At my local card show, I have come to know a few guys (customers, not dealers) that are looking for the same kinds of stuff that I am. Of course the "stuff" I refer to is cheap boxes that are not just absolute junk. These guys are my natural competitors, as we would all love to be left alone with these cheapie boxes to take all the good stuff for ourselves. But in practice, that rarely happens. Once a good spot is found by one of us, the others usually gravitate to that table, and a polite competition ensues.
Basically, it might go like this. Say there are 4 dime boxes at the good spot. The guy who found them tries not to call attention to them, but a few other guys soon show up. The original guy has claim to whichever box he is currently in, but the others are fair game. Once the boxes are all taken, any additional customers are on the outside looking in. Everyone is courteous, always asking 'Are you done with that box' or letting the others know when a box is available. But we are all looking through the cards pretty quickly, trying to find the diamonds so we can move on to the next section.
I call these other collectors my canaries. Like a canary in the coal mine. In a coal mine, toxic gasses would kill a canary before they would do the same to the miners, so you would always keep your eye on the canary. This isn't the same at all, since watching MY canaries leads me to good things, while you would watch the canary in the coal mine to avoid bad things. But I like the general idea, so in my mind, these guys are canaries. Always keep your eye on the canary!
OK, big lead up for a little post! At the last show I made it to, there were some canaries. And the usual stuff happened. There wasn't a ton of cheap boxes there, so we all finished our canary dance pretty early, which was good, because I had my son's soccer game I had to get to. I was walking for the door, when I saw a couple of canaries huddled around a dealer I had never seen before. I hurried right over and was fortunate to find an available box.
I had only 15 minutes, so I was flipping through the cards as fast as I could. Man, I wish I had been the one to find this table, because the stacks that my canaries had out were looking very nice! Unfortunately, I ran out of time, but I pulled 76 dime cards before I had to leave. I am only scanning a few below, but I was very happy with what I found:
