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The National features fresh new look, key changes under new promoters
Many car or cell phone GPS systems will soon plug in “I-X Center Cleveland,” or some variation thereof, as the 44th National Sports Collectors Convention rapidly approaches in the Ohio city July 24-28.
At the Chantilly (Va.) Show in June, SCD contributor Doug Koztoski chatted with Joe Drelich and Jim Ryan, two of the three members of JBJ Corporation, which will be promoting The National for the first time. Brian Coppola is the third member of the group.
We are about a month away from The National, how are things shaping up?
JD: Great. It’s full steam ahead, it’s 24/7 pretty much at this point.
Joe, you said a couple of months ago that this year’s National will have much more consistent Wi-Fi compared to Atlantic City in 2022 and better air conditioning than last year in Chicago. What are some other highlights and improvements that collectors can look forward to?
JD: Logistically, one of the big improvements that comes to mind for me is the repositioning of corporate [on the show floor] and the pavilions, rather than integrate them into the main floor. … The collector’s experience, the bulk of the floor, visually, is going to be cards and tables, which is what collectors want.
Corporate will be in its own section in two different areas of the building, as will the breaker’s pavilion and as will TRISTAR [for autograph guests]. Rather than being immersed where you have to navigate through, they are kind of separated. When we designed the floor plan that goal was to make sure the central focus was cards and collectors first.
What else will collectors notice that will be different at the 2024 National?
JD: Carpet (laughs). We’re excited about that. Ideally, we wanted to carpet the whole room, but with the way our show is and the actual movement that takes place on the floor, we were advised against it by the decorating company, really because it would potentially be a tripping issue. It’s almost impossible to keep the carpet down [flat] because there is so much movement.
So, we made sure there will be a lot of carpet in a lot of areas, so there will be a lot of relief for people [as opposed to walking all day on cement or concrete]. Even that little quarter of an inch makes a difference when you are walking around five, six, seven, eight, nine hours a day.
What other components to the event will be rolled out before the show?
JR: We’re having a dealer and corporate welcome party on Tuesday night. That’s going to start around 5 o’clock and it will go until about 8 o’clock. It’s just to welcome all the dealers and corporate people and say thank you for supporting the show. There will probably be a couple of athletes there walking around and talking with the guests.
We are also putting in a charity component this year. There will be three Cleveland-based charities. We will auction off 44 items, for the 44th National, and will have the auction running through Pristine that will run through the show and people can bid and help raise money that will be equally divided between different charities inside of Cleveland.
What particular items for the charity auction stand out?
JR: There are a couple of really good paintings that are being donated by a couple of artists that Joe has been working with.
JD: Yes, James Fiorentino did a huge piece that is a Cleveland tribute. It encompasses the city of Cleveland skyline, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and it has Jim Brown, Bob Feller, LeBron James, Tris Speaker, Jim Thome, Otto Graham and others. That’s anticipated to bring $15,000 or more.
Another artist named Murray Henderson did a beautiful super-sized version of LeBron James. It’s a painting of Lebron with sneakers around him and an actual sneaker is embedded into the painting. That’s a one-of-a-kind also and it’s expected to fetch between $10,000 and $20,000.
And we asked James Fiorentino if we could make a giclee of his Cleveland tribute painting as a more affordable option, so we are making 44 giclees that are all hand-signed by James that will be priced in the $300-$400 range. All of those sales, minus the cost of the giclees, goes to charity.
We also received various donations for the charity auction, including a 1948 Leaf Babe Ruth, which will be a highlight. I know there’s a Joe Namath rookie card. And we had some donations from Dave & Adam’s Card World; they gave us of a lot of current unopened hot wax. So it’s really going to be a nice mix of things that people will be able to openly bid on. And 100 percent of the proceeds go to the Cleveland-based charities.
JR: The three charities are The Greater Cleveland Food Bank, The Cleveland Sports Commission and The City Mission.
JD: So those are the three charities this year. That’s something that we all felt was important to do for whatever city we are in to make sure that The National, when they come in, the footprint that we leave behind, we take care of the cities as best we can as well, to say thank you. It’s definitely important to us, so we’re really excited by that piece of it. We’re looking to grow it for years to come.
JR: One other thing we did for something fun this year was we reached out to artist Dick Perez. We’re having a filming with him on Friday night. He will talk about his work, he will be signing some items. When we announced the filming and signing it sold out in about two hours. It has about 250 seats, but we might increase it to 300-350.
JD: We’re excited about that, too. Not only to honor Dick, but to do something unique that’s sport-related for after the show, so we are trying to bring in these little ideas that we’ve had and not take away from what we want the show to be, which is the greatest card show in the United States, in the world, for that matter. We want to maintain the integrity of that, but also take these little things like the charity piece and the Trade Night(s) and the Perez piece and kind of introduce those and see how they are received. We can then expand on them or continue them in different cities.
What are some of the details for the multiple trade nights?
JR: It’s going to be three nights—Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It will happen right after the show. It will start at 6 [p.m.] and run until about 11. It will be on the premises, in the lower ballroom at the I-X Center.
JD: Three nights with different themes. We are waiting to hear from the companies about the promos, but we will have more details soon. The Trade Night is kind of exciting because we brought together a lot of these groups, like Net54, ticket collectors, the wrestling collectors group, soccer guys, and others. We’re bringing them all in and introducing them to everybody.
In your estimation, who are the autograph guests that will spark the greatest interest for collectors at this year’s National?
JD: We do not oversee the autograph guests list per se, but I do know Chevy Chase got added, which is sort of cool, which is kind of a nice mix. He has some crossover with sports movies [Caddyshack]. Athlete-wise Barry Sanders is a really big name, and they are anticipating him being sold out.
JR: Baseball-wise Manny Ramirez is a big name that will be signing.
JD: Yes, Ramirez is a really good one from the collector side of things, because he does not sign very often. He is a little bit elusive for autograph collectors.
JR: I think currently it’s 140 to 150 some autograph guests currently booked.
What will be included with the promo bags?
JR: There are promo bags with all of the VIP tickets, there are packs of cards in every promo bag and other offerings. There will be pack redemptions that will be happening at the show inside the corporate area, as in the past, and all that is coming together now and will be finalized by the time the show comes around.
JD: A lot of that stuff from Topps and Panini, all of what they are doing with us is coming together within the next week or two. We know they are participating in giveaways and redemptions, the specifics haven’t been released to us yet.
How about food options?
JR: We’ve investigated many food options and there will be more food options than just hamburgers and hot dogs and pretzels. There will be some food trucks on the premises also. We did put a lot of time into planning better food for the customers.
JD: The building redesign is kind of genius the way they did it because the food court runs from the entrance of the show and goes all the way to the back, so it’s not like little pockets of it where you have to go find it. Guys who are in a far corner, for example, will have some food options near them. I think the food part will be a big upgrade from years past, not only selection, but amount.
Any other tidbits to share with the hobby?
JR: The magic questions we keep getting asked are: ‘How is Cleveland going to be? How is the show going to be? What’s the attendance going to be?’ We can say at this point that ticket sales are very strong and they are slightly ahead of Chicago [for the 2023 National], both regular and VIP tickets, and last year set the record attendance for the show. We think it’s going to be a great show.
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