Sports Memorabilia Dealers
Historic National Sports Collectors Convention draws record crowd in promoter John Broggi’s swan song
ROSEMONT, Ill. – The show floor stretching 600,000 square feet was jam-packed.
Collectors were elbow to elbow at some dealer booths, checking out the impressive eye candy.
Corporate sponsors went all out on their displays, and show attendees loved the view.
The 43rd 2023 National Sports Collectors Convention (NSCC) was historic in its approach and delivery.
It also set an all-time high for attendance, eclipsing 100,000 to move past the highly-decorated 1991 show in Anaheim.
The Donald E. Stephens Convention Center was the place to be for collectors from all over the country.
“We averaged much more than 20,000 a day,” NSCC show manager John Broggi said. “[Sunday] was a little bit lighter, but the other four days made up for that, and it’s got to be the largest sports collectibles convention ever.”
The NSCC doesn’t release specific attendance figures. However, Broggi — who was in his 17th and final year running the show — was at the ’91 National and can compare the two shows. One big difference is back 32 years ago, the event lasted four days. In the 21st Century, the show has a fifth day.
“I know they got closed down, but they didn’t have nearly the size convention center that we filled up with people and just kept bringing them in,” Broggi said. “My late partner Mike Berkus was involved in Anaheim and I don’t want to step on his toes, but we had to be at least that large, if not larger.”
Longtime collector and hobbyists Rich Klein also attended the ’91 show and said this year’s event ranks right up there.
“It’s probably going to have more people and it’s going to be a record, but there’s more room in this building,” Klein said. “At the ’91 National trade night, I was afraid for my life. I literally was. We left the trade show Tuesday night and we went to a little cafeteria and we hung out there until we thought the danger had passed. I did not feel like I was in danger at this show.”
Heritage Auctions Executive Vice President of Sports Joe Orlando attended the ’91 show as a collector.
“The energy I think is higher here,” Orlando said. “As crazy as the 1991 National was, there’s a different kind of energy here. I think the sheer volume of young people here, it’s so noticeable and different compared to the last two, three, four Nationals. I think, to me, that is what separates this National really from any I’ve been to.”
“It’s been fantastic,” said Robert Sciulli, manager of Marty’s Sports Cards and Cranks Sports Trading Gallery in Tennessee. “I’ve been going to The National since the late ’80s and to me this has honestly been the best one. … Friendly crowd, everyone happy to make deals, wheeling-and-dealing, we’ve sold a lot. Across the board, it’s really been great.”
Collectors, dealers and corporate sponsors were all in awe of the massive crowds.
Entrepreneur and sports cards enthusiast/influencer Gary Vaynerchuk — aka Gary Vee — was thrilled with the amount of folks flooding the convention center and his booth at VeeFriends.
“I felt great about it this year,” Vaynerchuk said. “I felt really solid. I’m happy for the hobby.”
“I’ve never seen the crowd as large and as enthusiastic,” NSCC Board of Directors President Al Durso said. “Everyone I’ve talked to has had a tremendous show.”
“They just keep coming in,” said Rick Giddings of Gizmo’s Sportscards. “There’s more people than I’ve ever seen. The hobby looks pretty strong.”
“It was a huge, huge crowd and a lot of really good customers that we do business with showed up, and that’s the best for us,” said Kevin Savage of Kevin Savage Cards. “We bought a lot of things that came in and a lot of people were at our booth all the time, and you really couldn’t ask for anything more. It was really good.”
“It’s been the biggest show I have ever done,” longtime dealer Les Wolff said. “With that third room, that massive room, I have seen a lot of different people and more people than I ever have.”
Kit Young of Kit Young Cards has set up at 41 of the 43 Nationals. He was blown away by this year’s show, registering sales over two times his record number from past Nationals.
“This is by far the biggest National,” Young said. “The energy in the room is fantastic. Spending is ridiculous, which surprised me. If you’re careful on your pricing, which we are and we always are, the demand is terrific.
“We did not know what to expect for this National. A lot of dealers were talking, wondering if there had been too much softening in prices and in less demand. We knew that the market for vintage is strong and it showed here.”
This year's show featured an additional 100,000 square feet, giving the show floor a different look and feel.
“Obviously, the additional 100,000 square fit gives it an even bigger feel,” said Tim Virgilio, founder of Signatures for Soldiers, the events official charity. “I feels enormous, almost Grand Canyon size. The foot traffic has been amazing. From the time you show up until the time you leave, there is just a buzz that is very different.”
With the packed crowd, some issues are always going to arise. One problem, especially noticeable the first two days of the show, was the convention center’s air conditioning, which struggled to cool the massive building and enormous crowd.
“I believe in the 21st Century we should have luxuries like air conditioning and things like that in the corporate section,” said David Prince, owner of Piece of the Game. “All of us companies are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to display here, and you’ve got to feel comfortable. And I hate to harp on it, but there were many customers here on Wednesday night, Thursday and Friday who were very uncomfortable and borderline health risk. It can’t happen. It can’t happen with what we’re trying to do with the hobby.”
According to Broggi, the air conditioning was running on full blast the entire show — there weren’t any changes to the settings to make the mammoth show floor feel cooler in the later days of the convention.
“The difference was the humidity in Chicago was 90 percent and the temperature was over 90 and with that combination together, it’s going to be very, very difficult to cool down the building,” Broggi said. “The other thing was that there were a lot of doors being opened and letting people in and all that type of stuff, so the building helped us by signs saying ‘These are not exit doors. Don’t go out them.’ We had more guards wandering the perimeter of the building to make sure that those doors stayed closed, and the heat went down a little bit.”
There are obstacles at every show and Broggi and his partner Dan Berkus overcame big hurdles each morning during the event.
“We knew we had a challenge because in spite of having run this show in this building many times, we’d never used the entire ground floor, the entire 600,000 square feet,” Broggi said. “Our biggest concern was the show opens at 10 o’clock, people who get in at 10 o’clock were here at 7:30-8 o’clock in the morning. What do you do with them? You can’t keep them in the lobby, it gets just too crowded, too congested and people can’t move.
“Our team went out here a couple of times during the year and we found out that upstairs there’s a hall that we could use with an escalator up, a big empty floor we could use, and then an escalator down on the side.”
BROGGI’S SWAN SONG
A steady crowd inhabited the convention center. Broggi believes Friday was the largest day, logging about 10 percent more attendees than the previous day.
To break the record in his final year as show promoter was special for Broggi.
“We’re very pleased,” he said. “Our team has done this show for a whole bunch of years and everybody wanted to go out on a high and I think we’ve done that. We’ve run as smooth a show as we can with the number of people that we’ve had to get into the building and the number of dealers we have in the building and the number of corporates we have in the building. We’re just happy that we’ve been able to put together what we think was probably the best and biggest show ever.”
Was it a little bittersweet because it was his final show?
“I thought it was going to be, but, no, I’m happy to go out like this on top,” Broggi said. “If I were asked to run another show, I’d do that. I’d take another challenge on. But I wouldn’t do it unless my whole team were to come with me.”
NSCC: Show manager John Broggi has guided The National to record crowds, biggest events in show history
Broggi and Berkus run SMI LLC and their contract with The National will expire on Oct. 31 of this year. At that point, JBJ Corporation — which is run by card/memorabilia dealers Joe Drelich, Brian Coppola and Jim Ryan — will take over as show promoters.
The three dealers and promoters were selected by the NSCC Board of Directors in October 2021 to run the show beginning next year. They roamed the floor talking to dealers throughout the week, but declined to discuss the future of the event.
Broggi won’t be retiring from the hobby, not by a long shot. He signed up for a dealer booth for next year’s show in Cleveland with his son and grandson. Broggi, who attended his first National in 1984, hasn’t set up a booth at the big show since ’96.
He will assist the new show promoters in getting acclimated to the job.
“I’m open to seeing whatever they want to do,” Broggi said. “We’ll provide whatever support we can in terms of providing them information that we have about running The National, but they are competitors. If we want to run the show again in a couple years, I wouldn’t be averse to doing that.”
Dealers and corporate folks are grateful for the job Broggi and Berkus have done for the show during their tenure.
“The Broggi family and the Berkus family could have mailed it in,” Klein said. “This is one heckuva swan song.”
— Greg Bates is a freelance contributor and editor-at-large for Sports Collectors Digest. He can be reached at gregabates@gmail.com. SCD editor Jeff Owens also contributed to this story.
