Blackhawks Convention!

[Nairb06]

Got a 3 day pass to the Blackhawks convention for my birthday from my parents. Had an AWESOME time. Im pretty sure im one of the luckiest kids ever. In the past couple weeks my dad has got me...

1. 2 tickets to Game 6 of the western Conference Finals Ducks VS Blackhawks!
2. 2 tickets to Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Lightning Vs Blackhawks!!
3. A 3 day pass to the Hawks convention.
4. Sooooo much more that would take me hours to list lol (2 tickets to blackhawks vs penguins at soldier field, 4 tickets to game 1 of the 2005 World series Sox VS Astros, soooo many blackhawks playoff games, etc. etc.)

anyway on to the convention.

upon registration they were handing out one scratch off ticket per person, if you were a winner you won a vip autograph signing of a player to be named about 20 minutes before the signing (they had about 15 different VIP signings). My scratch off was a winner so i took the first time slot which was 9 AM Saturday Morning.

Day one...
I waited in line about 15 minutes to get a Jeremy Morin Autographed puck. Then went into the Vendor area where they had a puck/picture grab bag. they were $20 for a random autographed puck or picture of a current or former blackhawk. Im a sucker for gambling so i decided to take a shot at it. First a got 1 puck... ended up being Jimmy Hayes. So i got another puck hoping for a current Hawk. puck number 2 was........ Brandon Bollig. Still hoping for a current hawk i decided to get a picture i got...... Anti Raanta.... soooo i went back again haha, decided to get another picture got.... Jeremy Morin. Finally a current player! but i just met him and got a puck signed :( soooo i went back again and got 1 more puck.... Finally a current player a didnt have yet! $100 dollars later and i finally got a.... Niklas Hjallmarsson signed puck! Besides just shaking some players hands and looking at all the game used item for sale that was it for day 1.

No Morin Picture


Day 2 was the big day!
Day started at 9 AM when i had my VIP signing from my scratch off. Rumor was it was going to be Andrew Shaw. So i bought a really nice 11x20?(i think) picture of him scoring the overtime goal against the Bruins in the Stanley Cup. Ended up not being shaw, but i still like the picture haha. Player ended up being Teuvo Teravainen! so i got my Stanley Cup puck signed by him!


As soon as i got the Teravainen auto i heard the other 9 AM VIP was Toews. So i ran up there and bought a ticket off somebody(ill keep the price undisclosed). Was very happy i was able to get my Jersey Signed!


The way the autograph tickets worked was if you had a winner, you went to the booth and redeemed it and they gave you a card that was a certain color(each player was a certain color, but no one knew which player was which color) (teravainen was black, toews was gold, Dano was red, amisinov was blue, Bickel was brown, Shaw was cyan, Coach Q was grey etc.) They were only handing out one color at a time and they would start the next color once they ran out.

So i had one more VIP ticket that i got from the guy i got the Toews ticket from. I went to the booth to redeem it for the next one which ended up being Dano. Right before i redeemed it the guy behind me told me the rumor was Kane was the Violet ticket signing at 4:30(this was about 10 AM he told me that) so i decided to hold onto the ticket and wait for violet. Rumor must have got out because a bunch of people started running towards the booth and looking for the violet ticket. I think the workers were getting mad because no one was taking any other colors until they started giving out the Violets. Once i saw the rumor got out i jumped in line and waited about 4 hours for them to start handing out the Violet tickets. I was about the 20th person in line and i got the LAST ticket. They were suppose to hand out 315 of them so everyone else was VERY VERY angry about where the rest of them were. but the worker just kept saying sorry thats all i have i dont know what to tell you, as everyone was screaming at him. Ended up the rumor was right!
Each player is only allowed to sign 1 auto per person but when i got up to kane i very nicley asked him to sign two items for me. I said its ok if you say no, but can you please sign both of these. he laughed and said of course i can big guy, but if we get in trouble im blaming you im not the one getting yelled at. lol so he signed both for me!!!!



It was a GREAT day for me!!!

Decided not to go to Day 3 for various reasons.

the signed jerseys go great with the ones i already have!



Sorry for the very long read. was just extremely excited!

[creasecollector]

Seems like you had a fantastic time ! Those autos are all incredible!

Nice jerseys, you have quite the collection of them!

[kuzniar42]

wow thats awesome! always wanted to go but could never make it work out!

[doniceage]

Congrats on the big hall.

Don

[Nairb06]

Does anyone have any good suggestions on framing those jerseys for relatively cheap(but still good quality)? i Have one framed jersey already but that was pretty expensive.

[hossa18sens]

What a great show. Love those conventions

Congrats on the Jersey's (love the Hossa for some reason lol)

[cardbuyer66]

Thanks for sharing Nair, looks like a great day! I have heard good things about the Blackhawk players. I grew up friends with Lindsay Meacham (Rourke) who is now married to Matt Meacham, the video coach for Chicago. From what I have seen (her being allowed on the ice after they won the cup, etc.) they seem to take good care of their players, fans, and family members!

[zunato]

Sounds like a dream day for any Hawks fan. I hope to make it one of these years.


I'm interested in the Raanta photo if you don't need/want it. lmk

[geschrocks33]

Great stuff! Love the autographed jerseys - I will have to share 2 of mine that I think you will like.

As for the framing - I don't think there is a cheap way to do it

[30ranfordfan]

Really nice stuff! Great looking jerseys!

For cheap framing options: The best one around me is Michael's. It's a craft / hobby store.... but they sell tons of frames. A couple of times a year, they put all their frames (including large shadow boxes for jersey) on deep discount. I bought two of them (last year?) for like $120 total.

Not sure if Michael's is Canadian only or not... but there must be something similar near you? That's the kind of store I'd try.