I had the AA VIP this year and it wasn't worth it. For starters, Tristar was a cluster#@#@#@#@ with a guy screaming into the mic so you could barely understand what he was saying and an asinine screen that you couldn't see because they stuck it on the ground. So the AA line priority was generally worthless. The parking pass was a nice way to avoid paying for it daily but we don't use the in/out privileges which is a big part of the value. Throw in the dysfunction of VIP pickup where they didn't give us everything we were supposed to get. We picked everything up on Wednesday before the line was longer than 10 people so there was no excuse for them to be so careless. Question... Did everyone who got a parking pass have a hole punched in their credential? I barely noticed anyone with holes in theirs but the lady insisted to show I had my parking pass.
We will be happy with the CSS and likely skip the National next year. I've made many more deals and seen much better inventory when Schwartz is running the show. And parents...have little Johnny go online and look at Kabooms and Downtowns. They are out of control. Some may think it's cute but it's a sad symptom of millennials who have no clue how to parent their own kids because they never experienced any consequential parenting done by their own parents.
Two years ago there was something at nearly every table. Now things are being set out to draw in these entitled KIDS who clog up the aisles with their personalized roller cases. There was MAYBE 25% of the show that had low-mid priced cards, 25% high dollar vintage cards, 10% "museum"/auction house, and 40% of the Kaboom/DT type of junk & places buying only that garbage. I made two fun deals in the area by the Autos and nothing aside from that. It all felt like the Fanatics[fest] disease is slowly making it's way in to kill off what the National's core has been since the beginning.
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