Ricky and Julian Are Coming to the Calgary Sport Card Expo. The Cards Can Wait.

I cannot make the trip to Calgary for this one, which is unfortunate in the very specific way that only an event announcement can be unfortunate. The Sport Card Expo is already the kind of place built to trigger the collector part of the brain: tables full of cards and memorabilia, autograph guests, people carrying things in protective plastic that they would absolutely rescue before some pieces of furniture. Then the guest list adds Ricky and Julian from Trailer Park Boys, appearing across all three days of the Sept. 18-20 show, and suddenly the international border feels like a personal inconvenience.

The Calgary edition of the Sport Card & Memorabilia Expo runs Friday through Sunday at the Genesis Centre, 7555 Falconridge Blvd. NE. The show describes itself as part of Canada’s largest and longest-running collectibles expo, with dealers, buying and trading, autograph opportunities and guest appearances built around the culture of sports memorabilia. Friday hours are 3 to 8 p.m., Saturday runs 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday is 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with earlier access for certain multi-day and VIP ticket holders. Admission starts at C$20 for Friday and Saturday and C$15 for Sunday when purchased in advance, while a three-day pass is listed at C$39.

And then there are Ricky and Julian. Robb Wells and John Paul Tremblay have spent decades turning two very bad planners from Sunnyvale Trailer Park into two of Canadian television’s most recognizable comedy characters. Netflix still describes Trailer Park Boys as a mockumentary following the booze-fueled misadventures of Julian, Ricky and Bubbles, but that tidy description barely captures why the show has lasted. The appeal was never really the schemes. It was the strange durability of the friendship, the recurring failures, the language, the rituals and the sense that these people would somehow be exactly themselves no matter how many times the plan collapsed around them.

That is also why their appearance at a card expo does not feel like a random celebrity booking. Modern collecting culture has expanded far beyond the old idea of a convention as a room where people quietly hunt for a missing card number. Sports cards are still the spine of the event, but memorabilia shows increasingly function as live museums of personal attachment. A signed puck, a jersey, a photograph, a Funko Pop or a piece of television memorabilia all work on the same basic principle: the object matters because of the story attached to it. The thing becomes a physical marker for a player, a show, a moment or a version of yourself that you remember.

Trailer Park Boys fits that world almost suspiciously well. The series is built from objects and visual shorthand that fans recognize instantly: Ricky’s patterned shirts, Julian’s permanently occupied drink hand, Bubbles’ glasses, shopping carts, liquor bottles and the accumulated debris of Sunnyvale. The expo’s own autograph rules divide memorabilia into regular and premium items, and the premium examples happen to include whiskey bottles. That is a normal collectibles-policy detail on the website, but with Julian scheduled to be in the building it lands with the precision of an accidental joke.

The Calgary event also offers a useful reminder that the strongest fan conventions are rarely about a single category anymore. People may arrive because they collect hockey cards, baseball memorabilia or autographs, but the real connective tissue is recognition. You walk past a table and see something that belonged to your childhood, your favorite team, your favorite show or the joke you have been repeating with friends for twenty years. A good expo understands that fandom is not neatly organized into departments. Most people are carrying several versions of it at once.

For anyone planning to meet guests, admission and autograph purchases are separate. The Calgary Expo says every item to be signed requires its own autograph ticket, with regular and premium categories depending on the type of item, and advance online autograph sales close Wednesday, Sept. 16. The event also offers Fast Pass options, while its VIP package includes early entry, a merch or autograph coupon and one FastPass. The show notes that autograph pricing is in Canadian dollars and that individual guests retain the right to decline an item.

None of that helps me get to Calgary, unfortunately. But I understand the appeal immediately. There are celebrities you would like to see, and then there are characters who have lived in your cultural vocabulary long enough that seeing them in person feels less like a formal meet-and-greet and more like confirming that some ridiculous corner of television history is still out there walking around. For me, Ricky and Julian are firmly in the second category.

So yes, the Calgary Sport Card Expo has cards, dealers, sports memorabilia and the mechanics of a serious collectibles show. It also has Ricky and Julian wandering into that ecosystem for three days, which is exactly the kind of crossover that makes the whole thing feel more alive. I cannot make the trip, but if you can, this is the rare card show where I would fully understand walking past a very expensive piece of sports history because you spotted two guys from Sunnyvale on the other side of the room.

Event Details

SOURCE NOTES

• Sport Card Expo Calgary — Home / event details
• Sport Card Expo Calgary — Guests / autograph policies
• Sport Card Expo Calgary — Tickets
• Netflix Media Center — Trailer Park Boys
• Additional event appearance detail: Sport Card Expo promotional announcement distributed for the Calgary 2026 event, identifying Ricky and Julian as appearing Sept. 18-20.