Inverness isn’t the first place you’d expect a trading card show to sell out a room, but that’s exactly what happened at the Citrus County Auditorium this weekend when TCG Trade N Play brought its Trade Day format to Citrus County for the very first time. Walking in, the turnout caught me off guard in the best way. Long lines stretched in front of the M&M Games buy-sell-trade booth for most of the day, vendor tables were packed edge to edge with binders and display cases, and there wasn’t a dead moment on the floor from open to close.
For a rural area that doesn’t typically get this kind of dedicated hobby event, seeing 70-plus vendor tables fill up with everything from Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering to One Piece cards was honestly a great sign for where the local scene is headed. Families came through with strollers, kids sat down for casual play, and longtime collectors dug through showcase cases loaded with vintage cards. Free admission and free parking clearly didn’t hurt either, and it showed in how many people came out on a Saturday to spend the whole day there.
What stood out most was how organized the whole thing felt for a first-time event in a new market. The M&M Games trade booth ran a steady line all day, vendor tables were staffed and stocked, and there was a genuine sense that this wasn’t a one-off pop-up but a real extension of something already working elsewhere.
That tracks with what TCG Trade N Play has been building across Florida. Inverness is just one stop on a packed 2026 calendar that includes a Tampa Bay Takeover, Pokémon and One Piece cash tournaments, a St. Pete trade night, a Tampa trade day, and a bigger Takeover event lined up at Benchmark International Arena in August. That’s a lot of shows running back to back across the state, and if the crowd in Inverness is any indication, the demand is there to support it. Bringing a first-time event into a market like Citrus County and pulling a turnout like this is a good sign that TCG Trade N Play is scaling this thing the right way, market by market, without losing the energy that makes these shows fun to attend.
If this is what a debut show looks like in a smaller Florida market, the rest of their 2026 lineup is worth keeping an eye on.
For more information click: Tampa TCG
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