First off, for those that have never been, I tried to take a few pictures from near the middle of the show floor in an attempt to show the scale of the place. Not sure it worked. This spot was about a third of the way down the length of the floor, shot from the middle aisle.
The shot above is looking back at the first few aisles. The entrance is to the left at the far end. Remember, this is only a third of the length of the place!
This one is looking from side to side. I'm standing at aisle 500 of 1200 (5 of 12).
And this one is looking down the far end of the floor. The company areas are to the left side.
I took a quick video standing in the same spot and spinning around slowly to show the 360° view. Was thinking about walking the length of the floor with the camera. Probably should have.
On to the loot!
First stop was my buddy Dave Esright's table. He's always good for massively discounted vintage. Found a couple '50 Bowmans and '64 high numbers. Picked up two more '50s at some point - not sure where. The other '64s are high numbers as well. Those were found at a table near the front that had a few different years of high numbers all for two bucks apiece. Another seller had thousands of autographs sorted alphabetically. Luckily he had his whole inventory indexed in a printout, so you could see if he had a certain player without digging through half the box. Snagged the '78 Nellie Briles since he was one of the few player collections that I still lacked an auto from.
More PC guys - all O-Pee-Chee! Love the backs on the '69s - and another Briles. Always nice to knock out some of the older ones from up north.
One of Stuart's hometown vendors had a really nice display of hockey singles on one side, baseball in the middle, and football on the other side. Stocked up on my OPCs from 17-18 and some 18-19 Parkie. The guy behind the table was impressed with my persistence in picking out such a big pile of singles. My phone was about to die at the same time. Was thrilled to find singles of my favorite hockey set of all time - 2002-03 Pacific Private Stock. Will revisit this vendor again later.
That's it for Wednesday preview night. Stay tuned for my first full day's haul....
So is the space in the aisle the normal or is it not wall to wall people due to being preview day? The pictures I've seen on places like Sports Collectors Daily make it seem much more crowded. I like the way it looks in your pictures better.
ReplyDeleteIt's because we were just let in. At peak hours, it's much more populated. You can see people streaming in the first aisle in the video.
DeleteThanks...I couldn't get the video to play on my tablet, it's not good with that sort of thing. This looks a lot more manageable. Some of the images I've seen it seems like you wouldn't be able to even get to the tables to see what they had.
DeleteLook at all of that vintage OPC! Dumb question: Do you have to pay extra to get in on the preview day?
ReplyDeleteWednesday preview night is only open to VIP badgeholders. It's like $170 or so for the whole week. You get access to the conference room all week too, plus the free autographs - three in that room Wed. night if you're into cattle stampedes.
Delete'77 OPC! '77 OPC!
ReplyDeleteCool OPCs!
ReplyDeleteWow, that place really is huge. The 360-degree clip really helped give perspective.
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff! Love those '50 Bowmans, OPC baseball, and Private Stock hockey. Can't wait to see what else you bought.
ReplyDeleteLove all of that vintage OPC! Don't think I've seen that deep red on the 69OPC backs before. What a beautiful color.
ReplyDelete