Northern National Collectors Convention comes to Windsor

A new collectors’ convention, one not seen since the departure of Comic Con.  

The very first National Collectors convention was held at Ceasars Windsor  Sept. 29-Oct. 1, 2023 and welcomed collectors, cosplay, and superheroes. 

The event was held in tandem with the Windsor Fan Experience. According to Northernnational.com the event had all the accents of a traditional card expo but it also enabled more of the Trading Card Game (TCG) community (inclusive of brands ranging from Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Disney Lorcana, and Dragon Ball Z) to have a national presence in Canada.  

Jeremy Renaud, the President of the Northern National Collectors Convention, said why he decided to do this event in his hometown.  

“I ran events in Canada in the U.S, I was eventually promoted to being the general manager of the scorecard and memorabilia expo, Canada’s national sports card convention,” said Renaud. “And I just basically got the experience along the way, and I decided to go on my own instead of running other people’s shows to start my own show and I wanted to give my hometown the show that it deserved.” 

The convention was attended and sponsored by several businesses that specialize in collectors’ items such as Figurine Out, Brimstone Games, Scarehouse and Cartoon Kingdom just to name a few. The latter will be celebrating their 20-year anniversary.  

Nathaniel St. Pierre, co-owner of Cartoon Kingdom and Cedar Creek Hobbies, said that getting involved was due to Cartoon Kingdoms upcoming anniversary.  

“Well, we are celebrating our 25th anniversary this year so it was a great way to kind of celebrate that put a capper on the anniversary,” said St. Pierre “It’s been a while since we’ve been able to have a show of this magnitude in Windsor and it’s definitely important to have this type of community event for fans of pop culture products, like we carry or trading cards and whatnot.” 

During the weekend the Northern National Convention saw at least 1,000 visitors ranging from all ages and backgrounds.  

Devin Levasseur came out from Tecumseh to take it all in and said why it was important to him to be here.  

“The reason why I wanted to come today is because I love that whole science fiction fictional comic book stuff ever since I was a little kid at age seven years old,” said Levasseur.  

According to Thenorthernnational.com despite the convention being held in Windsor it will move to the Greater Toronto Area and expand to other markets in Canada.