General Forum

I live in Massachusetts and feel furtunate that we still seem to have a reasonable number of collectors, card shops, weekend card shows and the like to make collecting possible and even social.  I was wondering about the experiences other follks have in different parts of the country.  Which area is the real "hot bed" for the hobby?  Thanks.

I just posted about this in the pricing thread . I am very lucky here in Pennsylvania , I have several shops , card shows , flea markets and auctions in less than an hour's drive . For me there is never a shortage of places to go to get cards on the weekends when the urge hits .

Thanks to this site everywhere is the best area! 

Iowa is not a hotbed we have 1 so so care shop in my town and not many shows. 

I wouldn't be surprised that you see a Northeast bias on this. The whole hobby was born here with the tabocco companies and then with Bowman and Topps in New York. As the country spread west so did the hobby. I know CA has a huge collector base. There is a large allotment of shows that I can chose from. Those shows have vintage galore and my take is that it's because of the older generation collector base here. Shops are a little harder to come by, but that is more indicitive the Hobby than of a particular area. Plenty of comic shops though..

With that said, a shout out to our neighors (no u, sorry all ;) ) to the north. I've seen a large amount of Canadian collector on here spread throughout the country.

It seems like Chicago to me. 

Here in the Hudson Valley we have a lot of collectors- at least 4 just on the Database within a 20 minute drive- but very little support. In the 90s it was different. We had card shows every week in one of the malls, or at least it felt like it. Have not had even a single one since 2002. We had a dozen card shops. One is left, but doesn't have a lot, mostly does paintball and board games. One of the others is still in buisness and has a wide selection of gaming cards- Pokeman and the like. But no traditional cards. 

Well it's pretty quiet in this area though now exactly a metropolis to begin with. If you wish to travel 3-4 hours you might just catch a shop or two but definitely not worth a Sunday drive if you know what I mean.

Well here in MS there's not much. The closest shop is 2 hours away. There are no shows like when I was a beginner (actually no shows at all anymore). This site has actually saved my collecting and trading. 

For good or bad, it seems the internet is the "hot bed" of card collecting.

Definitely not here in SC. There are no shops or shows that I have found in the 2 and half years i lived here. There may be something in Atlanta but don't want to drive the 2 and half hours to get there. When I lived in Pa There was 2 shows a month within driving distance and 1 shop

And in many ways, that is a shame.  I think we all miss our local card shops and the regular card shows.  Where I am located (across the lake from Rochester), it is 2 hours to a monthly show in Toronto and 3 hours to a monthly show in Ottawa.  Of course the National (Canada) is in Toronto once a year I believe.  There are a fair number of collectors / sellers in the local area within an hour but for the most part limited on what is available.  So yes, thankful for this site and in some ways the internet.