The card show packing list

A card show punishes bad packing twice. Once on Saturday morning when you are setting up in a hurry and cannot find anything, and again on Sunday night when you get home and find a dinged corner that was not there on Friday. Almost all of that is decided by how the bag gets loaded.

Slabs travel locked, not loose

Graded cards in a soft bag knock into each other for the entire drive. Foam-slotted cases hold every slab in its own slot so nothing shifts on a hard stop, and a lock means the case can sit under the table while you walk away for five minutes. Load it at home in good light, and write down what went in. Reconciling a list is much easier than remembering.

Raw stock wants a different box

Sleeved raw cards need a rigid box packed tight enough that the stack cannot lean. Half empty rows are exactly where bent corners come from. Fill the dead space with an empty toploader or a folded cloth so the row stays vertical the whole way there.

Playmats and the tube problem

A rolled mat loose in a duffel gets creased, and a creased mat is a mat you can no longer sell as new. A hard tube keeps the roll round and the surface flat. Once you own more than two or three tubes, a hanging organizer keeps them upright and reachable instead of rolling around the trunk with everything else.

The table kit

Sleeves and toploaders in the sizes you actually sell. Team bags. Two pens that work. Painter's tape, which comes off a table without residue. Printed price signs, because handwritten cardboard reads as amateur to a buyer deciding between two tables. A tablecloth long enough to hide the boxes underneath. Wet wipes for hands, and a microfiber cloth for cases.

Three things people forget

Good light. Venue lighting is dim and yellow, and buyers do not buy what they cannot see properly. One small clip lamp changes how your table reads from ten feet away. Second, a payment fallback for when the venue wifi dies, which means a fully charged phone, a battery pack, and a cash float in small bills. Third, something to sit on that is comfortable for eight hours, because the last two hours of a show are when the good trades happen and you want to still be there.

Pack for the trip home too

At the end of a show you are tired and you will pack badly if the system does not do it for you. Keep the foam slots empty rather than filling them with sold-out packaging, so returning stock goes straight back where it came from. Do a slab count before you leave the table, not in the car park.

The travel cases, playmat tubes, and hanging tube organizer we use for shows are all in the Show gear collection.