The New Jersey Collectors' Convention, or NJCC as it is affectionately known, is a small convention held at the Holiday Inn in Cherry Hill, NJ. This is an up and coming series of shows that is really beginning to grow and has the potential to become something really great in the very near future. The most recent edition of this convention was held on March 28th, 2013.
The show at this point mostly consists of a dealers' room and some additional dealers' and gallery tables just outside the dealers' room. The dealers' room was filled to capacity with tables and tables of toys, mostly vintage "G.I.Joe" and "Transformers", with not alot of elbow room to move around or really get a good look at most of the sellers' wares (which also made getting any quality pictures difficult, I was only able to snap a few pictures without people obscuring the toys). The dealers for the most part had alot of nearly identical inventories on display, I was actually hoping to find some more diversity in what was available for sale. If you are in the market for vintage Joes or Transformers, this is an
EXCELLENT show to attend as the toys were abundant and the prices were
VERY reasonable, but if you were looking for anything outside of Joe or Transformers though, your choices were very limited. In the future, I would really like to see more in the way of a variety of different toy lines represented by the dealers and hopefully either a larger space for the dealers' room or multiple dealers' rooms so as not to constantly be bumping into fellow collectors while trying to peruse what is for sale.
The best part of the show, in my opinion, was the "
Joe Declassified" gallery of unproduced and pre-production "G.I. Joe" toys. Sadly, no photography was permitted for a variety of reasons, but the sheer amount of toys on display was breathtaking! I spoke at length with Gyre-Viper, a major preproduction/unreleased Joe collector and one of the main forces behind the "Joe Declassified" group and gained a wealth of information about all facets of the prototype collecting culture. If you ever get the opportunity to see one of "Joe Declassified"'s exhibits, I strongly suggest that you spend some real time looking everything over and speaking with the gallery staff as you will be amazed at what is on display and what you will learn.
The NJCC show runners also had an extremely limited custom action figure available at the show. The catch was, it was not for sale but could be won via raffle tickets given at the door when you purchased your admission ticket (other prizes included SDCC Exclusives and this year's "JoeCon" Boxed Set). The figure was a custom made figure of "Salvo" a lesser-known "G.I.Joe" character from the late 1980s. I was hoping to acquire a sample figure for review purposes but was unable to do so. The figure was built off of a "G.I.Joe: Retaliation" Wave 1 Roadblock body with custom built and cast add-ons (head, vest and missile launcher) as well as a selection of
Marauder Gun-Runners' excellent weaponry.
In closing, the NJCC is still a young show and has some hurdles to overcome (cramped dealers' room, lack of diversity in items for sale, etc.), but I can really see this show becoming something huge in just a few years time!
