Indoor Soccer at the National?

If you ever read my main sports autograph blog, you may know I attend the National Sports Collectors Convention almost every time it's in my home city of Cleveland. When it was first there in 1997, I was 13 years old and went for a single day.  In 2001, age 17, I had the VIP pass.  Ditto on 2004 at age 20. I missed the shows in 2007 and 2009 because the travel would have been too much, but then made my triumphant return in 2014.

This indoor project really began about a year after that last trip, mailing my first gigantic batch of requests out in September 2015.  So I haven't really had a major reason to go looking for MISL memorabilia at the show until now.

I know back when CheapWax4U was around I probably could have found some boxes of indoor cards there-- I mean I once found AFL cards there for chrissake, and I don't mean the 1960s American Football League or the currently-barely-alive Arena Football League, I mean AUSTRALIAN FREAKING FOOTBALL. 1995 Select, I believe, as they still had the Brisbane Bears, Fitzroy Lions, and Footscray Bulldogs.

I could probably also find boxes of 1992 Score Serie A from Italy because I bought an entire case of it on eBay a few years back for like $45 (2/3 of which was for shipping), and probably some 1991 and 1992 Pro Set English Premier League boxes, plus some of the newer Panini stuff. And I'm sure I could find boxes or complete sets of the Pacific sets somewhere among some junk wax dealer. But have any readers ever seen any indoor autographs, regional sets, or non-card memorabilia at a National?

Cleveland, of course, has hosted six times in the show's history. Chicago has had eleven dating back to 1983, eight of which are post-2000 and a ninth coming next year. Baltimore has had two. In fact of the twenty shows from 2001 to 2020, only the three Atlantic City shows and one Anaheim show were in a non-MISL city. While indoor soccer is certainly a smaller group of collectors than the four major sports, you can find nearly anything at the National, so I'd think and hope that maybe there would be something there.

The all-time top two scorers and fourth-winningest goalie in indoor soccer history live close by. Why not get them as autograph guests? Are people really that much more interested in Jim Stillwagon, Joe Charbonneau, Kevin Mack, and Rick Waits? I did email Tristar about it, with an offer to get them contact info; we'll see if I hear anything back.

Anyways, what are the chances I'll be able to fill some needs on my Autographed Set Want List at the show?  I know I'll find some baseball ones I need, possibly some hockey and football, but anything indoor? I'm going to have a very busy week there, as I'm planning on trying to hit at least ten baseball games before, during, and after the National (Birmingham, Lexington, and Charleston on the way up; Toledo, Columbus, Lake County, Cleveland, and Akron while we're there; Fort Wayne, Cedar Rapids, and Des Moines on the way back), plus looking around at all the tables for good deals, but a table with indoor soccer will attract my attention VERY quickly.

And the earlier I find it, the better: I might skip Sunday (the show's last day), and once in a while a local dealer might have some other items they didn't bring but can grab easily. That's what happened in 2014 when someone found out I'm a Cory Snyder collector, and had a game-used bat that he said he would bring the next day. He did, and it's now mine.

So if you've had any experiences (either good or bad) with indoor soccer collecting at the National, leave me a comment.