Inside a middle school gymnasium in D’Iberville, Mississippi, something subtly amazing is taking place. Not at a Chicago convention center. Not in a crowded Los Angeles arena. A mid-sized gym with wall-to-wall folding tables and seventy vendors setting up shop next to each other with the concentrated energy you’d expect from people who genuinely care about what they’re selling. Hundreds of collectors flocked to the C2 Trading Cards and Collectibles Show this past April for its second year. That is not insignificant. That could be all there is to it.
Tony Tran and Justin Coulter, who came to this as collectors themselves rather than as promoters or event marketers, co-founded the show. In this hobby, Coulter’s story in particular is typical: a childhood passion, a gradual drift away from it, ten years of distance, and then an abrupt return that feels more like a homecoming than a restart. He attributes the rekindling of that fire to Tony. This could be the reason their show has a different vibe than one that is solely for profit. It seems like they didn’t build this because they saw a revenue gap, but rather because they truly wanted it to exist.
Contrary to popular belief, that distinction is important. Nationally, the trading card market has experienced a challenging few years: rapid growth during the pandemic was followed by a gradual correction, prices on some cards began to decline, and doubts began to surface regarding whether the bubble had just burst. Nevertheless, the gym was packed here in D’Iberville. Not dozens, but hundreds. Driving in from all over the Gulf Coast, collectors pass tables filled with graded slabs, vintage sets, Pokémon holos, and nostalgic memorabilia from franchises that most people haven’t given much thought to in twenty years. Just the variety reveals something about the attendees.
The extent to which these kinds of events serve as community infrastructure is something that is easy to ignore, and people do. not merely business. A fourteen-year-old learns how to bargain at the card show, a retired teacher finds something she loved again in 1987, and two strangers end up sitting at the same table for twenty minutes, amicably debating the relative worth of a mid-grade rookie card. There are no online replicas of that texture. eBay does not have conversation, but it does have listings.
It’s difficult to ignore how this is similar to what has been occurring in smaller markets across the nation, towns and cities that are seldom covered by the hobby press but where the culture has been steadily developing behind the scenes. D’Iberville is not awaiting confirmation from the coast. Vendors occupied every available space in the gym during the second edition of C2, which attracted a larger audience than the first. The co-founders are already organizing a third show for August. Whether or not the national card media chooses to take notice, there is momentum here.
Tran and Coulter appear to have an innate understanding that access points are what allow the hobby to continue. The C2 show isn’t priced like a luxury experience; adult admission costs $5, while admission is free for those under the age of seventeen. It’s affordable enough for a family to do on a Saturday morning without giving it too much thought. Probably more important than any one vendor lineup is that decision.
The next performance is scheduled for August 15th; the location is still being finalized as of this writing. The long-term ceiling for a regional show in a small Mississippi city is still up for debate. However, as you watch this develop from its first to its second edition—the rise in vendors, the increase in attendance, the tale of two former collectors creating something genuine—you begin to believe that the ceiling may be higher than anyone anticipated.
Collecting culture in a small city is not a consolation prize. It appears more authentic in D’Iberville.
