Autographs
Northeast Collectors Fest bringing new interactive, fan-friendly card show to Massachusetts
A new card show is coming to the South Shore of Massachusetts.
Being dubbed as a fan experience—similar to Fanatics Fest but on smaller scale—Northeast Collectors Fest promoters promise unique opportunities for show-goers when it runs its first event at the end of January 2026.
“I’m trying to make it more interactive and fan-friendly, not just a basic card show where you’re going to buy a card and leave,” co-show promoter Sean McElroy said.
“People want to be entertained. One of my things in looking at Fanatics Fest, it’s very entertaining. You see these athletes walking around tables, picking out their own cards, breaking with breakers, doing discussions. Later on down the line, once we’ve run a couple of these, I’d love to do a discussion with some of these athletes and build a stage and have them talk about their careers and talk about different stuff.”
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McElroy and business partner Fred Borelli have planned a family-friendly show. Northeast Collectors Fest will run Jan. 24-25 at the Wolves Den Sports Complex in Pembroke, Mass. Organizers are planning to have quarterly shows.
A 24,500-square foot show floor will accommodate 300-plus dealer tables, an autograph pavilion and plenty of interactive activities for collectors of all ages.
“We’re going to have a photo booth there where people can take their pictures and be put on a card or Wheaties box or something,” McElroy said. “We’re having a lounge area where I might try to get one of the autograph guests to go over there and play Madden Football, if they’re a football guy, or MLB The Show, if they’re a baseball guy, and play with a kid or adult for 15 minutes or so. The kids can hang out there and play video games.
“Hopefully, these types of things keep the people in the building longer. The longer you keep them in the building, the more likely they will spend money at the show.”
To make perusing dealer tables easier for collectors, the Northeast Collectors Fest will have designed areas for different kinds of cards.
“We’re going to have Pokémon dealers and we’re going to also have sports card dealers, but we’re going to separate them at the show,” Borelli said. “All the Pokémon people will be in like one section of the show and all the sports card people will be in another section of the show. We may even take the sports cards a little further and put the modern [collectors] in one section and then the vintage in another section.”
Lifelong residents of the South Shore of Massachusetts, McElroy and Borelli saw the need for a major card show in that region.
“The North Shore has always had a lot of shows, and they have a really good one, the Shiners Show. It’s an old legacy show, and it’s been around forever,” Borelli said. “We wanted to create something that may have a little different twist to it overall, but generally speaking, we’d like to have a show like that in the South Shore region. The South Shore region is surrounded by a lot of towns that are fairly affluent. It’s an exploding area of growth. And there was nothing steady [for card shows] like four times a year in this region. The other thing was because we’re in the South Shore, we believe that we can really serve the Cape Cod and islands community, Rhode Island, which is not very far.
“Our show is a regional show, so we have dealers coming in from Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, they’re coming from Maine and Vermont. They’re coming from all around the region. It just seemed to make sense to do that.”
Borelli started the Rockland Card Show in Rockland, Mass., a smaller, quarterly show, two-and-a-half years ago.
“There’s another show not too far, about a half hour away, down in Plymouth. But because Fred’s show is only about 35-40 tables and the show down in Plymouth is maybe 70-100, this area’s really lacking a big show,” McElroy said. “The area is densely populated and we feel like this area’s underrepresented. All the big Boston shows are north of here, an hour from here.”
JOINING FORCES
For over a decade, McElroy has been working behind the scenes with autograph guests at major card shows. He works at the National Sports Collectors Convention each year and the CSA show in Chantilly, Va. three times per year, as well as regional shows.
In addition to running the Rockland Card Show Borelli is also an online card dealer. With McElroy’s experience with autographs and Borelli’s knowledge of organizing a card show, the two promoters feel that is the perfect combination to run a new event.
The duo actually had some other ideas before the card show route popped up.
“Sean had talked to me at one time of possibly opening up a store, I kind of kicked that back and forth,” Borelli said. “Then when I was out laying fliers for the Rockland Card Show—I try to go to a lot of different places that I think a lot of families are going to be there, parents and children—I happened to stop into this one place where we’re running the show and I had heard about it but I hadn’t been in it before, and one thing led to another and I thought this would be a great place to have a big show, like a two-day show, a 300-table show. So, I reached out to Sean. And Sean’s background, he’s kind of on the autograph side of the world and I’m on the sports card dealer side of the world, so it just made sense for the two of us to combine forces to put a show like this together.”
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McElroy and Borelli strategically named their show a collectors fest, allowing them the flexibility to expand their model down the road.
“We called it a collectors [because] we wanted to ultimately bring in other collectibles into the show—cards will always be the biggest section—but we have a comic book dealer coming to set up, things like that,” Borelli said. “Comics, maybe a little coins, maybe vintage toys, things of that nature. We designed it so if we wanted to expand the model out, we could expand it out.
“But it will always be primarily a card show, because that’s our background. That’s where we come from.”
The co-promoters have lined up a solid autograph list. A large number of cast members from the “Mighty Ducks” movies will be on hand to sign on the first day of the show. Other signers include Boston Red Sox pitcher Garrett Whitlock, former Red Sox pitcher Frank Viola, former Boston Celtics guard Gerald Henderson, and New England Patriots defensive tackle Christian Barmore.
ON-SITE ACTIVITIES
One unique aspect for the Northeast Collectors Fest is there will be a raffle to win a $5,000 item that is yet to be announced.
“I’m not aware of anybody that’s ever done anything like that, I could be wrong,” Borelli said.
Raffle tickets are $5 apiece. They can be purchased at the show or pre-ordered at northeastcollectorsfest.com. The winning ticket will be pulled on Jan. 25 at 3 p.m. The winner doesn’t need to be present.
Also included at the show will be demonstrations on learning how to play rugby. A number of members of the New England Free Jacks—which is one of 11 professional rugby teams in Major League Rugby—will teach kids the ins and outs of the sport.
“This is good for the people that are coming to the show for entertainment purposes,” McElroy said. “Not everybody goes to a show and is going to buy something. They may only have 20 bucks to their name, so you want to make them happy. You don’t want them to just walk in the door, look at tables and go, ‘OK, I’m just going to buy this one card because I have $20.’ You want them to come in the door and go, ‘Oh, there’s other things I can do here, even if I don’t have the money to spend on a card.’ [A ticket] also includes our autograph pavilion for people that may want to meet an athlete.”
General admission tickets are $8 on the show’s website or at ontreasure.com. VIP tickets are $15. Free parking will also be available in lots near the Wolves Den Sports Complex.
The show is still accepting dealers who would like to set up. Eight-foot tables are sold out, but 6-footers are available. For more information, check out the show’s website, Facebook page at Northeast Collectors Fest and Instagram @northeast_collectors_fest.
Questions can be directed to McElroy at 508-269-1293 or Borelli at 617-462-8899.
