This past week was the National Sports Collectors Convention in Chicago. The National is the center of the baseball card world and it\u2019s always an incredible experience. This year, however, I had plans to go with my wife to Austin, Texas, because she had a conference there. Austin is a great city so I was really excited to go, but as the time approached, the thought of missing out on the card show started to sink in. It was then that I started to go through the Five Stages of Not Attending the National.<\/p>\n
THREE WEEKS BEFORE THE NATIONAL: DENIAL<\/strong><\/p>\n It feels like the 2018 National was just a few months ago, so there\u2019s no way it could be coming up this soon again,<\/i> I thought. I can just go to Austin, have a great time, and then it\u2019ll be time for the National after that.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n Plus, the more I thought about it, Austin is a much cooler place than Chicago. Live music is everywhere in Austin and it\u2019s not like Chicago is well-known for music. Austin has barbecue and tacos \u2014 what food is Chicago famous for? Austin has the Texas Longhorns and Chicago isn\u2019t even a good sports city! Right?<\/p>\n \u2026right?<\/p>\n TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE NATIONAL: ANGER<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m starting to see ads for the National now, and I\u2019m getting upset. Gary Vaynerchuk is going to be there basically the entire time. It\u2019s not fair! Darren Rovell is writing about the National. Why can\u2019t I be there? I\u2019m seeing photos of the giveaways \u2014 will anyone get them for me?<\/p>\n Now I start to think about blame. Should I talk to the organizers of my wife\u2019s conference to make sure this conflict never happens again? Maybe a sternly-worded email would get across the importance of attending the National.<\/p>\n TEN DAYS BEFORE THE NATIONAL: BARGAINING<\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s a way. There has to be a way.<\/p>\n My wife\u2019s going to be in workshops all day Thursday and Friday. Maybe I can fly with her to Austin, then fly from Austin to Chicago, just for a couple days. It\u2019s the same time zone and everything.<\/p>\n \u2026Flights are a little pricey last-minute, so maybe I can drive. It can\u2019t be that far, right?<\/p>\n …Okay, 17 hours is a little too much. Please, let there be a high-speed rail system between Texas and Illinois that I\u2019ve never heard of!<\/p>\n THREE DAYS BEFORE THE NATIONAL: DEPRESSION<\/strong><\/p>\n My wife asks why I\u2019m so withdrawn. I mope around the house.<\/p>\n “It\u2019s time to pack for our trip to Austin,” she says.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy even bother?\u201d I reply. \u201cAs soon as we pack we\u2019ll just have to unpack when we\u2019re there and then repack to come back home and then unpack again once we\u2019re home so what\u2019s the point?\u201d<\/p>\n I definitely wasn\u2019t making any sense.<\/p>\n DAY OF THE NATIONAL: ACCEPTANCE<\/strong><\/p>\n It was a long road, but I got here, and I\u2019m glad I did.<\/p>\n On the first day of the National, I did research on baseball card shops in the Austin area. I took a Lyft to Kenny\u2019s Collectibles, about 12 minutes away from my hotel. Kenny\u2019s is a giant store with tons of baseball cards, comics, Hot Wheels, and pretty much anything else you can think of. I spent several hours digging through boxes at Kenny\u2019s. Then when I was done, I spent about an hour talking about cards to Kenny himself. Thoughts of missing the National started slipping away from my mind \u2014 after all, here I was digging through boxes of cards and meeting new people just like I would have if I were in Chicago.<\/p>\n On the second day of the National, I went to a really neat antique mall where there just happened to be some unique vintage baseball items. I walked away with two vintage ticket stubs, but left behind old catcher masks and a minor league souvenir from the 1960s. Then I went to an awesome collectible store with piles and piles of old stuff, and left with a few old programs and a 1993 Topps Micro complete set. Digging through stuff is my favorite part of the National, so I was happy to get to do some digging on my trip.<\/p>\n On the third day of the National, however, I made plans for next year\u2019s National in Atlantic City. I firmed up who I\u2019ll be sharing a table with and started looking into flights and lodging. I may be in the acceptance stage now, but I don\u2019t plan on going through the other phases again next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This past week was the National Sports Collectors Convention in Chicago. The National is the center of the baseball card world and it\u2019s always an incredible experience. This year, however, I had plans to go with my wife to Austin, Texas, because she had a conference there. Austin is a great city so I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"amp_validity":null,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6110"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}