I attended my first ever card show today. I brought a wad of cash and some cards to trade, in the hope of securing fat stacks of singles for my collection without paying postage. I was mostly afraid of sharks; in hindsight, what I should have been afraid of was a lack of product. The event was mostly Pokémon, with very little MTG on offer.

There were only five booths stocking MTG:

• One booth had a single binder page dedicated to MTG singles, but no Avatar cards.
• One had random sealed products (Beginner Box, Scene Boxes) but no singles.
• One guy had a small shelf of singles but left his MTG binder at home(!) and regretted it. Apparently we were the third set of buyers to ask him about it.
• One gent was kind enough to let us thumb through his loose stack of unsleeved retro bulk.
• Finally, we found a single booth stocking both sealed packs and MTG Avatar singles.

I ended up purchasing a Badgermole Cub alt art and an Appa, Steadfast Guardian prerelease stamp from that final vendor. The price of a CB booster was a little rich for my blood, but at least we didn't leave the con empty handed. Interestingly, this is actually the first prerelease card I've found in the wild. Even the ones I pulled myself came from kits I had to import after my LGS didn't save me one.

I'm glad I bought the early bird ticket to snipe what limited singles were there. It was a nice day out, but we didn't stick around.