It was a great experience! TONS of Pokemon, and it was honestly just cool to see stuff in real life I had only seen pictures of online. This is anecdotal, but all the vendors I interacted with were pretty chill. The perfect amount of chatting and letting you look around and think things through. I didn’t run into any elitist people (I’m not the most knowledgeable) or scalpers. Everyone seemed on the same page with prices, which seemed good and bad. Nothing crazily overpriced, but not a ton of deals either. Most cards seemed to be within $5 of each other if they were under $100, which is mostly what I was looking for today.
If you are like me, and get a little overwhelmed in situations like this with lots of people/vendors, and buying/selling/trading, this is what I did that really helped me enjoy the experience. 1. Set a budget. I knew going into it I only wanted to spend $100. Signal was horrible, so I probably should’ve gone through an ATM and taken out cash. Next time. 2. I used an app and put a “wishlist” together which uses TCGPlayer to show current market prices. This was huge, because it helped me hone in on specific cards and not lose the plot looking through too much cool stuff. 4. I walked the whole floor and made a mental note of which booths had the cards I wanted. Helped me find a vendor that had 3 of the 4 cards I picked up, and gave me a little negotiating power.
Post show thoughts: this was a great experience for me, and I think it broke me a little of buying and ripping packs so much. I’m now feeling like I’d rather just save my money and go big at the trade shows for the singles I want, since it seems like a much better use of money, and it gave me a similar rush as ripping to hunt the cards I wanted in the building. I’ve bought online before and the experience felt a little like cheating (silly, I know) but that’s not the case with the trade show.
Anyway. I know a lot of you here are much more experienced than me, but maybe you enjoyed reading a beginner’s perspective. Have a great night!
by UnderwaterB0i