Collect-A-Con Los Angeles

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Everyone who collected anything as a kid still has the box they never threw out. This is a thousand dealer tables of other people's boxes. What separates Collect-A-Con from an ordinary card show is that it refuses to treat anime as a side room — graded Pokémon slabs, One Piece singles, vintage Yu-Gi-Oh and a full cosplay crowd all move through the same hall at the same volume, and the organizers bill it as the largest trading card, anime and pop culture convention in the country. The December edition changes the character of the room in a way the summer dates never do: it lands in the dead week before Christmas, so a real share of the floor is people hunting a gift for the one person on their list who is impossible to buy for, and the rest are people spending gift money a few days early and not pretending otherwise. Two days, ten to five, at the Convention Center downtown. Saturday and Sunday, December 19 and 20.