The last time I had gone to the National was when I was in 4th grade and St. Louis hosted it. I just remember being in awe. They had so many tables, we probably only got through a fourth of the show. My best friend Paul got to go in one of those phone booths where air shoots the money up from the ground, and ended up winning a Skybox XXL T-shirt and a few packs. Also at that show, I remember seeing a guy trying to sell 2 complete sets of Donruss 1990 for 3 bucks, and even at that price nobody would touch it. I only had 20 bucks to spend back then, I think I opted for some 1989 Fleer and random Frank Thomas cards, probably would have been better off with the worthless 90 Donruss sets.
Anyway, driving to Chicago, all my brother and I were talking about was buying a bunch of boxes. My brother Ryan has always been more about quantity, not quality. He is a few years younger than I and doesn't collect as much, but probably has more cards just because he enjoys the low quality, crazy high production run sets. We basically both wanted to do the same thing: bust wax. A lot of it.
The Chicago National was much smaller than I remember back in the day. The show was dominated by Dave and Adam's Card World and Blowout Cards. We also didn't get nearly as many promotional cards or free stuff (the free stuff I did get I sold on Ebay, hahahaha). We looked all over for the cheap wax, but didn't see any for a few hours. All I had picked up was a box of 2008 Allen and Ginter. After I got it, I walked by a table full of singles that included a Jeff Francis A&G auto. I said "I'd hate to buy a box of Allen & Ginter and get the Jeff Francis autograph". Guess which auto I got in that box......
But then the Rosemont Convention Center became as bright as the "F*** Face" on the 1989 Fleer Billy Ripken card, and we found the ultimate booth. Some young asian guy was putting out all kinds of boxes that we were looking for. 1990 Fleer, Upper Deck, 1989 Topps, 1991 Donruss. We hit the motherload of crappy wax boxes. I picked up probably 10 boxes and my brother did as well. The best part was bargaining the dealer down, and I think he may have paid us to take some of the boxes if we would have asked. The highlight was a box of 1993 Triple Play that I purchased for $1.25. Beckett says that the President Clinton card is worth 5 bucks, so it's a great deal right? More on Beckett prices later....So, after we had our crazy box buying spree, we had to take all the boxes back to the car. I was cracking up laughing all the way back to the car, because my hands were killing me from carrying all of the crappy boxes.
Below is a picture of some of our boxes when we got back home. There is nothing better than a coffee table full of unopened boxes. Well, maybe there are a whole lot of better things, but it was still a fun day.
