I’ve been a collector of baseball cards since I piled up a bunch of random ones scattered in my childhood toy box.

That was around 1990 or so. The cards had worn, corners rounded, and only good to see the front picture and back stats. When I started playing youth baseball in Rock Falls as a child, the two interests connected, and my baseball card collection grew. More than 30 years later, I am still collecting.

One of my occasional stops to find more baseball cards is the monthly card show in Madison, Wisconsin. It’s one of the largest monthly shows in the Midwest. The show alternates on the final Saturday of the month between the Alliant Energy Center arena and the nearby Madison Marriott South hotel – both are accessible from either the John Nolen Drive or Rimrock Road exits on Madison’s U.S. 12-14-18-151 Beltway.

The show’s banner has even grown to include a Pokémon show six months a year when it is at the Marriott.

The show, founded by collectors Beau Thompson and Johnny Lee, has grown from a small gathering of card enthusiasts in April 2021, with just 17 tables, into a major regional collecting destination. The COVID pandemic was a boom in the hobby, and I remember wearing a mask at one of its first shows. As vendor demand increased, the show expanded. In June 2025, it moved its larger events to the Alliant Energy Center’s Exhibition Hall, at first accommodating approximately 250 tables. This July’s event (2026) reached around 275 tables, nearly doubling the capacity of earlier hotel shows and is the largest show to date. Even at the nearby hotel, the show now takes up two convention rooms.

Visitors can browse all kinds of cards, vintage collections, modern releases, graded cards, trading-card games, memorabilia and collecting supplies. There were even some packaged food items from other countries at the most recent show I attended. Dealers also provide opportunities to buy, sell and trade. Special appearances, including professional grading-service representatives such as PSA, have added further appeal.

Thompson now solely runs the show. It’s grown to have tables manned by collectors nationwide, and offers more than just the simply buying and selling.

“The growth has been amazing,” Thompson said. “When johnny and I started the show my goal was to reach 40 tables. I never in my wildest dreams would have thought it could grow to what it has become including PSA flying a team from California to man a booth and at one time being the sixth most-Googled card show in America.”

Thompson sees the show’s growth as a product of timing as much as the collecting community itself. The early events arrived when the pandemic and the state of the card market had limited opportunities for collectors to gather, giving Madison a chance to become a regular destination as interest returned.

What began as a modest gathering has since become a regional fixture, drawing vendors and collectors from across the country.

“I don’t think the show itself is very unique from many other shows of similar size, but moreso it’s become a must-attend show for the region,” Thompson said. “Timing is everything and it began during a time when there were not many shows due to the state of the card market at the time as well as COVID – as our first show required masking, sanitary stations, a maximum amount of people in the room and social distancing.”

The first Pokemon show was in April of 2025, and that has added to the event’s prestige.

“Pokemon has really driven the card show scene over the last 18 months to 2 years and holding one of the first Pokemon-only shows in the Midwest really helped grow that segment of the show,” Thompson said.

I recently attended the August 2026 show at the Marriott. I missed the largest show by one month. I just wanted to pick through boxes and see what piqued my interest. I consider it therapeutic. I needed that then.

***Click HERE to view my Flickr photo album from my visit***

I went in kind of blind, just wanting to see what appeals to me. I pulled up my Want List on my phone, to see if any of those could be found (the Want List is of cards that aren’t in the mainstream). The Want List was on one phone browser, Beckett’s online card index was on another, which helps me in identifying rookie cards, or anything else I am seeking further assistance on. I started on the ground floor, which had a lot of non-sports. I did find a dealer with a box of sports cards for 10 cents per. I wound up getting $1 worth of 1992-93 Conlon baseball cards, which were of baseball players from pre-World War II – including cards of players that I did not have.

One of the first baseball cards that I bought was a 1975 Topps card of George Scott. Scott, a 1970s Brewers great, was known for his power and his unique necklace of “second basemen’s teeth” (not really). The 1975 card had this necklace shown, and that was missing from my George Scotts. Yes, the card is beat up, but I like what’s on the cards – that creates more of a conversation piece than sharp corners ever will.

At two tables, I bought 1971 Topps cards of Yankees backup catcher Frank Tepedino. He had a light baseball career, but later in his life, he was a 9/11 first responder. I buy such cards to help tell these interesting facts, and perhaps sell some in the future. My knowledge of baseball cards gets me by socially, especially at these shows with vintage collectors. I can mention Tepedino’s link to 9/11, or show dealers something unique about a card I find that they’re selling. Some dealers are interested, some not so much.

There were two tables close to one another that sent me in a 1990s time warp. The 1990s were a pivotal decade for cards: they began with the ugly yellow 1991 Fleers and eventually progressed into autographs and “piece of history” inserts. I began collecting cards in the mid-1990s, and seeing those (gasp!) 30-year-old cards again brought me down Memory Lane (as seen at the top of this page). Among those were a 1995 Zenith rookie card of Hideo Nomo written in Japanese. I already had the American version. For some strange reason, I think Nomos are going to do something in the future, price-wise. (Remember, he beget Shohei Ohtani.)

One of my unique side collections is of rookie cards that were hot one year, but crashed not long after and are considered average. Rookie cards of Adam Dunn, Miguel Tejada, Juan Encarnacion and Carlos Lee were among these finds on this occasion. Those cards bring back memories, but odd ones. When those rookie cards were hot, I was a young kid who couldn’t afford them. I have them now, even if their values have stagnated. In shows past, I also have picked up such “hot-then-not” rookie cards of players such as Travis Lee, Rick Asadoorian and Rocco Baldelli (before he became a Twins manager). All of these kinds of cards appeared at or toward the top of the Beckett monthly price guide “hot lists.”

The show has given me a chance to reconnect with my past through seeing those kinds of cards, and I can only imagine that it does the same to others who appear. While I’m not one of those collectors who come in with nuclear football-like cases or backpacks of cards, I enjoy quietly rummaging through and have fun to get the most out of my visit.

There are many card shows out there. I’ve frequented ones in Orland Park, Rockford and the Quad Cities. This one has a personal connection to it, as Beau is a friend of mine. We first connected while working with the Illinois High School Glory Days website in 2005. Only after our shared interest in high school sports, and high school sports history, did we know of our shared interest in baseball cards. I came to appreciate his interest in Cubs rookies of the days growing up such as Ty Griffin, Earl Cunningham and Jerome Walton. Walton, most people may know. The other two, not so much.

Some time when I was in high school, I found an autographed Ty Griffin card at a rummage sale in town. I bought it just because it was an autograph. It was with ballpoint pen. I came to realize that it might have been signed when Griffin was on the Peoria Chiefs. Only years later did I learn of Beau’s interest in Griffin, and I knew he’d want the card more than I did – so I sold it to him. Several years after that, I wrote a story about a national card dealer, Gizmo’s Sportscards of Davis Junction, and during that interview, “Gizmo” showed me some blank-front 1989 Bowman cards. One of them was of Griffin (his stats are on the back), and I mentioned to Gizmo “my” interest in it; he just gave me the card; Beau now has it.

Beau’s hobby interests don’t just end with the monthly Madison shows. He once went on a mission to collect 1 million Cubs baseball cards, which he finally reached in 2024, 7 years after he started. Topps even made a custom card of him and his feat. One Million Cubs is the name of his eBay hobby store.

We are two different collectors. He’s on top of everything about the hobby. I simply have my own particular way of collecting that isn’t all that “mainstream.” Remember, there is no one way to collect. I have chronicled my own baseball card experiences on this website, and they are linked HERE.

Just 2 1/2 hours away from where I live, I have enjoyed each of my trips to Madison for the cards. Madison itself is a neat city. It’s one of the fastest-growing towns of the Midwest, too, so there’s much to be positive about.

Remaining 2026 shows (as of this post) are, as it turns out, being held in close proximity to holidays: Oct. 31 at Madison Marriott South, Nov. 28 at Alliant Energy Center, and Dec. 26 at Alliant. The last Pokemon show of the year is Nov. 1 at the Marriott.

Find Madison Card Show on Facebook or X, or go to madisoncardshow.com for more and up-to-date information.