This year's National Sports Memorabilia Convention was held at Cleveland's I-X Center and the week flew by for us. We started our trip on Monday morning July 27 leaving at about 5:00 AM to beat the New York traffic. Once over the George Washington Bridge, we drove on Route 80 for close to 8 hours without much traffic. We had set up a couple of appointments with collectors and ended up buying over 40 bobbing heads along with some other interesting memorabilia. We then headed straight for Cleveland to get ready for set-up on Tuesday.

Set-up did not start well for us as when we got to our booth, the glass cases we rented from an outside supplier we not at our booth. We were told that the convention center was holding them from being delivered for an additional fee of $208. These places are really getting greedy and it makes it difficult to do the show. For small-time dealers like us to do the show, we have to incur a lot of expenses. We drive our merchandise to the show (over $300 in gas), the booth is about $1,000 for the week, renting the show cases is another $500, plugging in the case is $150 and staying at the hotel was close to $1,000. Before we calculate the cost of eating- our expenses for the week are close to $3,000 (that's a lot of bobbing heads). Then the convention center has the nerve to hold us up for additional $208 for us to bring in the cases.

Okay- enough complaining and now for the good stuff. Both the buying and selling was solid during the week. Our best purchases were a complete set of Hartland baseball statues- many with boxes & tags, an extremely rare Washington Redskins "Ear Pad" bobbing head and an equally rare Stanford Pottery Boston Red Sox bank. We'll feature these items in upcoming auctions. We are also happy to announce that it appears that this hobby has gotten over its "recession blues". The selling was very active and from speaking with other dealers- most appeared to have good shows.

The best part of the show was meeting the public. We do so few shows, so it's always great to see our long-time customers(and friends) and also adding to our customer list. It could not have been a better time and we hope that everyone who attended feels the same way.

Thanks to all of you who attended.

Lou & John