Tri Star Observations

Good football autograph guests and a decent amount of vintage but if you're looking for Astros cards at a Houston card show you may as well not waste your admission fee. There were some decent cards but dealers wanted WAAAAY too much. Most were selling anything decent for 150-250% CV.

I bought 2 cards from the whole show.

EDIT: I'm headed back up there today. If you want to trade some Astros stuff come find me. I'll be wearing a navy Astros shirt with the orange logo from the 80s and a shaved head.

bummer. At least you have shows near you.

I'm going back tomorrow to help a friend get a bunch of stuff signed. Anyone going that collects Astros?

Last TriStar show, I attended was the 3000 club show a few years back in Atlantic City.. They charge loads for a table and most dealers try and get that money back 1st.. Spence was still selling autos than, Thats a ways back.. Out state dealers will always charge more when they're in a teams market..

I made the drive from Austin in exactly 150 minutes door to door. My first time driving in Houston, and Jesus Tapdancing Christ but that road system is hideous. I've driven in NYC, Washington, Chicago, Seattle, all over New York and New England and all the way from Philadelphia to Tampa, not to mention San Antonio, which, as the saying goes, was laid out by a blind Mexican riding a drunken mule, and I've never seen such a bizarre collection of over-unders, on- and off-ramps, and twisty-turny freeways. Not even London was this confusing. Throw in some road debris and the random 40-mph driver on a 65-mph freeway, and I couldn't get off the road fast enough.

But anyway, I was excited for my first show in over a year. While I had visions of finding all the cards I ever dreamed of, I knew I'd be lucky to find more than a couple things I really wanted. I agree, it was a good show if you were looking for vintage stuff, even some pretty obscure things were well represented. But little new modern stuff. A lot of dealer stock seemed to be from a time warp from 2002. I did make take a good chunk out of my 55 Bowman wantlist, and got a few 41 PBs, and one Frank Thomas card I've been wanting, I was looking and drooling over vintage a lot more than I bought. I couldn't find a nice solid $100 card that I wanted to go home with, but everything that really hooked me was $1000+, and I'm not spending that much right now. Only one person I saw had opened any Elite, and he had an Ackley auto for $50 along with some other autos but I'm not up on the names, so I left them. I was thinking of buying a box, but decided against it. I saw no 2010 Topps, unfortunately. I did find one guy who had 2 display cases full of Sweet Spot autos. I asked if he had a Mike Marshall and he told me he sold it the night before. I asked how much, and he said $25. I swooned, and told him he undersold it, and he said, yeah, he'd heard that. I figured this would be a great place to locate the two Astros cards I'm looking for, 2005 Old Judge Gold Burke and 2006 Bowman Originals Black Pence. But since I've been looking for them for years, I wasn't surprised not to. On the whole, it was a decent show for someone who didn't care about the autograph guests. If this is the only show available to me, I won't mind making the drive again.

Oh, one cool thing was that there was also a Halloween Costume trade show going on in another room, and the mezzanine has windows to look down into it. It's all about the sexy girls costumes, apparently, and there were a bunch of models out displaying the goods. Even from the floor above, I fell in love a couple times with the goth chick and the pirate queen.

Driving in Houston does suck. Another bad thing is about 30% of the drivers here don't have insurance so be VERY careful.


Anyone going today?

Didn't get to go but it was so so from what I heard. I have never found anything decent for astros stuff there. Its kind of weird how they don't have much of the astros. Figured that if you do a show, always bring a bunch of the cards for the home team. Apparently I am in the minority in this thinking. There is an older guy who has a ton of older cards for different players(1996 and earlier) and I have had a lot of luck finding odds and ends for my Bagwell and Biggio colelctions from him. He is pretty decent as far as prices. I know he has an antique shop out in Victoria.

There are some good deals to be had but only if you colelct non-prospect, non-astros cards. I picked up several cards at like 10% of BV at the last show I went to. Lot of vintage to be had there as well.

And yes...driving in Houston sucks but as long as youa ren't around downtown, the roads are fairly easy to navigate. Dallas blows more when it comes to confusion on the roads.