I finally got my act together and uploaded about 49 pictures on the web in order to create a multi-part photo essay here to explain what it was like to be at the National Sports Collectors Convention. If you want to just see the pictures without all the commentary, click on the 213 Miles From Shea Facebook Fan page (right column of the web page) and look at the photo album with the Convention title (also while you are at it, become a fan!).
Anyway big barely begins to scratch the surface of the size of this convention. The reason that it is usually held in the midwest (and for a change in Baltimore) is that there are very few venues that can support the convention. Overall, there are over 22 aisles of stuff to look through and at some points it is even hard to find a table you want to revisit because you can get lost in the sheer magnitude of the convention floor.
Essentially what you see from the front gate. See that far wall, beyond the black curtain, towards the center of the image, a larger secondary room beyond that. On the left of the image, you see the beginning of another area that is not pictured. Below is my attempt of trying to picture about half of that back room:
The problem in the above image is the height of some of the booths actually block youfrom seeing how far back the covention goes. Also if you see that wall that looks like a bunch of circles just above the man in the orange shirt — thats not a wall. Its a bunch of baseballs. A very common site at this convention is just stacks and stacks of autographs.
People will probably tell you that the one day you would not want to attend this convention is on the last day and I would have to agree with those people because starting midway through the day you will start to see this:
The convention in terms of venders starts to clear early on the last day (luckily I went on the last day and another day as well in order to max the convention experience). Out of all the Photo-Essays this one will probably be the worst, since there are only three photos. However over the next few days there are going to be themed ones talking about baseball's, baseball cards, plaques and strange items to see at these conventions!
