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Originally Posted by Chris Counts
I went to the Anaheim show in '74, and I believe it was advertised as the "West Coast" show. I still have a badge from it lying around somewhere. Two years later, I attended a show in Michigan I distinctly remember being called a "national show." I believe it was in Plymouth.
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Last night I was looking at an issue of The Sport Hobbyist from 1977 on which the cover was trumpeting the upcoming "national show", with a list of previous "national shows" that were really just various prominent regional shows, including the Detroit-area show that started in 1970. Charles Brooks, editor of The Sport Hobbyist, seemed to really want to promote the idea of a national convention over the years. In the August 1956 issue of The Sport Hobbyist and Journal, from which I posted Lionel Carter's article on T207s last night, Brooks (who was still in high school at the time) mentioned that plans for a national card convention had been postponed.
There were several prominent regional shows in the 70s that often attracted collectors from around the country -- the Detroit show, the Philly show, the West Coast show -- and for all I know some of them may have occasionally been called a "national" show. But the idea didn't really catch on or become explicit until the 1980 show in Anaheim, which helpfully came at the start of a big boom in card prices and hobby interest.