I was reading the recent post by Dan McKee regarding the theft of part of his dad's collection in 1991 at the National and I remember reading about the theft of Gordon Burns' collection in The Wrapper and that started me thinking... has it ever happened to you? My own story, I was set up at a mixed collectibles show. At that time, I did one or two shows a year to raise some money to buy additional items for my collection. I went to help a 'customer' who had asked my mother a question, while at the other end of my table another accomplice helped themselves to the following items in my case, assorted 1957/8 basketball rookies including Cousy and others, some 1961 Fleer bsktball stars and assorted other expensive (at least for me) basketball, baseball and even a few non sport cards (I believe Wild Man, Jungle Chewing Gum, and a few G-Man). I guess I was lucky in a way as they missed the Bill Russell rookie next to the Cousy! The sport cards taken were a consignment from a fellow collector so I had to pay him for his loss. Now here is the 'kicker', I went directly across the aisle and asked that dealer if he had seen anything suspicious and he tells me that he was just ripped off of approximately one thousand dollars worth of comic books by two guys and he was just coming over to ask me if I had seen anything! After we talked, we figured they hit us both within two minutes of each other and wondered how many more dealers were hit that day. Needless to say, I never saw any of the cards again and boy did I look.
If it has happened to you and it isn't too painful to post, share your experience with the rest of us.

I often heard the break-in stories of

the "great story teller" Mary Ballisteri
and
the "venerable" Tom Reid

Both lost collectibles that could never be replaced.

I'm sorry but I have searched my mind and cannot recall
the specifics of either break-in.
.
.
.

Back in the early 80's I had a store and was robbed once.

Nothing like you are talking about though.

Sorry that happened to you.


Steve

In 1999 (At the height of the Pokemon craze) a friend of my son's (Both in 10th. grade at the time), broke into my house and stole my son's Pokemon collection (It was worth about $500.00 at the time). Obviously the only thing he was after since there were much more valuable cards, coins & other items in the house.

We knew who it was, but couldn't prove it. My son said it was more painfull to lose his friend (Pals since kindergarden) than it was to lose the cards.



Two cards the thief missed, since they were in a box with my cards.

I was robbed of some cards when I lived in an apartment in the late 1980s. Pretty sure it was one of the managers of the apartment complex, since there was no forced entry and he knew I had some cards, but couldn't prove it and never got them back. Luckily, he didn't take too much, but he did manage to break up my complete set of 1962 Topps baseball cards. I bought back all but 2, but never got around to finishing the set again and probably never will.

Even though I don't care for sports collectibles, I think every dealer should have at least one signed baseball bat on the wall of his display. And whenever he notices someone stealing from him or another dealer, he should break that bat on the thief's head. (I won't say where he should ram the handle afterwords, but you get the idea.) As customers, we pay higher prices because of these scams. So it's our business too, and we should all keep our eyes out for other people stealing. If they thought that every person in that room was watching and would speak up when they saw a crime, this sort of thing would happen much less. Unfortunately, I fear that the few times people are caught, the dealer just chases them away, since he's afraid to leave his table to chase them down or deal with the police (which allows the robber to continue his "work" on someone else). It would be great if these shows had some sort of security measures, undercover security or some cameras. I suppose that's wishful thinking, but providing our own "neighborhood watch" is something we all can do. (Some signs to that effect wouldn't hurt either.)

OK, this is not going to make anyone happy nor is it meant to solve the problem of stealing but..... As a promoter and co founder of the National, we spend around $50,000.00 in security at every show. I also ran the the Labor Day and Memorial Weekend shows in LA for 25 years with Gavin Riley and Steve Brunner and we have had our share of thefts. Much of the problem centers around the need to draw large crowds. These crowds also contain theives. We break down our security in two fashions, one is during the show hours and two is when the floor is empty at night. During the show hours we have roving security to watch the crowds and cameras in certain facilities that monitor as much as possible. With over 1000 display areas, it becomes impossible to see every dealer's booth and every person in the crowd. We look for suspecious acitivity of people "hanging back" and studing certain dealers. If one table has a crowd around it, it also attracts our attention to the back of the crowd to watch.

At night, we have 3 roving guards, usually off duty police, that stop anyone from entering the show. But.... we have to make concessions to cleaning the floor, grading companies have rights to continue working all night, etc. We create a walkway pattern for any approved persons, in the room, after closing. Anyone caught outside that walkway is stopped, ID'd, and if they belong to one of the grading companies or cleaners, they are warned once. After that, they are dismissed off the floor and searched. If we catch anyone on the floor that is not authorized, they are taken in by the local police as "breaking and entering". No exceptions.

The problem comes during close and opening of the show. When we open the show for dealers to come in, we see that many do not show for over another 45 minutes. We cannot watch 1000 exhibits with show dealers everywhere. When we close every night, same thing, and this is when we have problems. We get into arguments with dealers not leaving their booth to close up because they have more sales or want to do some work in the booth. We "sweep" the floor at 15 minutes after closing. This is 10 people walking side by side down each aisle and litterly "throwing" some dealers out of the show. It has gotten nasty. You would not believe the lack of cooperation that happens and we are doing it for the safety of the same dealers we are throwing out? Go figure.

Now comes the unpleasant part. I was there when the Levins were robbed. The 91 National had over 100,000 attendees and it was choas for 5 straight days. The one question I had for these unfortunate dealers was.." I can understand how you could not protect a ton of memorablila or publications, but how could you leave show cases full of rare cards that could easily be put into a briefcase (as all the other high end dealers do), and feel comfortable with leaving your table? The promoter that is mentioned was Jack Petrocelli, who died young of cancer five years ago. His "security" team consisted of 20 active police officers from Anaheim, Fullerton, and Placienta, California. Jack was a police officer who was decorated for the largest undercover drug bust in Californa, by Presiden Reagan. He also was in treatment for losing an infant to drowning after he was called to the scene and attempted 30 minutes of live saving techniques. I know these men, they would not turn crooked for a few show cases of baseball cards. Most of them had 100 million dollars of dope that they could have easily kept, when in the line of duty and that did not happen. They also testified, under oath, after the robbery.

Bottom line is this... If it is important to you and you have at least one show under your belt, you know not to leave anything really valuable. Most of the thefts that take place are from neighboring dealer table. How sad, but true. Bad dealers have the chance to watch their neighbors work and study what they can take. It is less common for a customer, although it does happen, to be able to take his time stealing good stuff when the show is open.

Anyway, this is what happens, like it or not. We are in the same boat as a shopping center that has over 500,000 sq ft to watch and cannot quarentee complete security.

For those that have suffered, I am sorry. We were robbed last year in Chicago in our lockup office and we lost cash that we had under lock and key. We were fortunate to have a camera at the door and caught the robber but this happens in our perfect world of collecting.

Mike