The Sports Cards & Collectibles Expo in Toronto is a show that always brings in thousands of fans during the weekend. And Upper Deck has been a mainstay at the show bringing a variety of giveaways and promotions for collectors young and old. This last weekend however, Upper Deck staff really spent a lot of time engaging kids as they are truly the future for this hobby.

Trading card shows provide Upper Deck with a great opportunity to share trading cards with young kids and see their smiles as they instantly become engaged in the hobby.

It’s never too early to expose kids to trading cards. Yes, if you get them too young, it is almost a certainty that the cards will end up right in their mouth, but maybe, just maybe, trading cards can help with teething. We loved seeing the look on youngster’s faces as they held Upper Deck trading cards for the first time over the weekend.

Two brothers and one sister competed head-to-head-to-head in the Upper Deck decoy toss where they tried to get the most decoy cards in a target.

The winner was thrilled and those who came up short, well, they had their own ways of getting revenge...

We scheduled some times where kids could compete in a decoy tossing game at the booth where they went head to head against each other or Upper Deck staff to win prizes like new Upper Deck packs. I’m pretty sure they would have competed just for the fun of it though. It was awesome to see the smiles on the faces of brothers, sisters and friends as they competed in this exciting game as supporters cheered them on.

This young man scored a FREE box of Upper Deck cards at the Expo raffle.

Hopefully this happy winner shared some packs with his sister!

Next we made sure we had kids involved in our raffle program on Saturday. Lots of kids were holding raffle tickets and since we had a lot of prizes, a good amount of kids won. It was great to hear their enthusiastic cries after they won as some of them took home their first ever trading cards and collectibles.

And sometimes we just got a little silly with the kids and came up with games for them on site. We had three brothers that were camped out at the Upper Deck booth on Sunday so we had the two older boys engage in a fun game for some packs while their younger brother Christopher looked on.

There is really no bigger thrill for me though as a new father than to see kids opening packs of Upper Deck cards with their fathers. It’s especially exciting to see a father teach his son or daughter how to open up the packs and their sense of wonder as they go through the cards for the first time. Through our redemption program, we saw a lot of kids coming through opening product at the Upper Deck booth this weekend. And some of them scored some pretty awesome Priority Signings cards!

This young man pulled a Ryan Nugent-Hopkins Priority Signings autograph card and was all smiles!

We allocated some of the Priority Signings autograph cards to use with fans this week, but if you want to take them home, you’re going to have to work for them. In the comment section below, please share your ideas (must be at least four complete sentences) on what more the trading card industry can do to get kids interested in collecting new trading card sets. We’ll select our three favorite ideas to receive random Priority Signings cards. Comments must be received in by 4:00 p.m. Pacific on Wednesday, May 9, 2012.

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