Day 1 of my first trip to the National Sports Collectors Convention is officially in the books!

Although the show didn’t officially open until 4:00 pm, we headed over at 10:00 am to register and pick up our VIP gift bags and parking passes. The bags were full of promotional materials/flyers/etc … but there were some cards in there as well. The Leaf VIP cards were random … I got a Messi & Floyd Mayweather, while Jen had Steph Curry in hers. Both bags had identical Upper Deck and Panini promo packs. I was partial to the UD packs, which contained MJ, Tiger, Gretzky, LeBron … and for some strange reason … Ben Simmons??? The Panini packs had recent NFL draft picks in their NFL uniforms. While we were registering, we ran into Eric Hecker and Jen got to meet him for the first time. She also recieved one of his awesome Random Act of Kindness packs. While we were talking, @MDRansom1 (Ransom Cards) walked by and we got to meet him as well.

Jen got to meet Eric Hecker and he gave her a #NationalRAK22

After registration, we went to lunch before coming back for the VIP party at 2:30. The party was basically a place to meet and greet, a buffet and free autographs from Ron Jawarski, Greg Luzinski & a HOF NHL goalie whom for the life of me I can’t remember right now. Tri Star was there and did do a helluva giveaway. Ten attendees won some amazing prizes (Payton Manning autographed full size helmelt, autographed Ken Griffey Jr, John Elway and Randy Moss Jerseys etc …) It was at this point that we got to enter the convention 30 minutes before it officially opened. I had hoped to use this to my advantage to get to the PSA on site grading booth to get my 2003 Lebron 1st edition RC graded, but by the time I got there, the line was already a mile long. So the plan is to get there before the doors open tomorrow morning and attempt that again.

some of the items included in the VIP gift bag

As for the show itself, it measured up to what everyone told me it would be. It’s truly hard to explain how many vendors are there, just unbelievable. Like a moth to a flame, Jen immediately saw a booth that had the most Game used NFL gear I’ve ever seen in one place, and it WAS ALL STEELERS. Steelers jerseys, pants, helmets, locker plates, cleats, balls. I didnt think I was going to get her out of there. After that we both found ourselves absolutely mesmerized by all the beautiful vintage we saw at booth after booth. We spent the better part of the afternoon just gawking at Jackie, Satch, Roberto Clemnte, Babe Ruth, T206 & Goudy cards. It was truly awe inspiring. The vintage stuff impacted me more than I thought it would, and I am 100% confident that I’ll be moving away from ultra modern and more towards vintage in the near future.

By the end of the day, I hadnt made any purchases, but have definitely identified some things that I’ll get before we leave, I just didn’t want to pull the trigger too early only to find something even more amazing later in week.

This was just too cool

People told me today would be overwhelming, and indeed it was to an extent. I can’t wait to go back tomorrow with a better plan of attack and get to spend a full day wandering and soaking it all in.