But hey, at least you can get your one of a kind, voice of a generation, Jason Paige autograph amirite?
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I don’t know if it’s just me, but those videos of him running around card shows offering his autograph for expensive cards is rather disturbing.
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TRUTHNUKE
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Is there a resource for German card shows? I’d like to go to one near me someday.
I’m not sure what it is, but people seem grounded here. My local card shop has big posters that says graded cards are banned lol
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I can recommend this calender a lot!
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Disregard hobby culture.
Acquire cards.
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I don’t believe you.
Thanks!
That is a great overview.
Bumping this because of the recent Rudy video. His thoughts about Collect-A-Con echo my own card show experience.
never been to one and will never got to one maybe if theres some animes at the convention ill go watch that instead 
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Brother, I’m literally begging you to stop consuming social media content that angers and upsets you, it’s literally ruining E4 for me the amount I see you complaining about it in every second thread lmao.
To answer your question, I actually agree with you that the culture at big card shows is largely negative, BUT you have a lot of autonomy to create your own experience and make it better for yourself.
As a generalized stereotype of market segments at shows -
Graded cards - Varied experience with vendors. I wouldn’t say rude or bad, but most dealings will feel very transactional, don’t expect many to cut you any kind of deal or chat to you about finishing the last piece of a collecting goal. However, people with high end niche vintage have almost certainly been in the hobby a long time and will be your best experiences in this segment. Expect to see stupid prices at some vendors, ignore them. Don’t waste your time haggling for too long or debating comps if their prices are loony bin, you’re not going to get through to them.
Modern sealed - Opening modern sealed at retail price is already a bad experience, let alone engaging with someone to buy at secondary mark up. AVOID.
Modern binders - At small tables, usually good fun chats. At high value tables, will often feel like an afterthought to the side, expect to be ignored while they give their time to more lucrative clients (don’t really blame them).
Vintage binders - If you manage to find someone who actually has a really solid binder of vintage cards, my experience has been unanimously good. Great chats, willing to help you out, cut deals to help you out to finish goals if you’re buying a lot. All my best experiences at shows have been with these vendors.
Trading/Selling - People need to stop putting vendors on a pedestal and taking whatever shit trade offer they give you. Card show patrons need to stop normalizing 80% as a remotely acceptable offer for good, liquid cards. There are hundreds of other tables in the room you can shop your stuff to. I keep detailed spreadsheets for my trades and these are my most recent trade percentages I got last month 88%, 85%, 90%, 90%, 90%, 141% (low pop ex era that hadn’t sold in month, vendor gambled on it and it then auctioned much lower later that night), 87%. I chalk all these trades up as good experiences as I very easily got pretty much what I would expect on eBay after fees.
TLDR: Go to shows with confidence in yourself and an ability to walk away from bad people and bad deals. Look for vintage binders.
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To be fair, I’ve calmed down about the social media drama. That comment was from a month ago. I apologize; I definitely got carried away with it, and it was honestly unhealthy for me to be so deep into those social media rabbit holes that have absolutely nothing to do with me. I’ve significantly limited the amount of time I spend doomscrolling YouTube/IG, and it’s been very helpful.
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This thread reminds me of the Stoic philosophy quote:
“People are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them.”
― Epictetus
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To get this back to vendor slopmaxxxing.
I had a really fun experience trying to sell a full 11 card Japanese CD promo set to a vendor with multiple staff. They pulled out the Pikachu and said they weren’t interested. I explained it is a full set of all 11 from the sealed promo. They proceed to think I am scamming/making stuff up and that Japan has never produced an English card. Absolute cinema.
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>If you don’t develop a healthier attitude, you are not going to make it in this hobby.
This is probably the most dramatic thing I’ve read on this forum. This isn’t hollywood, no one is trying to make it (besides maybe the bulbastore clones at every card show)
Crazy take: it’s ok to criticize something you don’t like!
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