The National Sports Collectors Convention — known to many as simply “The National” — is a five-day event that can best be described as the world’s biggest card show. Or maybe Comic-Con for card collectors. Or perhaps “walking around eBay.” If you’re looking for a card, chances are you’ll find it here. If you’re not looking for a card, chances are you’ll still walk out with some cool things you may not have known existed.
The plan was for the two of us to scour the floor for cool stuff, iconic items, and everything in between. Unfortunately, United Airlines had other plans:
And this will not be some bitter airline rant — in fact, the people at United couldn’t have been nicer or more helpful. Shoutout to Kathy at gate C94, who tried to get us to Milwaukee/Grand Rapids/Detroit (and then drive to Chicago) or out of flights from LaGuardia or JFK. None of it worked, so it was down to Danny roaming the floor (with cameos from former CBS Fantasy legend Michael “Big Hurc” Hurcomb) and Nando helping to direct him on how to spend his $100, much like Arrested Development’s Larry Middleman:
The plan for months was to find “cool, interesting, vintage stuff” and try to keep the budget under $250. We would be armed with cameras to snap pictures of 1952 Mickey Mantles but our wallets would be reserved for things like unopened 1980s E.T. packs of cards, or perhaps some Perlorian Cats singles.
All Danny wanted was a Luis Robert card with a piece of a game-worn jersey. Or a rookie. As of mid-day Thursday, he had offered $30 on a PSA 10 Topps Chrome Robert rookie with a $50 sticker, to which he was countered $35, to which Danny walked away. Multiple people on the convention floor said cards of Chicago teams were likely marked up due to the show being in Chicago (or more specifically Rosemont for those that know what that means).
We’ll be updating this frequently at least through Friday, so please enjoy the weird journey through The National with us.
The Magazine
Before we get to The National, a quick nod to the Newark Liberty Airport bookstore for propping up our 2023 Fantasy Football magazine in the front. Now available in grocery stores and airports (and probably a bunch of other places) near you!
This was very close to being our first purchase, but I am a cards guy and not so much a “silk” one. Plus we cross-referenced everything on eBay and there were cheaper ones available. It’s definitely cool — anything George Washington is cool, right? — but if we were trying to work with a budget, we weren’t going to buy the first cool-ish thing we saw.
Want to know what’s annoying? All these pictures you see were texted and I (Nando) would ask “hey, what’s that red card on the left?” I’m pretty sure I made several enemies on the text chain over the two days but I do have some kind of sympathy credit because of the flight debacle crushing plans that were put in place over a year ago.
Very cool nostalgia trip… but what do you do with this after you buy it?
These were a couple original Allen & Ginters from the N28 set from 1887-88. Not to be confused with the modern version put out by Topps.
Here’s the cool thing about signed checks. Would you pay $750 for a Bill Russell signed check? Probably not. But it tells a story. In 1978, a 54 year-old Russell was still in Seattle — a year after his stint coaching the SuperSonics was over — buying $100 of who knows what from Tape Town (which, according to this matchbook we found on eBay, is exactly what it sounds like it is). Just one of the greatest basketball players of all time, doing something mundane like walking into an electronics store in between coaching stints, buying some cassette tapes. And now you can own that story, which is much more than just an autograph on a piece of paper.
There’s your Jordan rookie (there are a lot of them here — also a ton of the Curry rookie, too)
… and here are your Mantles (the iconic 1952 Topps and the Bowman 1st from 1951):
Upper Deck doesn’t get enough love in the general hobby conversation, but expect them to see a big leap as they have exclusive rights to NHL can’t miss rookie Connor Bedard — who can’t, because of weird NHLPA rules, appear on a card until he plays in his first game. So we will have to wait a little to get his first official card.
Most of Upper Deck’s presence this year was built around Michael Jordan with this being the 25th anniversary of his sixth and final NBA title with the Bulls. However, Jason Masherah, president of Upper Deck, was excited to bring up their partnership with Bedard.
“That’s a big one for us,” Masherah said. “We’re expecting a big hockey card year. We want to take advantage. There’s been a lot of hype around other sports and other rookies the last couple years. This is an opportunity for hockey rookies and hockey rookie cards to really take center stage in this next year. In 15-16 the big rookie was Connor McDavid, 16-17 was Auston Matthews. Two of the biggest superstars in hockey, but they’re Canadian markets. This is the biggest hockey rookie in the United States in a long, long time so it’s an opportunity for us to work with the NHL and the NHL Players’ Association and really grow the hockey card category because they’re gonna have a lot of attention from the U.S. market this year.”
As for the Jordan stuff, Upper Deck wanted to show off its biggest partnership in a big way in the market where he made his name. They had 1-of-1 Jordan shoes signed and custom jerseys with Jordan autographs. The extra touch on the autographs this year is an inscription signed by Michael saying “6x champs.” Gabriel Garcia, director of Upper Deck Authenticated, was proud of the inscription because Jordan rarely does them. He signed some for his Hall of Fame class (2009) and that’s about it.
They had a painting of Jordan’s famous last shot with the Bulls that had a frame that wouldn’t be out of place in an art institute. As Garcia said, Upper Deck is going for beauty in art and design. The marquee piece was framed with two Jordan jerseys, one from his rookie year and one from that 1997-98 season. The front of the rookie year was the cursive Chicago jersey and the ’98 shows the back of the jersey. It was going for $40,000.
“The reality is that Michael Jordan’s brand transcends everything,” Masherah said. “It’s truly unlike any other athlete brand that’s ever existed. So having a partnership with Michael and being able to make cool and unique pieces is unlike anything that we can do with any other athlete or brand.”
Also produced by Upper Deck: the almost-impossible-to-find First Peoples set of cards, which were given a super-limited release and highlights several Indigenous players who never had their own cards. After I wrote this, I put in a $98 offer (it was a round number in CAD) to a Canadian eBay seller for his set. 14 more hours until my fate is decided (my hunch is it gets rejected, but who knows)
Alsooo from Upper Deck: As part of their Cosmic line, astronaut autographs.
We found these awesome vintage Japanese baseball cards… and bought 7 of them for $30. They were priced at just $5 and look — these have been around long enough where they aren’t going to suddenly jump in value to $100. Or even $30. But they look so pretty, and they’re relatively cheap. People talk about their personal collections all the time and these cards, at this price point, make it kind of easy to understand why you might want to PC vintage Japanese players.
Would you pay $120 for an ungraded Victor Wembanyama Bowman 1st? Fanatics has the exclusive rights to Wembanyama cards, so it’s either SI For Kids or Bowman right now.
Speaking of Fanatics, they had a big presence on the show floor. The big push was around Fanatics Live, an app which launched on Wednesday, coinciding with the first day of the convention. Fanatics Live seems like a Twitch stream for cards, collectibles and merchandise where consumers can purchase things through the app. There are plenty of box breaks being streamed now (including several at the convention), but few have the marketing might and reach of Fanatics.
Fanatics also had Stranger Things cards, which had a solid display.
The big thing in the Fanatics area was actually Topps-related, but hey, Topps is Fanatics now. Topps was doing a box exchange where boxes of certain cards could be exchanged for a pack of cards that were exclusive to the convention. It was one box for one pack and they would open the packs in front of you (preventing resale of convention-exclusive packs). They were supposed to be very good packs and the line for them wrapped around all three of the Fanatics/Topps booths. That was a big hit among collectors.
Danny bought the Marilyn on the left for $20. We have no idea where it’s from or what it is but… we’ll find out. Google Image Searches and eBay are coming up empty so far!
Topps Chrome came out Wednesday and they introduced the Tacofractor:
We are going to use our journalistic powers to figure out why there are tacos on Topps Chrome cards — we cannot promise answers. But it’s awesome. They’re selling for north of $200 on eBay (and these are just the early ones) and it’ll be interesting to see if they take a massive “Downtown”-style uptick or if they settle in at around $50. My hunch is they shoot up to $400-500 (they’re numbered to 5 and they have tacos on them), but who knows.
Something to ponder: How much would you pay for a Harry Truman autograph? In the context of this picture, $400 seems like a great price. But just out in the wild… it’s tough to put a price on. On the one hand, he has a prominent spot in Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” But he is currently back in the national conversation thanks to “Oppenheimer.” Good or bad, it’s hard to tell. If we offered $300 for the autograph, would we get it? (Note from Danny here: I did not offer $300 because what if they said yes and then I have a weird autograph in my apartment that I don’t even want.)
More non-sports cards!
These packs all come in at about double of what I’d pay — although they’re about in line with eBay prices, to be fair (chalk it up to having been a non-sports aficionado pre-pandemic and stuck on those values). $15 may be worth the trip down memory lane… but at the expense of three more vintage Japanese cards?
Goldin of Netflix’s “King of Collectibles: The Goldin Touch” fame was also there with a large area on the show floor. There was some cool memorabilia, but it was very hard to miss the big screen playing the show (presumably on a loop, which has to get tiresome by the end of a four-day convention for a show that clocks in at around three hours).
Playing your own show at your own stage at a big convention has a very Troy McClure, “You may remember me from…” feel to it.
If you watched the show, Dave Amerman, Ryan Krupa, Alex Giaimo and Carlo Civitella were spotted at the convention. No Ken Goldin sightings, but there will be more of him in the recently announced Season 2 of the show.
Absolutely not. I love the movie “the Sand Lot” but this is 10x what any sane person should pay for the set.
I’m not really a buttons guy, but I love presidential/historical items, so this table took some of my money. Specifically, the Gary Hart one for $5. His story in American politics is pretty incredible — massive lead in the polls, rising star, challenged people to follow him when rumors of him having affairs came up, they did, and he dropped out of the race a week after the challenge was issued when a now-famous photo of him with a woman in his lap “went viral” (for the late 80s).
So for $5 you can look at that button and imagine someone obtaining it in 1987 when they really believed in Gary Hart. Things looked up, he had a chance at winning, the country now would probably be altered in some ways. And then it all came crashing down in a fashion so spectacular it hasn’t been really seen since. Or before. It’s an alternate timeline, basically. Buried on a table of Trump buttons!
We mentioned Fanatics Live earlier. Allen Iverson opened 1986 Fleer packs on a Friday afternoon stream with CEO Michael Rubin and host Scott Rogowsky:
Allen Iverson just pulled a Michael Jordan rookie card @nsccshow during @Fanatics live event. ???? pic.twitter.com/aSOIAlAydW
— CHGO Sports (@CHGO_Sports) July 28, 2023
The trio ended up pulling FOUR Jordan rookies over the course of the stream.
(All photos by Dan Santaromita at The National (except the astronaut card, which is from eBay)