56th Philly Non-Sports Card Show

A big thanks to Jessica for asking me to write a bit about the “Philly Show.” The 56th Philly Non-Sports Card Show was held on April 21 & 22 at the Merchants Square Mall in Allentown, PA. This was probably one of the best (if not the best) Philly Shows that we’ve run since starting co-promotion of the show, and moving to Allentown, several years ago.

We had a number of activities going on throughout the weekend. Twin Galaxies, “Official Scoreboard for the Electronic Entertainment Industry”, were on-hand to officially premiere their brand new Video Game Trading Cards. Twin Galaxies’ Walter Day and Billy Mitchell were featured in the documentaries The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarter and Chasing Ghosts: Beyond The Arcade and both came to Allentown. On Sunday, we hosted Bench Warmer models Mary Riley and Billie Jo Powers and they were big draws. The girls had autograph cards to sign for fans free of charge and Bench Warmer gave us six promo cards to hand out to collectors.

Speaking of promo cards, there was an amazing amount of promo cards to be collected by fans. Upon entry, we gave away a dozen or so cards to collectors. At the show, attendees could obtain more cards from Rittenhouse Archives, Cryptozoic Entertainment, SideKick, Frank Eachus Publishing, Twin Galaxies, shopTopps.com, and several others. We seem to get more and more promo cards each time and each time, we find ourselves saying we’ll never top that next show!

The Philly Show would not be the Philly Show without the talented artists who exhibit each show. This time, we hosted Axebone, David Gross, Veronica O’Connell, Rhiannon Owens, Sean Pence, Elaine Perna, and Tony Perna. Most of the group were on-hand at last Spring’s show and have become best of friends. It was great to have them back. At our NSU Card Talk forum member gathering on Sunday morning, Axebone, Rhiannon, Elaine, and Tony spoke on our artists’ Q&A Panel. The panel can be seen here: http://youtu.be/f-pK2xtjEKE

The next Philly Non-Sports Card Show will be held on October 20-21 at the Merchants Square Mall in Allentown. And before that, we’ll host our brand new artist show called Pop Art Con on June 10 at the Hilton Garden Inn in Ft. Washington, PA (Philadelphia-area). More info about Pop Art Con can be found at popartcon.com.

-Harris Toser