Rich Klein in his native habitat . . .
Klein’s Korner: Return of Card Shows Signify Return to New Normal – The last time I had, which was fortunately, a very brief spate of unemployment I attended local DFW meetings. We are extremely fortunate here in DFW to have an incredibly active group and great people who assist in that very worthwhile venture. One of the best pieces of advice I heard was to ensure you ask the hiring manager during an interview what keeps them up at night as a question that shows you care about the position and the details thereof.
Well for me there is an easy answer to the question of what is keeping you up at night. That is, should I (with the permission of the Adat Chaverim brotherhood who do have the final say) run our second 2020 show. We barely got the March show in before the country shut down and had a very successful event. However, the world has certainly been turned upside down over the past few months. But there are glimmers of hope. One of the glimmer of hopes was local promoter Kyle Robertson held a very successful event in June with an estimated 1,000 people walking through the doors during those three days and many dealers reported huge sales. And yes, there were some customers and dealers who opted to be nowhere near the show. Since our COMC Dallas office is literally within walking distance of the building of Kyle’s show I walked there from the office and yes for me that was a reasonably easy decision to make.
To Kyle’s credit, there were masks, sanitizers and gloves available at both the dealer check-in table at the back and at the admission table up front. The room was spaced out nicely and people did not seem to be overly crowding any table. I did wear my mask the entire time I was at the show but did remove the facial apparatus to eat lunch on Saturday and drink a coke zero on Sunday. However, there was a paucity of people who actually wore masks and that was truly disappointing to me as a promoter.
But after attending the show, I was comfortable in being able to run a show but also realized many of the aspects which made our Adat show such a popular event have to be changed or even temporarily eradicated in order to have our Labor Day weekend show. Some of the details are very mundane and specific to what I’ve done the past few years but others are more general in nature.
Those include should wearing masks be mandatory at all appropriate times for all attendees? Now I would probably say it’s acceptable not to wear masks while actively loading in or out as the door letting in fresh air would be open. Also, you can’t wear a mask while eating or drinking. Should there be a limit as to how many customers are in the show at any time? Should everyone attending sign a waiver absolving any blame? These are all questions I never would have thought less than a half year ago but now are very important and are difficult questions to answer. As noted there are other questions which are more specific to our show but that has to do with distribution of cards and prizes. My suspicion is that we will have fewer prizes than previous years but since we have nearly two million cards in our donation inventory we increase that distribution.
The purpose of this exercise was to give you some idea of my thinking but even more important is your thinking so please let me know what you think of the whole concept of shows in 2020. The Adat Chaverim brotherhood is working on my suggestions and will discuss them with our synagogue’s management so we can keep moving ahead with future show planning.
All photos which I did find on google were used in the Sports Collectors Daily review of the show and we thank Rich Mueller for ensuring his articles and photos are so accessible.
For more from Rich Klein, follow him on Twitter @sabrgeek.
Rich’s vast experience and knowledge of the hobby has been well documented through the years. GTS is happy to feature his thoughts on collecting in Klein’s Korner. The opinions expressed are his and do not necessarily reflect those of GTS Distribution.
Klein’s Korner: Return of Card Shows Signify Return to New Normal
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