How do people do 5 days of this?

After day two of attending the National, I’m exhausted. I arrived at the convention center at 9:00 this morning to try to beat the line at the PSA booth. The show opened to the public at 10:00, but my badge allowed me to enter at 9:30. So the thought process was, get to our entrance about 30 minutes before the doors opened and be near the front of the line to enter the show floor. When I got there I would guess that I was about 150th in line to enter (not everyone was going to PSA though) … but by 9:30 hundreds of our fellow collectors broke the social contract, ignored those of us who were lined up single file along the wall, and basically herded at the entrance. Those of us who had been waiting exchanged some choice words for those guys.

When the doors opened I was able to navigate the crowd and made it to the PSA booth to find a managable line that moved at a comfortable pace. I had the card dropped off by 10:15 or so.

I spent the rest of the day, exploring booths I didnt make it to yesterday, and returned to a couple of spots I’d visted yesterday to pick up a couple of items that I had identified but didnt buy yesterday.

I also found a $1 box full of Rod Carew cards! I spent quite a bit of time there and found 10 new unique cards for my PC binder. Eric Hecker then took me to meet Tim from @sigs4soldiers and I got to speak with him and hear his amazing story. While at is booth I felt compelled to contribute to the cause and picked up two Eric Davis autos to add to the PC.

The best part of the day was once again meeting folks whom I’ve long “known” on Twitter, but have never had the chance to meet in real life. This started with a very good conversation with Tracy Hackler (formerly of Panini and now of Roadshow Cards), that dude is a Hobby legend! I then finally got to meet @goldline cards. He and I have probably done 20 youtube conversations together over the years, we’ve texted, DM’d, talked on the phone, but have never met in person, and it was awesome to change that today. Finally Jen and I met Blake Jamieson, spoke with him for a few minutes and got a couple of autographs in the process. Meeting him was the highlight of the day at the show, because I have really wanted to thank him in person for his generous donation to my American Heart Association fundraiser earlier this year.

Oh yeah … back to the PSA submission. I dropped it off at 10:15, and at 2:40, I recieved notification that it was ready to pick up. The grade came back as I expected and I now will be taking home a fresh PSA 9 2003 Lebron Topps 1st edition RC to my friend Kayla whom I’ll be selling it for on consignment.

By the time 6:00 rolled around, I was truly done for the day, so we decided to pass on trade night (I didnt bring much to trade anyway) and head back to the room to just have dinner, relax and get ready for day 3 tomorrow.