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Tri-Star's card show a marketplace rarity
Dwight Chapin, Gregory Lewis
Monday, August 20, 2001
©2001 San Francisco Chronicle
NOT SO long ago, the Bay Area was a hotbed for card and memorabilia shows.
You couldn't turn around without finding local action of some sort, at Moscone Center, at the Cow Palace, at San Jose Convention Center and the Concourse Exhibition Center and malls and halls all over Northern California.
Not anymore.
In these days of ever-pervasive Internet commerce, card shows -- particularly the big ones -- are almost dinosaurs, both here and around the country.
Even the people who promote them can't duck reality.
"The show industry has really contracted," Jeff Rosenberg of Tri-Star Productions said recently. "Compared to what we've seen the last five or six years, the major shows are few and far between. Outside of the National Sports Collectors Convention and (Krause Publications') Sportsfest, and the league shows, there just aren't many large shows left."
But Tri-Star is successfully swimming against the tide.
Rosenberg and his capable crew will be back in San Francisco for their 14th annual Labor Day Collectors Show at the Concourse Exhibition Center from Aug. 31 to Sept. 3. The show is the largest of its kind on the West Coast.
Tri-Star already has announced a star-studded autograph signing lineup, which will be expanded. Set to appear so far are Jerry Rice, Rich Gannon, Charles Woodson; Hall of Famers George Blanda and Ted Hendricks of the Raiders;
former Lions great Barry Sanders, Baseball Hall of Famers Steve Carlton, Bob Gibson, Harmon Killebrew and Bobby Doerr; Giants Jeff Kent, Rich Aurilia, Calvin Murray and top prospect Kurt Ainsworth and the A's Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Frank Menechino.
Advance autograph and admission tickets are available at www.tristarshows.com, or by calling (713) 666-9595.
In addition to the big-name autograph guests, expect the usual array of dealers (more than 200 are expected), cards and collectibles, something you can see only at a major show.
Rosenberg obviously has a vested interest in this, but there's no reason to quarrel with his view that "The big ones are still great, fun for collectors."
MAKING THE GRADE: Krause Publications has joined an ever-growing group of firms that offer card-grading services.
Krause will challenge PSA, Beckett and the other most successful grading operations with what it calls Sports Collectors Digest Authentic.
"We've got the magazines, we've got the trade shows, we've got price guides,
now we're grading," said Steve Bloedow, operations manager for SCD Authentic. "It was a step we weren't able to help the consumer with, and now we're there. We've learned a lot of the things to do correctly and incorrectly from the other (grading) companies and we felt there was a need in this industry to get in."
Two unique selling features of the new service will be a pristine 11 grade for cards deemed to be a step above a 10 grade or gem mint card (good luck on interpreting that one) and an "Untouched" designation assigned to cards "that are taken from an unopened product by the SCD Authentic staff, or in its presence."
FAR EAST FANDOM: Interest in the famed T206 Honus Wagner tobacco card apparently is heating up in an unlikely place: Japan.
Collector Brian Seigel, who bought the 1910-era card of the Pirates' Hall of Fame shortstop for a record $1.2 million last year, said a Japanese film crew came to his Orange County home a few months ago to do a story on it.
Since the report was televised, Seigel told T.S. O'Connell of Sports Collectors Digest, "I've been getting phone calls from Japan from collectors wanting to buy the card."
Some of the offers have reached nearly $2 million, but Seigel is holding fast -- for now.
"It's a piece of Americana and I was worried about it going to Japan," he said. "But they keep raising the price. I guess if they keep calling. . . ."
Speaking of Japan and baseball, Seattle Mariners' rookie star Ichiro Suzuki has agreed to an exclusive, one-year deal with Upper Deck that will include autographed cards and game-worn and signed memorabilia.
E-mail Dwight Chapin at dchapin@sfchronicle.com. E-mail Gregory Lewis at glewis@sfchronicle.com.
©2001 San Francisco Chronicle Page C - 2
