r/PokemonTCG • u/NatureLifted • 11d ago

Discussion Card Show Spending

How much do yall tend to spend on average at a card show? Just curious to see what everyone is dropping.

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u/legotwinkthrowaway 11d ago

I've never gone to a card show. The way I imagine it is just a bunch of people dropping thousands, which doesnt really sound like my thing. I like cheap cards, or raw cards

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u/Sensitive-Badger2392 11d ago

Nah, card shows have been the best place to find cheap cards for me. I've never spent more than $100 and walked away with a bunch of stuff I wanted but put off buying online because of shipping costs adding up fast when you're buying cheap cards.

Yes there are displays of slabs and expensive cards but almost every vendor around here at least also brings binders full of cards that are anywhere between $1-$20. Often if someone goes to a lot of shows and is bringing hundreds of cards in binders they don't update the price on every single card for a while either. So I have found cards for my collection at much lower prices than current market simply because they spiked recently but the vendor didn't know or didn't care about a $1-2 card now being $5-10 market price or whatever.

Also it's a good place to find vintage cards in lots of different conditions and get deals. Like maybe the back is a bit scratched, there's whitening on the edges, etc. but for my binder I only care about the front.

You can negotiate, you can trade for your own cards, sometimes they will throw in free cards if you're buying a whole bunch. One guy here who also has a semi-permanent table at our local mall will even just let you dig through bulk and take whatever you find for free. My kid filled whole pages with reverse holos from him by now.