Staff photo / Brandon Cantwell Jason Wilson, right, of Struthers, points out a football card to his son, Ryan, 8, in the display case of Hubbard-based Bomb City Sports Cards and Collectibles at the Cardhio Trading Card Show at the Metroplex Expo Center in Liberty Saturday afternoon.

LIBERTY — For Tim Patrick, memories and the desire to do some buying, selling and maybe some trading, brought him out to the Metroplex Expo Center.

“The Metroplex is an old venue that I used to come to when I was a kid for card shows, probably about 30 years ago — a little nostalgic coming back here for another card show,” said Patrick, a Boardman resident. “Used to be a lot of card shows at the Holiday Inn Metroplex. I met guys like Willie Stargell and Bob Feller and Kelly Holcomb here.”

“Happy to be out here, any day at a card show is a good day,” he added.

Patrick was just one of 460 attendees at the Cardhio Trading Card Show Saturday afternoon, an event that brought together all age ranges — from the longtime sports card collector to the youth looking to shore up their Pokemon card binders.

Ryan Simpson, Cardhio’s organizer, said he was inspired to put together the show after recognizing a lack of them in the Youngstown area.

The Southern Park Mall Sports Card & Pokemon Show, a three-day show hosted by the Pittsburgh Card Show group, returned weeks ago.

“There is only one right now, one other one in the area,” Simpson said. “Being as we do the toy show (Toyhio) three times a year, let’s take a swing and see if we hit a home run.”

Simpson said the toy show’s name familiarity helped draw in interest, explaining that the demographic for toys versus trading cards was a “lot different” — resulting in a need for engagement and networking.

Even with the hype around Pokemon reaching new heights in recent years, Simpson said he tried to balance things out as evenly as possible, meaning there was a 35-35 split among the vendors between sports cards and other trading cards.

Simpson said that while he encouraged vendors to make their own decisions regarding how they set up to secure their products, layered protection against theft was provided, noting not just the Metroplex’s security cameras, but his own people serving as “active security.”

“You’ll never be able to pick them out of the crowd, but I do have active security here to help a little bit with that,” Simpson said.

If organizers plan to move forward with a second, third or fourth show, Simpson said it would likely be on a two-year basis.

“Pittsburgh Card Show, what they’re doing is great — they’re all over the market, and it’s good for not only the vendors, but the collectors — the whole thing as a whole,” Simpson said.

Austen Rhodes of Salem, a Pokemon vendor, had four or five tables lined against the event hall’s back walls, all covered in sealed products, display cases and an opportunity for customers to play the game itself against him for prizes.

Rhodes, like other collectors, said his journey started as a kid, moving from Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! to sports cards as an adult, but returning to Pokemon after his daughter was born.

“She loves the cartoons, movies, we started going through everything and then we started collecting,” Rhodes said.

Rhodes admitted he didn’t realize things were so crazy since the pandemic, because most of the cards or sealed product he had wasn’t freshly purchased.

“When COVID hit and everything became unavailable for everyone, I started vending to try and see if we can help people to get stuff,” Rhodes said. “My first show, I priced everything at 80%, trying to be the good guy, and I didn’t know there was a market hike; by the time I got to my show, everything was 60% and my tables got bought out.”

For parents or grandparents trying to get Pokemon cards for their children or grandchildren but struggling to find sealed products at stores because of scalpers, Rhodes recommended coming to card shows and seeking out local shops.

“Nobody wants to stay up overnight to try to get a box. For Ascending Heroes, for example, I had to go to 20 different stores to get four different packs of the new set,” Rhodes said. “It was an eight-hour period of me driving all over Ohio yesterday. Go to your local card shops.”

Rhodes said it will cost more than other places, but being a consistent and regular customer typically results in them working with the customer and selling things cheaper because they don’t expect them to just scalp it themselves.

“That’s what everyone’s worried about right now, that you’re just trying to make a buck off of them,” Rhodes said.

Rhodes encouraged parents and children to be wary of fake cards, as many people don’t realize they have them.

“Be careful, have fun and make sure you keep in mind that, yeah, it’s for kids, but we’re all supposed to be kids at heart,” Rhodes said. “As long as you keep that mind and goal in play, everything else will work out.”