Earlier today, I attended the second day of Collect-A-Con Las Vegas. As you can probably tell by the name, Collect-A-Con is a convention dedicated to collectibles, primarily trading cards and anime products. Those who know me well will probably be surprised that I decided to go to a convention like this, considering that I don’t really collect anything and I actually don’t even like having too many physical possessions, especially things that don’t serve some kind of practical or utilitarian purpose.
The closest I got to being a collector was buying singles of every different Absol Pokémon card in every rarity, variant, and language I could find. I started doing that in 2018 and it lasted a little while before I lost interest. Nowadays, I only revisit it once every couple of years to see if there are any easy gaps in my collection to fill in from recent releases.
This may sound ironic or counterproductive, but… the fact that I am not a collector is actually the precise reason why I decided to go to this convention. I’ve been to a lot of conventions, but I noticed that they were mostly just the same ones over and over again. For example, I got sick of going to PAX twice a year, every year, and basically seeing the exact same thing time after time. Upon this realization, I decided that I will no longer go to PAX anymore unless I am invited to be a speaker or something, and I will generally avoid conventions that are just repeats of ones I’ve been to in the past. Instead, I want to check out conventions, events, and shows that are different from what I’m used to.
Collect-A-Con is still pretty related to video games, so it wasn’t that new to me. Also, my friend Erin Song, who runs the AgentDMG collectibles brand and consignment company with her husband, was also attending Collect-A-Con Las Vegas, so it wasn’t like I was going into it completely alone and blind. Regardless, it was still an adventurous step into new territory for me.
Upon arriving at the Las Vegas Convention Center, I picked up my wristband and headed into the hall. My first impression of it was that the convention didn’t really seem like a convention. Instead, it felt like a really big farmers’ market, but for cardboard instead of food.
When I think of a convention, I imagine a gathering of a broad variety of industry-specific professionals and enthusiasts who are all coming together to contribute their own little piece of the industry. For example, I expect to see companies premiering new flagship additions to their product lines, start-up companies seeking investment or capital, innovators showing off the latest technology and other developments, sponsors and advertisers selling goods, presenters and speakers sharing knowledge, students seeking to build a network for future employment, and entertainers providing color and flavor to the event, among others. However, when I walked into Collect-A-Con, an overwhelming majority of the booths were just people who were buying and selling trading cards.
With that being said, there were still a few booths that were unique and distinct. For example, I especially liked the ones that had custom-made art and other goods based on the intellectual property of their favorite franchises (and I will conveniently ignore the fact that they most likely did not get a proper license to do so, because it’s nice to see people’s passion projects). I also liked the live music.
Within several minutes of my arrival, I noticed some music coming from the far rear of the convention hall. I slowly made my way through the crowd and to the stage in the back, at which point I discovered that it was Jason Paige singing. I recognized him as the person who sang the original Pokémon theme song for the cartoons. He was performing a small set of Pokémon and Pokémon-related songs, and he closed his show with the main theme song that I (and probably many other people) know him for.
This was overwhelmingly my favorite part of the show. I’m someone who watched Pokémon as a kid, and when I do live stream broadcasts on my Twitch channel and take song requests, I often get asked to play the Pokémon theme song. Thus, it was quite exciting to see it being performed live in front of me as a surprise by the vocalist who originally sang it. Apparently Jason Paige is one of the recurring headliners of Collect-A-Con and does a small set every time, but because this was my first time at this convention, it was my first time seeing Jason Paige, and it was a great experience.
What made this extra funny is that Jason Paige is apparently a particularly controversial figure among the card collector community. Specifically, he was recently accused of “scamming” a child during a trade-up challenge. I was curious and did some research into it, and I found out that the accusation was made by some random guy named Bryan Kuznitz from “Boosters and Bangers Collectibles” who did a combination of making up fake facts and leaving out important context to try and make Jason Paige look bad. I didn’t look for it myself to confirm because I’m not interested in scrolling through Bryan’s social media profiles, but he allegedly posted a follow-up video apologizing for misleading the community, which is an implied admission of guilt.
With that being said, apparently there are a lot of people who just don’t like Jason Paige—in general, and unrelated to this false scamming accusation incident—which is fine. This was evident by the confused reactions I got when people would ask me what I liked most about the convention, and I answered that my favorite part was Jason Paige singing the Pokémon theme song. I don’t know Jason personally and did not even go to his meet-and-greet or autograph session afterwards. However, I can say for sure that I thoroughly enjoyed the three minutes during which he sang the Pokémon song, and I thought it was fantastic.
My overall assessment of Collect-A-Con is that I am glad I went once to see what it’s like, but I most likely would not attend again in the future. I think this is heavily catered towards people who like actually buying and selling physical collectibles, and the amount of activities to do outside of that is very limited. I’d be willing to tag along with some friends again if they wanted to go to the Las Vegas stop of the Collect-A-Con tour circuit and I didn’t have to travel anywhere for it, but that would mainly be just to spend time together with friends, rather than for the convention itself.
Of course, I took a lot of pictures at the convention. I didn’t really have a structured plan for my photography; basically, whenever I saw something that looked remotely interesting, I snapped a shot. Here is a random collection of photos I took of random things around me, with no particular meaning or significance in their selection or order:
