Two weeks after its Labor Day weekend edition, the Funky Town Card Show returns to the Meadowbrook Recreation Center on Friday, September 18, 2026 for another free evening on the Arlington hobby calendar. The series runs on a roughly every-other-Friday rhythm, and this mid-September date lands right as the new football season heats up and the fall Pokemon release cycle gets moving — two things that reliably change what shows up on the tables.
Expect somewhere in the range of 65 to 85 vendor tables, packed into a comfortable recreation-center hall that fills up quickly once the doors open at 6:00 PM. Pokemon is the largest single category, covering graded vintage, modern chase pulls, sealed booster bundles and thick binders of playable singles. One Piece continues to grow at this series, and Dragon Ball, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Magic: The Gathering and Lorcana all have committed sellers. The sports contingent brings MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL cards across every era, with football inventory noticeably stronger in September as the Cowboys season gets underway; graded slabs, rookie cards, sealed wax and cheap team boxes all circulate. Beyond cards you will find comics, anime figures, Funko Pops, sneakers, video games, autographed memorabilia and local artist and craft tables.
The show runs a single four-hour block, 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM. Treat that structure as a strategy guide. Serious buyers work the room between 6:00 and 7:00 PM while cases are still full. The middle two hours are the social heart of the night, when binders come out and trades outpace purchases. The last half hour is genuinely the best time to make an offer, because a dealer weighing a fair price against repacking a tote will usually take the price.
Admission is free. There is no ticket, no registration and no line, and parking on site is free too. That absence of friction is why the Friday-night format has become such a fixture — you can decide at five o'clock to go and lose nothing but an evening.
Meadowbrook Recreation Center is at 1400 Dugan Street in central Arlington, a few blocks south of East Abram Street and minutes from downtown, the UTA campus and the entertainment district. Highway 360, I-30 and Division Street all feed it easily, which keeps the drive short from Grand Prairie, Mansfield, Kennedale, Hurst and Pantego. Abram and Collins are lined with dinner options if the on-site food vendors sell out.
Who gets the most from this? Working collectors who cannot give up a Saturday. Traders, because the regular crowd knows each other and deals move fast. Parents, because free entry plus dollar boxes makes for a cheap and genuinely fun outing with a kid. And bargain hunters, since Friday-night pricing is consistently softer than weekend show pricing on comparable cards.
Tips for the evening: bring cash, bring a trade binder with your asks already written down, and do a full lap before spending anything. If you are selling, arrive early and talk to the buying tables while they still have money in the drawer. If you are buying, stay late.
For vendor announcements and the rest of the Funky Town Friday dates this fall, check the show's TCDB listing or follow Funky Town Card Show on Instagram and Facebook.