Sunday, July 21, 2024

Why Are the Nation's Biggest Comic and Card Shows the Same Weekend?

I was looking at the schedule for various conventions and noticed something that stuck me as odd. The biggest comic convention in North America is generally agreed upon as Comic-Con International/San Diego Comic-Con. The biggest card show around is the National Sports Card Convention--which includes lots of non-sport cards too despite the name so it covers a lot of popular culture. In 2024 CCI runs from July 25th-28th with a preview night on the 24th. The NSCC takes place the 24th-28th...also in July. The comic show is in San Diego and the card show is over in Cleaveland, Ohio. How did this happen?

I understand when smaller shows overlap. It isn't a big deal if two smaller comic/card/whatever shows were happening even a state apart, but the massive, famous shows? Why would that happen? Perhaps there isn't a ton of crossover between card collectors and comic-book fans, but there is enough that you'd want to appeal to as many people as possible for a huge convention. This hasn't even been discussed much, although I found a tweet from nine months ago where someone observed the upcoming scheduling conflict. I just hope there is nobody whom absolutely loves both shows and has to struggle to pick one or juggle a bunch of flights to visit both, somehow. I also wish that in the future the biggest shows make more of an effort not to overlap for the sake of everyone attending or writing about the news that comes out of them.

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