying cards from small local shows, let alone one as big as the National. There are all these tales of finding HUGE STEALS on all the card message boards, but anyone who is a dealer at a show (especially the National where booths costs thousands of dollars and sell out a year in advance) basically knows what they have. They might have a few steals because of buying and selling in huge quantities, or not knowing the value of everything on their tables, but most stuff is priced right around what it’s “worth”, more or sometimes a lot more. Card buying and selling is a little weird, as a general rule. Card buying and selling at shows often gets even weirder.
I searched through boxes and cases at all different types of tables for a few hours. I looked at expensive cards, cheap cards, everything in between and every type of card imaginable. A lot of tables would have boxes of cards where every card was $1, or $2, or $10, and then more expensive cards behind a glass showcase. I spent about $50 on cheap cards but I didn’t find much that I thought was a good deal, let alone a great one. To be fair, I wasn’t looking for anything specific. Most likely because where I really wanted to be was back in Chicago. So I walked back to the L, checked in at my hotel and relaxed the rest of the night. I had the book sale the next morning anyway, and I wanted to get up in plenty of time so I could take 45 minutes to make the 20 minute walk — get a bite to eat, get lost once or twice, take it all in.
That’s exactly how my Friday morning went, and I got to the 10:00 AM sale at about 9:50, and the line was wrapped around the building for a block! Not unusual to have a crowd just before the start of a large library sale, but it was interesting to see it in a city setting. The procession inside was unusually smooth, and I was happy as soon as I entered the big, beautiful library because this was a really well-organized large sale. There were three separate rooms with everything separated in a logical manner, clear and consistent pricing and lots of volunteers. I checked out the largest room one first, and I found a good amount of $1 to $3 possible purchases in the DVDs, poetry and yearbooks/magazines sections. It got even more exciting when I entered room 2 and saw a whole large section of unusual and collectible books, with plenty of the strange and hard to find books that I like to sell. There were tons of books marked over $100, some seemed worth it and others seemed overpriced, but there were a lot of cool art books and old books and Chicago related books. There was also a 150 book collection of leather bound books from the Notable Trials Library marked at $10 each. The ones in that set which caught my eye were sports (Curt Flood) and music (John Lennon) related, but I figured some of the others might be valuable as well. I asked if they would do a discount if I bought in bulk, and got a pretty firm no which bummed me out. But I felt good that I had asked, at least, and not all was lost. I found out in the same conversation that Sunday was half price day, and the volunteer in charge of the weird book section thought all the $10 gilt edged books that I was admiring would still be there. I took that intel and left that room behind to go down the hall to Room 3, which had music and art plus a bunch of other genres I don’t know or care about. Straight ahead as I walked in were about a dozen large classical music box sets all neatly arranged on the shelves, and by large I mean 20, 40, sometimes 100 or more discs. I don’t know much about classical music, but I know quality when I see it. The prices were high on these box sets, from $20 all the way to $150, but I knew that high for a book sale might still leave plenty of room for profit.
So I decided to make a day at the book sale, found a couple empty corners to settle into with my stash, and methodically took my time researching listings on my phone. I realize there are apps which would make this process much easier, but I am stubbornly reluctant to change and rarely do research while I’m out in the wild anyway. I usually follow my gut, maybe run a quick Google or two, and spend $20 to $50. But this was a rare exception. I knew my budget was probably going to be higher than that. I honestly enjoyed doing the research and over a few hours, learned that a few of those classical box sets were very underpriced, a few were very overpriced, and most were somewhere in the middle. So I grabbed the best few with a plan to come back as early as possible on Sunday for half price day. “The best few” added up pretty quickly — I spent $163 which was more than I had spent on my first day at the card show.
I went back to the card show on Saturday with the goal of taking care of an appointment I had to exchange some redemptions. My appointment was early Sunday afternoon, but I knew I wanted to go to the book sale instead. I figured even if I had to hang out at the Panini booth all day to facilitate the exchange, it would be worth it because then my Sunday would be free. Then disaster struck. I realized on the L that I left my admission badge to the show on the bed! But the nice woman at the admissions booth took pity on my hungover ass. I wasn’t hungover, but in her mind that was the only explanation for why I was so forgetful, so I played along and got a temporary admission pass. Once I finally got inside the show, I went straight to the Panini booth and the line was short, so they let me move up my appointment and I completed my redemption exchange done in about 20 minutes. I took a few laps after that (victory laps really), shuffled through a few more boxes without buying much and said goodbye to the show. Next year the National is in Cleveland and I plan to attend, but I think I will only buy a single day admission pass and use the money I would spend on a 4 day pass on something I would really enjoy.
Hopefully something I really enjoy will be a Cleveland area library sale with great inventory and a half-price day. Once I got back into the city, I lazed around a bit and made my way back over to the library sale about twenty minutes before it closed for the night. I wanted to get a lay of the land as far as what was left, and most of the classical box sets and Notable Trials books were still on the shelves. I thought about buying a few things but decided to wait until the next day for the half off sale.
In a moment of brilliance, I took pictures of the most interesting shelves before I left and spent the night distinguishing the valuable stuff from the duds. The Notable Trials books were going to be easy sells (even in bulk) at $15 to $20 each, with rarer ones worth more, and there were some box sets that were a real steal at 50% off. I realized this was a unique situation and prepared myself for the likelihood of spending over $500. I have spent that much in online auctions but never in person, and it’s only in the last year that I’ve really been able to spend that much without needing to double-check my bank account.
Over a few hours on Saturday night, I came up with a real, honest to goodness plan for when I would walk in the door on Sunday morning. I would hit the classical section, grab as much of the good stuff as I could carry, leave it at one of the front tables designed for exactly that purpose and then double back to Room 2 and offer $400 for all of the Notable Trials books. I had no idea if my offer was too low or not, I would have loved to have a phone a friend lifeline and see what @retro-treasures-wv thought! Now that I think of it, I could have just posted here. But I was in the moment and I had my plan. Then I went out and explored the city more. I had fun but not too much — I had somewhere to be the next day, after all.
I woke up the next morning with plenty of time to spare. I was going to be 30 minutes early to something for maybe the first time in my life! Of course, then I got cocky on my walk there, put away the GPS and eventually got myself turned around, all while I spilled breakfast on myself. Classic tourist bullshit. Fortunately I came to my senses and spent the extra $9 to get an Uber to take me the last 1.2 miles to the library so I still ended 10 minutes early, not 20 minutes late. I was about the tenth person in line. No line wrapped around the block this time. The doors opened and I beelined straight to the room with my classical music sets…
Part 2 coming soon. Here are a few pictures from my trip.
-
-
@Jay Here is my haul from the first day of the sale. I was going to post this immediately after my original post and then the internet went down in our area.
$50 Colin Davis The Symphonies 54 CD RCA Red Seal box set
$25 Hans Knappertsbusch Venias Records box set The Parsifal Recordings
$14 Sir Simon Rattle Leaving Home DVD set minus the box
$3 An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, leather bound Easton Press with gilt pages
approx $50 20 to 25 back issues of Ballet Review magazine
a handful of $2 DVDs with the most interesting being Nordic Dawn: Modernism’s Awakening in Finland
a handful of $2 books, mostly poetry books that I want to read first and then will lot up in a flat rate box
That would have been a decent haul on its own but there is obviously more to come.
-
-
-
That’s pretty clever to take photos to do your research prior to the 50% off day.
I was doing that at an estate sale earlier this month and the lady running it told me I could put in silent bids slightly above the 50% off price and if it was still there at the end of the day prior to the 50% off day they would pull those items and hold for me if I was the high bidder.
I got all the items I wanted and didn’t have to show up until the end of the day.
I wonder if that was an option here?
-
One of the most interesting things about stepping outside of my comfort zone like this was everything that I learned in the process. I will try different approaches the next time that I find a haul like this and see what comes of it. Nothing harmed by asking questions. I’m not sure that asking for a discount would have worked with this sale, in many ways they were frustratingly inflexible when I asked about discounts for buying in bulk, etc, but the quality of items more than made up for their inflexibility.
Taking pictures is something I’m going to start doing much more regularly when I’m considering a purchase or it makes sense to do so. Having those pictures of the items I was considering made my life so much easier for day 3 of the sale.
-
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.