National bound

Last week, after very little deliberation, I bought my tickets for The National.

I live all of ten minutes from where the show happens, which I've always found extraordinary given that people come from all over the country for this thing. Since travel isn't a concern here, the only question that remained was if the money would shake out (small budgets usually die quickly there), and I'm happy to report it has. So I've marked my calendar: I'll be at The National with my dad exactly two weeks from today. 

I've talked about The National many times on this blog, and I don't mean to sound like a broken record about it - but I've long had mixed feelings about the thing, and I think what a lot of it boils down to is the fact that it just feels so darn impersonal to me.

It's hard to argue that The National isn't the best show in the world, because it is - imagine a baseball card, and it's probably somewhere in those aisles.

But yours truly, a dime box scavenger and generally cheap-o aficionado, really isn't the prime audience there. I'm not a very social person in the first place, and worse yet, The National amplifies (embraces?) all the breaker and bro-culture aspects of the hobby that turn me off even further. I've often felt like the cards are my comrades at The National, and not so much the people. 

It's a shame because I know how good a lot of the people in this hobby can be - including a reader named Wes who's been periodically shoveling large quantities of cards on me for much of this blog's history, the latest instance of which saw a nice amount of legends along for the ride (send me all your Topps Tributes!).

It's still crazy knowing that people like Wes are specifically looking out for my crazy mini-collections - that's not the type of brotherhood you're likely to find at The National.

(Dig the exceedingly rare Reliever at the Plate with that Rick White!)

Speaking of which, here's a note I found inside one of the team bags Wes sent me - how cool!

Says a lot about Wes as a parent that his six-year-old son picked out such a killer cavalcade of stars, wouldn't you say?

I can usually still find good deals on vintage at The National (knock on wood), but it takes even more sifting through graded-and-generally-expensive stuff I can't afford and/or have no interest in.

You don't see a lot of beaters at this show because that's not what most people are there for - I find a certain comfort in them, though, because can you imagine the inferno you'd face on Twitter nowadays if you scribbled on a '61 Harmon Killebrew?

Those star-studded beaters were all doubles for me, but Wes did send along a few new oldies for my binders.

I've started picking up more and more of those vintage coach cards lately - Senators ones get extra points! - and while I don't specifically collect Kansas City A's stuff, they're novelties in my kind-of-but-not-really Defunct Teams catalog (see: Brooklyn Dodgers, Boston Braves, etc.).

Most trade packages I receive these days have a good amount of Cubs content - I've somehow never seen that beautiful '94 Rick Wilkins before, and Lou Brock Cubs cards are glorious (albeit a bit painful).

Player collection hits are great, and ones that come from off-road brands like Pacific and Fleer Box Score are even better!

Make no mistake: I'm excited for The National, and hopefully the finds will carry the same quirky-but-cool vibes that Wes repeatedly seems to send to me. 

With any luck, maybe I'll bump into a few kindred spirits like myself who find joy in the oddities and that make this hobby the joy that it is - it'll make getting whacked in the knee by someone's black magnetic case for the 27th time more than worth it.