I have purchased my train ticket and set the alarm (5.20!!). Hoping to be there around 11.00, maybe a bit later, train allowing.

Looking forward to seeing you all there ... even wolfie!

Thanks for well wishes.

I hope everyone has a great time this weekend and I look forward to seeing plenty of reports and pictues.

Hope you get better soon AJJ

We're just stting off now so see some of you later

I am on my way

Ah well it was a much shorter trip than bargained for!

We got there just after 9 and I headed to the Card Talk stand (where Harris and Quaint were present) to renew the subscription. Boldly turned up here as well.

It was busy ( much busier than other shows this year ) and amongst the 501st and Daleks there were many costume players.

There were not as many card dealers as usual but I did spend time and money at both Ash's and Richard's stalls

Did not see many no-shows amongst the Film autograph signers but many of the Doctor Who signers were a bit late. As were the The Spirit MS1 promo cards

Had to leave at 11:30 after my wife got a phone call about her mother but sorry to have missed the Card Talk event hope it went well I did say goodbye to Harris and Quaint and CSIDave was behind the counter as well


Oh and for Boldly - the Cliff Richard and The Shadows tour is currently listed here

This message has been edited. Last edited by: dis68,

Got to Birmingham about 9.30 Saturday, met up with Graham and we joined the "big fight" to re-new our subsciptions (I hope the magazine goes on until 2010!!! ). Managed to get a couple of Spirit P-MS promo's when they finally arrived. I thought there were more dealers than usual! Attended the Card Talk meeting - Co-hosted by Harris & Paul - there was the amazing happening of 2 people pulling their own number out of the Raffle for the Batman CP1 promo & some other great prizes including a Patrick Hammill Sketch card of Hellboy & a fantasic 8x10 painting by Nik. Great to see Harris & his band of helpers.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: hammer,

I didn't post my report yesterday (a mixture of tiredness, hunger and apathy won over) so I thought it give my personal overview of yesterday and the Card Talk / Card Cast meeting.
It was an early start, up at 5.20 to get the 6.45 train out of Shenfield. Some 4 hours and 6 trains later (due to 3 lots engineering works!) I arrived at the NEC.
There was a fair size queue to get in - bigger than last year- and we were shepherded in by the obligatory Stormtroopers, Gamorean guards and Daleks! Once through a large box with something called 'City Of Villains' was thrust into my hands. I'm guessing it's some kind of online game but it is as yet unopened.
After initial orientation I made my way to the NSU stand. Only (CSI) Dave Brown was holding the fort so I had a quick chat with both him and Paul Hart whose stall was next door. They directed me back to the front info desk where I picked up a quantity of Saturday show exclusive The Spirit promos and a couple of Iron Man hero-clix which I think were also show exclusive.
It was then time to check out the rest of the stalls.
I thought that the layout was actually a lot better than last year. The aisles were wider enabling easier access around some dubiously dressed individuals and the daleks roaming the area. It was a bit busier than last year in my estemation and I got talking to a couple from Worcester who were there with their 10 year old daughter who were purely there just for a look around and were having a really good time.
First port of call for a purchase was (as last year) with the Rich With Cards lads. I always enjoy a chat with them and I picked up an extremely reasonably priced box of Fantastic Four Archives and a Gregory Itzin auto from the latest 24 release. There's was actually the best price for the Fantastic Four boxes in the hall and all the other cardtalkers I spoke to during the day had picked one up from them. In fact prices for quite a lot of boxes varied tremendously. There was a table selling 3 (older/dumped) boxes for £10 and many dealers had prices that were down on what you would normally expect to pay. Some of these actually had quite a brisk trade which is possibly a good sign, but a couple of dealers I spoke to were having a bit of a stock clearance too.
I also managed to pick up an Amanda Tapping Stargate auto from a very very good price.
I needed some caffeine, so after grabbing a coffee I went back to the NSU table to renew my subs. I also had a commission sketch to pick up from Patrick Hammill (Patdata) and I was pleased to find the whole crew (Harris, Paul(Quaint1) Bines, Dave & Pat) there. There was also a certain wolfie there too - and as I has some base sets to offload to him I took the opportunity to pass those on and hence make some room in my bag for more goodies, and goodies there were to be had! Promo's a plenty, a fantastic Stargate card that Pat had done for me as a commission for my wife for Christmas and I even made a purchase from Mr Harts stand. John the Hat had his stand opposite and he came over to chat with Harris while I was there.
I went to grab a bite to eat and then made it over to the Stage area where the Card talk meeting was about to start. The previous panel had over-run slightly and I bumped into Steve J and his wife (who I'm always pleased to see) were waiting outside - more base set trading ensued. My sat in the second row behind Boldlygone Paul who had brought his video camera. QBall Paul was in the row bhind us which was rather handy as I had some more cards to trade with him.
The stage area was nicely set up and whilst the usual suspects (more name dropping later) were there, it was pleasing to see a fair amount of others with a passing interest in the hobby (incuding some dealers) there. I would estimate that there were about 30-40 people in attendance, none of whom were put off when the resident MC introduced Mr Toser and Mr Bines using the hobby title as 'Non-Card sports'. Non-card sports I'm assuming is every sport except golf! Anyway, Harris started talking about the magazine and the hobby in general, inviting (but not always getting - even wolfie had nothing to say at one point!) participation from the audience who seemed to know what non-sport trading cards were or were too embarrassed to say otherwise. Paul then talked about cardcast, and then Nick Neocleous (NIK) was reluctantly persuaded to come to the stage and say a few words - he had donated an awesome Batman picture to the raffle and had a few promo's of his own too. Patdata was here and there with his camera taking pictures of all and sundry throughout. The raffles were drawn (I didn't win anything - boo!) with several people suspiciously (actually co-incidentally) pulling there own tickets. There was a great pack of promo's from Harris for everyone, a Twilight cello pack and some base cards from the Canadian iCardz release were handed out from an opened box. I managed to get a quick chat with Peter Cloet who it was great to see - that's some journey man! - and also saw (but didn't get to speak to) Triple Frog.
It was then time to revisit the hall to dig out and haggle for a few more bargains - some bits for the children including an Holiday Disney Treasures collectible cards box (they get the models - I get the cards - we both win) for a tenner, and a box of Stargate Atlantis season 1 (which had a Fallen Heroes 1:480 card in) for twenty quid.
Back to the NSU table before I went I had a really good chat with hammer and Graham - great to meet and talk to you guys - before I made my goodbyes and left for the long journey home where my wife, children, a warm house, a chinese take-away and a glass of beer were waiting.

I really had a good time and had lots of fun chatting and swapping stories with everyone. It was good to see some old faces and make some new friends - cheers guys! Roll on 2009!!

Extra - edited to include some of the promo's I picked up from the generous NSU packs & elsewhere:

The Spirit P-1 P-PS P-MS
Twilght P-1 P-PS Cello pack of 4 cards (1-4)
Supernatural Season Two P-FE
Supernatural Season Three P-1 P-PS
Dr Who Seasons 1&2 P-1 P-PS
Star Trek Movies In Motion P-1
Americana II P-MR
Marvel Masterpieces P7
2008 Classic Vintage Movie Posters Promo 6
Dexter 'PROMO' promo
Philly Non-Sports Card Show #50
Toy Story S1
Farscape Through The Wormhole P1
The Munsters 'Special' promo
Al Lewis For Governor promo

Thanks to all the companies who donated these.

I've also opened the aforementioned City Of Villains box and it contains 7 heroclix and a DVD & code for 14 days free trial for an online game.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: justm,

Good to see you too

Arrived at the NEC at 08:45 to find a sizable queue already.Definitely more people with early bird tickets and overall I would say a higher attendance.

Qyite a few bargains to be had compared to previous shows and I picked up some nice signed photos for £5 each of american celebrities who the seller was not familiar with(no way would you get Blake Lively,Tina Fey,or Sarah Silverman autos that cheap in the USA ).

The three boxes for £10 stall Justm mentioned(sorry I missed you)was actually being run by Barrie and Elisabeth of Strictly Ink and Nik Neocleous was there too.I bought 2 boxes each of Sliders and Creators Universe,a box each of The Phantom and Godzilla,and binders for Terminator 3, Hellboy,and Witchblade for a total of £30 .

The cardtalk meeting was good fun and it was nice to see some familiar faces.I had a near miss with the raffle,the winning ticket for that fantastic NIK painting was the one before mine .So near and yet so far.Met with Wolfie,Steve J and QBall to exchange base sets and then bought an NSU subscription before dashing off home to catch the soccer results and the last half hour of College Gameday.

My only real moan was nobody had any three pocket pages which I use for Benchwarmer box toppers.Several people said they had them but had not brought them to the show .

Compared to previous NEC shows thats very minor and overall I reckon the show was much improved.Hopefully that will continue next spring.

Here is my report - pictures will follow later (I've not been back long and I need to recover a little bit!)
Friday, I met up with Patrick Hamill (aka Patdata) in Birmingham and, after a pint and a chat, we headed towards the NEC to meet up with Harris and David Brown (aka CSI Dave); Harris went off to his hotel and Patrick, David and I headed back to Birmingham for dinner, a few more pints and lots more chat.
Saturday, and relatively hangover free (for a change ) we got to the NEC and entered - a decent enough queue for the early bird. Found the NSU stand (rather well placed close to the entrande and surrounded by card dealers - Paul Hart (of course) next to the stand, Ash Trading cards, John the Hat and a couple of other close by.

Met up with a few Card Talkers (too many to list, sorry, though I do want to make special mention of Peter Cloet who had driven over, via Eurostar, from Belgium specially for the show!) and did a quick look around the hall to a) see what the stage was like for the talk later, and b) scope out any bargains to be had. I actually bought some cards from Paul Hart for a change - a much sought-after (by me) Sophia Myles autograph card from Thunderbirds The Movie on which I keep getting outbid on eBay (I went on to buy another couple of T'birds autographs from Paul on Sunday which brings me VERY close to a master set!)
Lots of box bargains to be had, though you had to be wary of what was actually in the boxes - I picked up a couple of boxes of Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet, only to find they were retail boxes and, therefore, had no autographs, sketches of costumes. Still, for £2 each I wasn't too disappointed, and it did give us something to open in the rare quiet periods! I'll leave Harris to report on how the show went for him, but it looked pretty good to me!
I got my paperback of "Death in the Clouds" by Agatha Christie signed by Fenella Woolgar, who played the author in Doctor Who Season 4 - it was the first time she had actually seen a copy of the book, which has the same cover as the one seen at the end of the episode. She even signed it 'aka Agatha Christie' on the title page! Ms Woolgar was absolutely charming and looked radically different from her screen appearence.
Eventially the show exclusive "The Spirit" promos arrived, and they were snapped up by all and sundry, as were the IronMan Heroclix figures and the "City of Villains" box set, which contained a rather nice art book, a DVD of the "City of Villains" online game, 7 exclusive Heroclix figures and a card for the game.
1pm and Harris, Patrick and I went to the stage area (via a stand that had some of the many free CD's given away with newspapers over here - Harris thought he saw a CD in which he might be interested )
We were preceeded by a Star Wars panel (consisting of Warwick Davies, Richard Parmentier and one other whose name I didn't uite get) - they walked past Harris and I as we waited to one side. We bounded onto the stage and, after a crowd pleasing "Hello Birmingham" from Harris, we were off and almost running.
Others have reported on the talk and the giveaways, and I know Harris will be on when he gets back to thank everyone properly, but I would like to offer my thanks to the 30-40 people who turned up and seemed to enjoy the gathering, and especially to the companies and indivuduals who donated promos for the promo packs and prizes for the draw. There were three sketch art items; a Hellboy sketch by Patrick Hamill, a Tenth Doctor sketch done specially by Jim Kyle and a large sketch of Batman in full flow by Nik Neocleous, which was donated by the artist shortly before the talk! (I interviewed Nik for the podcast later for which I again thank Nik!)

The talk over, and our brief moment of celebrity ended, Harris, Patrick and I headed back to the stand and to a Subway sandwich lunch! David Brown had been manning the stand in our absence had been doing good business and this continued throughout the rest of the afternoon.

Saturday night saw Patrick, David and I partaking of Baltis and other curries in a local Indian restaurant; I found a whole glace cherry in mine and I'm still not sure if it should have been in there...

Sunday, and with some of us feeling tired due to lack of sleep (unfortunately, our apartment was not as quiet as it could have been, and the apartment above seemed to be having a furniture movers convention), we headed back to the show in heavy rain and low temperatures. Again a good crowd waiting to be admitted; this time, however, the exclusive promo (for "Twilight" this time) was available immediately.
Sunday was a little quieter, and there were a lot of price reductions and other bargains to be found - I picked up boxes of Space Jam, Mortal Kombat and Pepsi (complete with Beanie bear) for £1 each - I'm saving one or more for my first go at "Open That Box Day" next year!)
I also got the Julian Glover autograph from Indiana Jones for £2.95 and a Grant Gould sketch of Irina from IJKOTCS for £1.95...
Business wa much slower, though Harris did still sell a few subscriptions and had very little product left over on the stand by the end of the show, which is a good sign! I actually signed up for a subscription and got one of the really nice incentive promo packs containing the Inkworks Philly show exclusive promos plus a pair of "The Spirit" and "Twilight" P1's.
After the show, Harris was taken out for a curry at a different, and considerably better, Indian restaurant (and I didn't get a cherry in my curry, which was reassuring!) and, when he and David left, Patrick and I watched the first episode of "Survivors".

As ever, I had a great time and would like to thank Patrick, David and Harris for helping me get to the show and for making it a fun time for me!
Piccies (and podcast report) to follow later...
Au Res.,
Paul

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I will write my report this week one I have the time. I have a lot of work for the youth movement Scouts but I want to clarify that I came from Belgium and not Holland. We were once together but since a long time we are seperated

My apologies Peter - my brain was frazzled when I wrote my report and I made a few mistakes (which I have now corrected)! It was great to meet you regardless!
Au Res.,
Paul

Well, it was the best show in years, dispite my worries about the new organisers. For renewing my NSU subscription, I got a pack of promos:

Twilight P1
Twilight P-PS
The Spirit P1
The Spirit P-PS
Supernatural season 3 P-PS
Doctor Who (Inkworks) P-PS

As if that wasn't good enough, at the Card Talk meeting, every attendee got a random pack of promos (below) and a pack of Twilight promos that were available at San Diego this year.

Star Trek Movies in Motion - P1 Khan Lenticular
Doctor Who P1
Alias season 4 P1
Supernatural season 2 P-FE
Supernatural season 3 P1
Americana (Donruss) Amanda Beard, Randy Couture, Burt Reynolds
Dexter
Movie posters (Breygent) 6
plus a few odds and sods.

There were also two exclusive cards to the show. The Spirit P-MS on Saturday and Twilight P-MS on Sunday. If anyone wants to trade a Spirit for a Twilight, I've got a spare.

Although a couple of regular card dealers were absent (Where were you, Chris?) there seemed to be more tables with cards. One table was selling all his cards for half marked price. By the time I found him, there was only dust in my wallet, which hurt as he had a ST:TNG season 7 Patrick Stewart for a knocked down £40
As I said, a very good show.
Many thanks to Harris for organising the "meet" and offering the super subscription price. Got to see the new issue that should be with me any month now Also, thanks to Paul who held everything together. Two curries in two nights. The air must have been ripe
It was all the better having someone to share the show with. Thanks Kevin (Hammer).

Saw my friend Chris today, he said he had a great chatting with everyone and passed on the promo's and get well soon's from everyone.

Thanks for both.

Memorabilia 2008
I arrived around 9.00 to be greeted by asst Storm troopers and a Troll. The storm troopers were forcing two people on there knees before Darth Vader.
Got given a City of Evil box. I think it has something to do with an online game. Not opened it yet. Asked about the twilight show promo, told they didn’t have them.
Had a quick look round decided the queue for Bret Hart was toooooo long so found the NSU stand to present Harris with his early birthday present.

Renewed my subscription and purchased the new edition of the PCE. Harris gave me the promised promo pack. Thank you Harris.
Said hi to CSI Dave, Paul Hart, NIK (who I knew from some 25 years back), Adam, Wolfie and many others.
Then I went to have a look around, check out where the Card talk meeting was going to be, take some snaps and shop.
Picked up a box of FF Archives from Rich with cards and another Bond in Motion box for only £35 along with the binder for just £24.95.
Took my seat (Next to Wolfie) in the stage area for the Card Talk meeting where Harris spoke very eloquently about Non-Sport Update and Paul Bines talked about his excellent Card Cast Podcasts. Didn’t win in the raffle. Harris answered some questions from the audience, two of which were from me- I hope he didn’t mind the questions and that others were interested in the answers. Harris handed out all the free promos as promised and a good time was had by all. I filmed the meeting on my camcorder and if I can figure out how to download it onto utube I will.
After the Gathering I asked again about the Spirit show promo and Hurrah they had arrived.
Got some framed Doctor Who pictures for my daughter and asst chase and auto cards to fill in some gaps.
Invited Wolfie to join me for a pint but sadly after getting our hands stamped an walking ½ a mile we discovered the pub had closed down – Bummer!
Again checked on the Bret Hart queue and it was a long as ever and he, Bret Hart, seemed so grumpy and had forbidden any photos I decided he wasn’t worth my time or £20 for an autograph.
Instead went to another of my idols JEFF WAYNE where I bought the DVD of The War Of The Worlds on stage which he signed it “ To Paul, The Earth Belongs to the Martians” we had a short chat and he posed for a photo for me.
On Sunday having pretty much spent all my money the previous day I mostly sat through some very interesting panels by Doctor Who actors, Bond Girls Honor Blackman, Shirley Eaton, Margaret Nolan and Madeline Smith. and talks by Henry Winkler, Jeff Wayne & Garath David-Lloyd in the stage area where I was given a free Death Race cap.
An enjoyable event, already looking forward to 2009’s

I can see Harris spent too long near Wolfie, he's got some of his fur stuck to his head Shame I couldn't get there this year but I'm definitely going to make the effort for the next one.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Doctor Jas,

Likewise I'll be there in 2009. This year is the first I've missed going to at least one Memorabilia since 1994. Still, it's been a strange year for me...

Thanks for the reports though guys. Appreciated.

Thanks to everyone who has posted reports and picture. Sounds like everyone had a good time.

Harris, what type of critter are you wearing on your head?

quote:

Originally posted by Batman:
Harris, what type of critter are you wearing on your head?

That used to be my cousin Elmer from the old country.