BrownBullhead
Verified Trader,
My "newbie" experience with Sport Card Expo is over, and I have mixed feelings on my experience. Please allow me to ramble on, and I'll get to a show-and-tell of the (very) few cards I managed to acquire.
I had bought the Bronze VIP 4-Day Pass with the early bird discount, as I had family plans during my trip to Ontario, and I didn't know what days I would make it to Expo. I ended up attending 11am to 8pm on the Friday, and about two hours on the Sunday before going to YYZ airport. In retrospect, I should have stuck to buying daily passes on demand. I skipped the Saturday as I wasn't feeling 100% well, and I had also heard that the seam of humanity on the Saturday can make it tough to enjoy the show.
For someone who had never been to that venue, the overall lack of directional signage on the parking lots left alot to be desired, and zero wayfinding signage to alert one that parking near alternate doors such as "Entrance #5 (Aviation Ballroom)" would result in a very long walk to queue for the actual entry lines near Entrance #3. If the organizers are reading this, I think it would help if ALL entrances were converted to actual entry points.
Starting off my Expo experience, there was a continuous rainfall for the 45+ minutes I queued to enter, which I had failed to plan for. However, a good thing did come out of this, as the person in line behind me (of which I declined his offer to share an umbrella) turned out to be none other than Hobby Insider member @Chillychow and we spent virtually all of our time in line talking hobby and life. Seems like the kind of guy you could have coffee and talk hobby with all day!
I finally made it inside and got my wristband. Given my narrow focus of p.c. collecting, a couple people on Hobby Insider forewarned me that I may not get the most out of Expo - and in hindsight, I believe they were correct! From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., I dug through many dozens (hundreds) of binders and monster boxes and saw *ONE* ITG Action single, and I already had it! FIVE HOURS, and nothing to show for it. But then, things looked up a bit. 
One of my hobby friends from social media, Dave Bansraj Jr., texted me to let met know he was in the building. We had never met in-person before, so that was a pretty cool thing. Also ended up meeting @Shackamaxon in a out-of-the-blue way, and he directed me to @gamebreakers booth, where I FINALLY found some cards I wanted!
Also ended up connecting with Eli Rosu, who gave me two FREE Cards! Fun store here - he tried to mail these to me months ago... I had forgotten about them and so did he, until they were recently returned-to-sender to him! Thank you for your follow-up! Great cards for my collections.
Bought some cards from Marc at "Big Pete" booth - Marc and I also did a deal for a true 1/1 Kovalchuk from ITG Action a while back but I didn't have the $$$ at the time and he moved the card elsewhere - my bad.
I did score a sweet 17/25 SSP of @gomaz which will be shown further below! Mr. Jeremy Lee himself was there and well, yeah that's how I came to score that freebie.
A rather unexpected and "fun" purchase was three packages of literal meat sticks, which will be shown below - picked those up on the Sunday. Bought three more random singles from Gamebreakers before leaving for the airport - nothing p.c. but just spend some money just because.
In conclusion, I don't think I'll rush to go back to Expo in 2026. My (current) super narrow scope of p.c. collecting only ended up with me acquiring 11 cards (well, 10 - more on that below) on the Friday and nothing on the Sunday. I had a printed want list "poster" showing sample cards from my three ITG p.c. - many dealers who I asked would give it a 3-4 second glance and tell me they didn't do ITG, or they didn't have anything "that old". To those who did take a copy and will get back to me when they are home - I am excited to hear from them in the weeks and months ahead!
OK, stop talking @BrownBullhead - show them the cards.
4 cards from @gamebreakers booth - $50 CAD for these monster box finds ($15 Luongo, $20 Lidstrom; other 2 for $15):
2 cards gifted to me from Eli Rosu - thank you, good sir:
3 cards from Marc at "Big Pete" booth - $70 CAD spent here ($25 CAD (each) for the Sundin and $20 CAD for the Gilmour):
1 card from a "Jeff" at a random booth - turns out I was texting with him about this card months ago! - $20 for this quad:
1 card from Clouts-And-Chara - technically an eBay purchase but they held off on shipping and we got it done at Expo
1 card - MY SSP From @gomaz - no cost to me!
3 cards that were my Sunday impulse purchase from @gamebreakers - $20 for all 3
And $40 worth of cured meats - a completely unexpected find at Expo! Apparently, they have been a seller every year except once!
I had bought the Bronze VIP 4-Day Pass with the early bird discount, as I had family plans during my trip to Ontario, and I didn't know what days I would make it to Expo. I ended up attending 11am to 8pm on the Friday, and about two hours on the Sunday before going to YYZ airport. In retrospect, I should have stuck to buying daily passes on demand. I skipped the Saturday as I wasn't feeling 100% well, and I had also heard that the seam of humanity on the Saturday can make it tough to enjoy the show.
For someone who had never been to that venue, the overall lack of directional signage on the parking lots left alot to be desired, and zero wayfinding signage to alert one that parking near alternate doors such as "Entrance #5 (Aviation Ballroom)" would result in a very long walk to queue for the actual entry lines near Entrance #3. If the organizers are reading this, I think it would help if ALL entrances were converted to actual entry points.
Starting off my Expo experience, there was a continuous rainfall for the 45+ minutes I queued to enter, which I had failed to plan for. However, a good thing did come out of this, as the person in line behind me (of which I declined his offer to share an umbrella) turned out to be none other than Hobby Insider member @Chillychow and we spent virtually all of our time in line talking hobby and life. Seems like the kind of guy you could have coffee and talk hobby with all day!
I finally made it inside and got my wristband. Given my narrow focus of p.c. collecting, a couple people on Hobby Insider forewarned me that I may not get the most out of Expo - and in hindsight, I believe they were correct!
From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., I dug through many dozens (hundreds) of binders and monster boxes and saw *ONE* ITG Action single, and I already had it! FIVE HOURS, and nothing to show for it. But then, things looked up a bit. One of my hobby friends from social media, Dave Bansraj Jr., texted me to let met know he was in the building. We had never met in-person before, so that was a pretty cool thing. Also ended up meeting @Shackamaxon in a out-of-the-blue way, and he directed me to @gamebreakers booth, where I FINALLY found some cards I wanted!
Also ended up connecting with Eli Rosu, who gave me two FREE Cards! Fun store here - he tried to mail these to me months ago... I had forgotten about them and so did he, until they were recently returned-to-sender to him! Thank you for your follow-up! Great cards for my collections.
Bought some cards from Marc at "Big Pete" booth - Marc and I also did a deal for a true 1/1 Kovalchuk from ITG Action a while back but I didn't have the $$$ at the time and he moved the card elsewhere - my bad.
I did score a sweet 17/25 SSP of @gomaz which will be shown further below! Mr. Jeremy Lee himself was there and well, yeah that's how I came to score that freebie.
A rather unexpected and "fun" purchase was three packages of literal meat sticks, which will be shown below - picked those up on the Sunday. Bought three more random singles from Gamebreakers before leaving for the airport - nothing p.c. but just spend some money just because.
In conclusion, I don't think I'll rush to go back to Expo in 2026. My (current) super narrow scope of p.c. collecting only ended up with me acquiring 11 cards (well, 10 - more on that below) on the Friday and nothing on the Sunday. I had a printed want list "poster" showing sample cards from my three ITG p.c. - many dealers who I asked would give it a 3-4 second glance and tell me they didn't do ITG, or they didn't have anything "that old". To those who did take a copy and will get back to me when they are home - I am excited to hear from them in the weeks and months ahead!
OK, stop talking @BrownBullhead - show them the cards.
4 cards from @gamebreakers booth - $50 CAD for these monster box finds ($15 Luongo, $20 Lidstrom; other 2 for $15):
2 cards gifted to me from Eli Rosu - thank you, good sir:
3 cards from Marc at "Big Pete" booth - $70 CAD spent here ($25 CAD (each) for the Sundin and $20 CAD for the Gilmour):
1 card from a "Jeff" at a random booth - turns out I was texting with him about this card months ago! - $20 for this quad:
1 card from Clouts-And-Chara - technically an eBay purchase but they held off on shipping and we got it done at Expo
1 card - MY SSP From @gomaz - no cost to me!
3 cards that were my Sunday impulse purchase from @gamebreakers - $20 for all 3
And $40 worth of cured meats - a completely unexpected find at Expo! Apparently, they have been a seller every year except once!
