Back in January one of my collector pals (he's video games) told me about an event in a nearby community "in July." He told me the table fee was like $35 and sent me the details. I booked my spot and in the time since I've made connections with another area hobbyist that does art for the various conventions in our region. It was called the "Back to School Bash" for that community. By Saturday morning, the day of, both of the people I knew had backed out.
Now, I knew going in that there was school supply giveaways going on and that it was an outreach type event. And the organizer knew I was going in as a trading card vendor. Holy moley, the most humbling day of my life. While the community that hosted the event is known in the state for a high amount of affluent people, the event was
for people that were not of affluent backgrounds. I clicked really well with the organizer and all of the volunteers. The emcee and I exchanged contact information because he's into this hobby, too.
My booth was next door to the "Free School Uniforms" booth. I'm looking in my display case at $100+ football, baseball, and Pokemon cards feeling like the world's biggest asshole. I did some rearranging and made my $0.25 box (buy 4 get #5 free) and my $10 graded box front and center.
The event included scholarships to many area teenagers, dorm room supplies & appliances to college students from the area, voter registration for the adults, job skills training, job interviews, an army recruiter (a little predatory in my opinion but I was selling baseball cards so I'll ease up on throwing stones), and overall really cool to see something like this exist and makes me wonder why my home town isn't doing it.
There were many, MANY, awkward interactions with children keying in on the higher end stuff and obviously, everything is negotiable, but it was a realization in my brain that I should have not brought the heavy hitters and that they're just upsetting kids or reminding their adults of the financial insecurity in their lives while this bald asshole is displaying fancy stuff. One child hung out for over half an hour mulling over a $100+ item asking me what I'd take for it and added, "my family doesn't have a lot of money" and I was so close to texting my friend that is cosigning the pokemon through me and saying, "I'm taking this one on the chin dude, this kid is breaking my heart." Eventually his adult (possibly grandfather? he mentioned being 65) came and we were able to get him a graded card and a few singles for $10 all in and that made him happy.
Pretty soon the line to the free school bags (filled with supplies) had wrapped around the civic center to place the line in front of my table. Before I knew it there was an unending stream of children at the $0.25 box (a 3200 count 3 row box) going through finding stuff that had players/characters they knew, liked the art, and a few times I heard, "DADDY LIKES HIM!" A handful of times I told the Moms $1 for kids with more than 5 cards. The light up was priceless. I saw 8-10 year old me at the 1980s/1990s flea markets with $5 but nothing in my budget that I liked. A few other older kids were able to successfully raid the $10 slabs for deals. Someone put a Burrow/Jefferson dual rookie graded card in the $10 box and thankfully the kid that found it was letting me know, "hey I think you messed up." One man was looking over some 90s basketball in the graded display but his wife/girlfriend kept gesturing toward my music cards (Ice Cube, Easy - E, and Lady Gaga). Another mom took one of my laminates with my QR codes (my pay apps and instagram) to go home with to look over my online inventory.
By the end of the day, the organizer wants me back next year, the emcee wants to link up and have me at some of his events, and I was sufficiently placed in a headspace of absolute gratitude for my place in life and also that I had the chance to see so many happy faces after a bumpy start to the day. In the hours after the event I came to realize that I was a popular target for photographers. None of the photos I came upon were disparaging but yeah, lots of me as the feature subject or photobombing someone.
Just made me appreciate the perspective. We all have problems, but sometimes you (me) should acknowledge the privilege you do have. I don't pray, perse, but I pray that the smiles I saw lasted long after they walked away from my booth.
Photo bomb:
As somebody who grew up in an affluent family and could afford a lot (I remember multiple birthdays where gift bags including entire card packs as an example for 6-10 individual kids), situations like the above are really cool. As somebody who still prefers collecting the "name"/"character" on the card over the card itself (looking at you 90s PMGs or 20s Silver Prizms), I love that those kids have largely the same mentality.
