My 2021 National Recap

What a weekend spent in Chicago at The 2021 National.  One of my bucket list items for quite a while...I was actually on my way to The National 10 years ago when a family emergency forced me to turn around and miss the event.  Didn't miss it this time and had a great and amazing experience.  There are dozens and dozens of other collector reports of The National and I thought I'd also post my thoughts here of my Saturday and Sunday experience.

1. The Donald E. Stephens Convention Center is huge.  It took my brother and I 12 hours to walk and look at every single booth while stopping at about 10-20% of them to look through boxes.  If I was to do it again 3 days would have been perfect.  We walked 9 miles around the convention floor weaving in and out.

2.  The modern-card hobby is in a boom right now for sure as there were a ton of people.  I can't help think the modern cards market is going to collapse in on itself soon with the prices being thrown around.

3.  There is plenty of vintage at The National...don't let the modern-card YouTubers lead you to believe otherwise.

4.  1986-1987 Fleer Jordan rookie cards are not rare, however, they are rare in the PSA 9 and PSA 10.  I could have walked away with 2-3 dozen graded examples PSA8 and below.

5.  Likewise, 1951 Bowman Mantle and Mays rookie cards are not rare either.  Surprising how many The National brings out of the woodworks.

6.  After plenty of research, we ate a big breakfast and brought sandwiches and power bars for lunch and snacks so we didn't have to wait in line and pay the crazy vendor prices.  People always seem to be complaining, but with a little preparation we were just fine and saved all that time.  They did need more tables and chairs around the perimeters though.

7.  I have a good sense of smell and I didn't smell nasty BO until the last day with one of the venders.  Thanks to all the collectors out there for showering.

8.  Absolutely bring good shoes.  My hip flexors were really sore after two days of shuffling on the concrete floor and bending over looking at cases.

9.  The aisleways did get crowded and I did run in a fellow sumo card collector so I was probably guilty of clogging the aisles.  The convention center needs about 15% more space to spread out and give people a bit more room to maneuver in the aisles.

10.  People were really polite as well as the dealers.  I didn't have one negative interaction!

11.  I asked about 6 dealers and they all said they had an amazing show as far as sales.  Money was flying around no doubt.

12. The modern-card YouTubers were out and about, but I very rarely saw them...I only saw their videos afterwards.

13.  People say there were a bunch of kids there and they definitely were, but this hobby and industry really isn't for them anymore.

14.  People carrying lock boxes around with tens of thousands of dollars in slabbed cards is a site to behold.  When it is a 10-year old kid it makes me sad though.

15.  There is plenty of stuff to do: autographs, memorabilia, box breaking, card shopping, dime boxes, dollar boxes, corporate booth festivities.  There is not a shortage of fun.

16.  There were good deals abound, but you had to search.  I was surprised how much inventory was still sitting around at the end of the show leading me to believe the prices were a bit high for most buyers.

17.  Beer at The National.  A brilliant idea designed to pry more dollars out of people's hands.

18.  NASCAR card collecting is dead at the moment.  I saw maybe one or two booths with unopened, but no one was selling any singles.  Soccer, Wrestling, MMA, and F1 have all overtaken NASCAR at this point.  Again it's pretty sad to see how far NASCAR has fallen.

19.  I'm not sure we'd do the VIP Passes again.  Unless you are going to be there all 5 days, it really wasn't worth the price for what we did.

20.  I bought 5 items there...yes only 5 items:

    a)  An unopened taba pack of late 1950 sumo bromide cards!

    b) A box of 1987 Donruss to rip back at the hotel and relive my youth!

    c) A 1990 Donruss Nolan Ryan Learning Series Card

    d) A SGC 7.5 2018 Topps Chrome Ohtani - I wanted to own an SGC slab to have in my collection, but didn't want to spend a ton of money so I rescued this one.

    e) A full set of 1991 Kicks American Taekwondo Association Cards 

Well, there you have it.  Would I go to The 2022 National in Atlantic City?  You bet!

2021 Hobby Goals

Happy New Year!  As I have mentioned several times in the past, I love reading about how collectors did with their past year's collecting goals and their goals for the upcoming New Year.  I like to do them to help me focus my purchases and hobby time to help give me focus.  2020 was good hobby year for me, but just like everyone else I had to overcome all the challenges living under a pandemic.  I have a feeling most of 2021 is going to look like 2020 and am hopeful we can get back to normalcy by the end of the summer.  Thanks to all my readers and here are my 10 collecting goals this year:

Goal #1: Blog 60 posts this year!

I barely hit my blogging goal last year with posting on average once a week, but this year I want to challenge myself to get 60 posts.  Blogging is more therapy than anything and I hope I can provide a brief bit of information, knowledge, and entertainment as well to the larger collecting community.  I won't be short of things to blog about and am hoping the rest of my life can cooperate.  

 

  

Goal #2: Publish the 5th Edition of the Sumo Menko and Card Checklist.

This is it!  This is the year to get the next edition of my book self-published.  The 4th Edition was completed way back in 2017 and there have been numerous updates and additions ready to be captured in the 5th Edition.  To help me get motivated, I created a draft of the cover already....let's hope this is the year.

Goal #3: Get to the halfway point with my 1973 Calbee set

The 1973 set is a monster in terms of cost to complete.  With cards ranging anywhere from $50-$200 or higher, this 36-card set is a monster to put together.  It takes time and definitely resources to whittle away to completion.  Crazy enough, this is the most expensive sumo set in existence....it even eclipses the sets made in the 1890s....yes 1890s not 1980s...as well as the ultra-rare pre-war sets.  Because of supply and demand, prices have been elevated for a while now, but I am feeling lucky this year to get to the 50% completion mark.  

  

Goal #4: Relabel my Binders/Sets and Pass Along Excess "Stuff"

The majority of my Japanese card collection is in binders, but needs a bit of TLC to properly relabel each of my sets and relabel my binders.  Since my collection has grown from when I first started, I am continually organizing the sets within the binders but wanted to wait until it had settled out a bit before I went back in there and put more permanent labels on everything.  I also need to get into my misc. cards and make sure everything is tidied up and pass along some of my excess in care packages.  Not to mention I need to get my desk stacks incorporated into my collection.  This is the year I'd like to get that done.  Speaking of organizing, look at this binder carousel!  I have my binders on shelves, but this carousel is no joke.

Goal #5: Expand my 1980s/1990s Japanese Telephone Card Collection

I have been totally enamored recently with holographic cards.  Doing some browsing on Yahoo Japan Auctions, there are some legitimate and awesome looking Japanese holographic telephone cards.  I plan on picking up some here and there to complement my sumo wrestling telephone card collection.  Speaking of which, my sumo wrestling telephone card collection was sadly put on the backburner for the past several years, but this is the year I am going to start expanding it.  I used the word "expand" since I don't know which direction I want to take both the hologram and sumo telephone cards yet, but defining them and growing them will be this year's goal.  The real question is, how do I take good quality photos of holographic cards since scanning does not do them any justice?  

Goal #6: Do Something with my Yukata Card/Bolt Collection

I spent a good amount of energy this past year collecting Japanese indigo yukata bolts with their attached cards....so much in fact that there are very few left out there that are coming up for auction.  It's weird...you used to be able to find them on every street corner, now they are almost non-existent.  Anyway, I need to take the 40 or so I have to the next level.  I'll probably try and establish some sort of catalogue system for them and publish them on my blog.

Goal #7: Continue Giving my Non-Sumo Collections Some Love

I'm collecting specific non-sumo sets and want to continue working towards completion of them.  Each one is in a different stage of completion so I have specific goals this year of inching ever closer to 100%.

Amada Nintendo (NES)/Famicon Mini Cards

This 360-card set was issued in 6 different series and is so much fun to chase down.  These cards depict game art as well as actually screen shots from different NES games that were popular in the mid-1980s.  Right now I have only 170 of the cards leaving me a little over 47% complete.  My goal is to see if I can bump the total up by 10% to around 57% which means I need to add about 35 cards to my collection this year.

1983 Myojo Noodle Mechanical (Meca) Cards

Back in 1983, Myojo issued 9 different series of cards depicting different types of mechanical machines: Series 1 - World Steam Locomotives, Series 2 - World Racing Cars, Series 3 - World Classic Cars, Series 4 - World Ships, Series 5 - World Jets, Series 6 - World Motorcycles, Series 7 - World Space Machines/Meca, Series 8 - World Dream Cars, Series 9 - Star Wars Machines/Meca.  Each of these series has 30 cards for a total of 270 cards.  I only have 55 of the cards at the moment (20%), but am looking to boost that total up to 33%, or another 35 cards.  I have confidence that I can do that this year, no doubt!

2014-2020 Airport Trading Cards

I first heard about this set while I was flying through Chicago back in 2015.  I was instantly hooked and have made it my goal to try and collect them all.  No one knows how many there actually are in the master set.  I have it pegged at 156 cards, but I am likely a few short.  Back in October I talked about the "Dirty 5"....these are the 5 toughest cards to get out of the set and my goal this year is to get at least 1 of the Dirty 5!

1974 Japanese Yamakatsu Bruce Lee "The Way of the Dragon"

In 1974, Japan was going crazy over Bruce Lee and to capitalize on his popularity and promote his movies, Yamakatsu issued a three-series set covering 144 cards (48 per series).  Series 1 was focused on the movie "Enter the Dragon", Series 2 on "The Way of the Dragon" and Series 3 on "The Green Hornet".  Each Series gets progressively harder to complete and I was finally able to finish Series 1 back in September.  Right now I am down to needing only 4 more card for Series 2.  My goal for 2021 is to finish Series 2 "The Way of the Dragon" and then turn my focus to Series 3 "The Green Hornet" and add 5 more cards there.  Even something more cool about Series 2 is that it also captures the very first trading cards of Chuck Norris on them!

Radio Shack Zip Zap Cards

Some of the very first miniaturized radio control cars that came to market were the Zip Zap cars marketed by Radio Shack.  These were a huge hit and millions were sold.  All sorts of accessories, upgrades, body kits, and motors were available to customize each of the cars.  Included along with the cars and some of the accessories were trading cards.  Right now, I have been able to track down 82 cards in the master set, but I think there are more than that out there....I have 51 of the 82 (62%) cards, but would like to get that number close to 70% by the end of the year.  I need to go in and update the checklist too and try to get it reflected on the Trading Card Database.

Brandon Laird and Yuta Tabuse Cards

My three PC guys are Nolan Ryan, Brandon Laird, and Yuta Tabuse and my only goal this year is to continue adding to each of the PCs.  I don't have a specific number goal, but at least for Brandon Laird my goal is to start building up his Japanese-issued cards.

Goal #8: Get out at least 1 Care Package a month

I love sending random care packages....I actually enjoy shopping for things to put in them because of the challenge of trying to help fellow collectors out.  I am hoping I can get out at least 12 care packages this year!

Goal #9: Get to The National!

Assuming it is still on this year, my goal is to get out to The National.  Two scenarios: 1) I can hop on a redeye from LAX, land in the morning in Chicago and then hit up the show all day and fly home late that evening, or 2) spend a couple of nights in a hotel and then I can spend a few days at the show.  It all depends on my work schedule and how much time I can take off. 

Goal #10: Maintain/Improve Google/Yahoo/Bing Search Engine results for Sumo Card(s) & Menko

As a repeat from the past four years, my goal has been for this blog to be the #1-at-the-very-top-of-your-browser result when you go search up Sumo Card(s) and Menko.  In 2019, I was the #1 on Yahoo, almost the #1 on Bing, and the #1 to #6 on Google.  Now I am in the top 3 all around!  Here is where I currently stand, let's hope I can maintain that this year!

Sumo Card: Bing #1, Google #2, Yahoo #1

Sumo Cards: Bing #1, Google #2, Yahoo #1

Sumo Menko: #1, Google #1, Yahoo #1

Sumo Wrestling Card: Bing #3, Google #3, Yahoo #3

Sumo Wrestling Cards: Bing #2, Google #2, Yahoo #2

I hope everyone has great luck, fortune, and health in 2021!  Thanks for reading and Happy New Year!

5-Year Blogiversary - Thanks Everyone!

5 years ago and 321 posts later, here we are.  Thanks everyone for stopping by through all these years and all the great comments.  I am a rookie when it comes to a lot of the other blogs out there, but am thankful to be part of the card-collecting blogosphere.  This also marks my 2-year anniversary of doing my Fantasy Sumo Card game which has been holding strong at 16 players per tournament.  Here is the latest set that I recently gave a design refresh.  Sumo popularity is as strong as ever and I am extremely thankful to help try and be an ambassador to the sport.

Have a great Christmas everyone!  Sayonara!

2020-2021 BBM Japanese Basketball B.League Cards Arrive - 15 January!

It has been a long time since I have done one of these announcement posts for the upcoming Japanese B.League BBM Basketball card releases.  The past few years there has been some mid-season boxed set that always peaks my interest, but this year due to COVID both BBM and B.League opted to forgo any such sets.  So last January was the last time we saw any new B.League basketball card product.  Well, the new season is upon us with the first games kicking off several months ago which also means a new card set is forthcoming as well.  BBM's fifth annual release is slated to drop in stores in mid-January 2021.  Normally how BBM does it is they release two separate series a month apart.  Series 1, called "1st Half", comes out in January and Series 2, called "2nd Half", comes out in February.  I don't expect them to do anything differently this year and I will be jumping on board since I have been buying the boxes since the 2016-2017 season.  Interestingly they have slashed the box prices by ￥2000 from ￥8000 down to ￥6000.  However, they have also reduced the number of packs in the box from 20 to 15.  With 5 cards per pack, you are looking at only 75 cards per box.  The base set is 132 cards so it will easily take you 3-4 boxes to complete a set by hand.  Here is a preview image of the set design.  Not a very exciting design at all and an odd picture choice as well of Yuki Togashi, unfortunately.