2012 National Sports Collectors Convention

[Deacon]

It's appears as if you represented the hobby well. Hopefully it was an eventful week for you guys.

[vintagebrett]

The week of the National is a lot of work and very tiring, yet very rewarding. It flies by as there is little to no downtime whatsoever. I had a great time last week and our sales were steady and strong. One of the best parts of the show is all of the collectors that come through the booth. It was great to catch up with long time collectors and meet new ones as well. Having Corey Leigby from the Antique Athlete in our booth was a great bonus - he has been in the hobby for a long time and introduced us to some of the renowned collectors in the hobby. There were quite a few people that took a shine to the gloves as they entered our booth and hopefully that will ignite a spark in them to collect.

In terms of glove sales, the $5 to $20 range was very strong as always - these are mostly for people decorating rooms or just an impulse to pick up something neat looking. Old catchers mitts with a nice look always do well at the show - each year I've sold out. People are still looking for endorsements but mostly from the 50's and 60's. I sold a Jim Greengrass glove on Wednesday and could have sold 3 more if I had them. Too funny. Corey sold a nice Canadian Babe Ruth model. The people with the means to buy great gloves are looking for high quality, older, top condition models (no surprise).

There were lots of glove choices out there for collectors of all means. Herbert Thomas had 500 or so gloves that had come from the National Pastime store in Cooperstown via Lelands auction. He was selling them cheap and I know a lot of people were able to pick up some decent stuff in that booth. Rob Mucha's gloves made an appearance in John Kanuit's booth - a webless sold in that booth to MEARs. Pat Armstrong from Iowa and the Carrouthers from New York had a good selection of leather as well. Overall, there were many choices if you were interested in leather. The really, really nice stuff went very quickly.

Next year the show is back to Chicago, then Cleveland, then Chicago again. For the next open date, we heard St. Louis is strongly being considered. Sorry, west coasters.

[vintagebrett]

Here are some pictures of the booth - sorry it took so long to post them. That's why you should follow me on twitter or instagram.

[Studboy]

Looks awesome, I know it is a ton of work but it has to be a blast also. One of these years I'm gonna make it to the National, thanks for the pix (I did see them on Twitter).