Sac-Con: June 3, 2012

Mere weeks before the madness of the San Diego ComicCon, it’s always fun to attend the smaller shows just to get a little taste of what’s to come. In Sacramento, they have a nice, small, family-friendly show every 3 months called Sac-Con, which is like Anime’s answer to WonderCon, compared to the major Anime conventions: San Jose’s Fanime and the Los Angeles Anime Expo.

This show usually attracts a fair amount of people, especially for one of the smaller shows. There was a pretty long line to get in.

…and more people kept showing up just chomping at the bit to get in on the Anime action.

This cutie was greeting people and taking names for a raffle that was later to come… and I just had to ask her if that nose pierce hurt because it looks quite painful. She said, “A little bit.”

The floor was pretty spacious and PACKED with people looking for deals on toys, action figures, DVD’s, video games, wall scrolls, etc.. This show had a little bit of everything.

The guy that runs this booth gives me a hard time because I see him at practically EVERY small show, but never buy anything from him. Last I saw him, he tried to sell me a giant Green Lantern movie banner, but I respectfully declined.

There was a Retro video game room with all the consoles from yesteryear ranging from Atari 2600 to the Nintendo 64.

They even had a retro contest where you could win prizes.

There was an area designated for Trading Card Games. They had Vanguard, Magic the Gathering and Yugioh tournaments going on throughout the day. Since I had my trusty Anti-Meta Elemental Heroes deck, I decided to test my luck and see how I would do.

I took second place in the tourney overall and took home a good portion of support packs. I 2-0’ed a Dragon Twilight deck which is the top deck of the current format so I was stoked. My only loss in the championship round was to a Master Hyperion deck. I couldn’t draw a monster to save my life. Ah well. Still, it was a good time out.

This show is usually very heavy on the cosplayers, but this time around, there weren’t all that many.

This girl was GORGEOUS… and very sweet. Too bad the dude is there.

There were plenty of artists on hand trying to sell their work and break into the business.

Tone Rodriguez was on hand.

Voice actor Billy West from Futurama was in attendance. He had a HUGE line of fans looking for signatures and pics.

There was a separate room for other artists trying to sell their work.

This guy freaked out when I took pics of his work. He said the guy running the show didn't approve of photos taken in this room, but he probably thought I was going to print and sell them as my own. Fortunately for him, I couldn’t have cared less.

Towards the end of the show, they had a TON of food left over so they announced that EVERYTHING at the snack bar was $1. Sweet! I was starving! I grabbed a Hot Link, fries and a Capri Sun for a measley $2.50!

There were some decent deals to be had here. I got the Famous Covers Red Skull for $10 to complete my Famous Covers set. The last show I attended had some dude asking $30 for the same figure. I also picked up a Godzilla Hedorah (Smog Monster) for $10 and this Fantastic 4 Thing figure for cheap. It will soon become a Green Lantern.

Got the Red Arrow for a decent price as well. I'll be adding him to my budding Young Justice collection. 

This was a decent show overall and coming in 2nd in the Yugioh tourney was a huge plus. These small shows are usually fun, worth the price of admission and relatively stress free. Even though the sales floor was fairly crowded most of the day, you didn’t have to navigate the treacherous waters of a major convention to get something you wanted. In 3 months, I just may attend the next show if my schedule is free.