Pat McAfee smoking live on ESPN?

Let’s talk about something you can never let happen at your event. What you’re looking at here is a group of people who gathered in a hallway at the Dallas Card Show and started selling cards. They didn’t purchase tables. They didn’t purchase booth space. That’s the problem. In the sports card hobby, everyone talks about “trade night.” I love trade nights. They have a place. After the show. Not during it. Vendors at major card shows are paying hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars for the right to set up, display inventory and sell to attendees. You can’t then allow someone who purchased an admission ticket to essentially create their own free booth in the hallway and compete for those same customers. I’ve seen this happen at plenty of card shows over the years. Most shows won’t allow it. Some do. And when vendors see it happening, they get frustrated. Rightfully so. When someone pays you for booth or table space, you’re selling them more than a physical piece of real estate. You’re giving them access to the marketplace you’ve created. And part of your responsibility as an event organizer is protecting the value of that marketplace. Trading a card with another collector while walking the show is one thing. Setting up inventory in a hallway and actively selling is something entirely different. Your vendors invested in your event. Your job isn’t just to sell them space. Your job is to protect the value of the space you sold them.