The North American Decoy Collectors Association has set its 61st annual North American Vintage Decoy & Sporting Collectibles Show for April 20 through April 24, 2027, at the Westin Chicago Lombard Hotel in Lombard, Illinois. The 2027 gathering marks the organization's 61st year and places the five-day NADCA annual show at the center of the association calendar for decoy collectors, carvers, and sporting collectibles enthusiasts.
The program runs from Tuesday through Saturday and holds several parts of the hobby in one continuous gathering. Room-to-room trading occupies the opening days. A two-day Guyette & Deeter auction is scheduled midweek. The public Grand Ballroom dealer event follows on Friday and Saturday. Educational seminars, carving demonstrations, curated displays, networking activities, silent auctions, and free identification and appraisal opportunities sit with those sessions. The five-day format keeps buying and selling, education, preservation, craftsmanship, identification, and collector interaction in the same place, bringing collectors, carvers, educators, and sporting-collectibles enthusiasts into shared rooms for trading, study, and conversation.
Room-to-room trading is scheduled for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Collectors open hotel rooms to display and trade pieces in a one-on-one setting throughout those days. The format is a standing feature of the show and comes first, before the auction and the public dealer hall open. It gives collectors time to examine objects closely, compare regional carving work, and complete private trades before the more public portions of the program begin.
The Guyette & Deeter auction is scheduled for Thursday and Friday, with preview hours on both mornings and an auction preview reception on Wednesday. The sale runs alongside the show, placing previewing and two sale sessions in the same gathering as the trading rooms and the later dealer event.
The Grand Ballroom dealer event is a public session on Friday afternoon and Saturday. Exhibitors present decoys, duck calls, sporting prints, fishing collectibles, and related vintage material in a tabled hall after dealer set-up Friday morning. The hall is also the setting for continuing displays, demonstrations, silent auctions, and identification work, serving as the exhibit-hall counterpart to the earlier room-to-room trading.
Education is built into the middle of the week. A Wednesday afternoon seminar is scheduled, with the 2027 topic still to be announced. Thursday morning includes the Stevens Decoy Seminar, held ahead of the first auction session. Expert-led sessions cover regional carving styles, maker identification, and collecting knowledge. Free identification and appraisal opportunities are part of the public-hall program.
Carving demonstrations and curated displays are part of the Friday and Saturday public program. The 2027 show includes a Stevens Decoy Display, a Heck Whittington Rig Decoy Display, and a featured carver exhibit by Mike Valley. Those presentations appear with live carving demonstrations and other decoy and sporting collectibles displays, keeping craftsmanship and historical context in view while collectors examine objects.
"The 61st annual show is the point in the year when the collecting community comes together in one place for several days rather than in fragments," said Rick Sandstrom, President of the North American Decoy Collectors Association. "The length of the week matters because trading, the auction, the dealer hall, the seminars, and the displays serve different parts of the same field."
Sandstrom said the gathering also reflects the association's work beyond a single week. "An annual show of this kind is not separate from preservation," he said. "When people can see historic birds, hear how they were made, and talk with others who have spent years studying regional makers, the event becomes a working session in documentation as well as a North American decoy collecting event."
NADCA treats the annual show as the centerpiece of a volunteer-run calendar that also includes collector guides, identification resources, historical research, newsletters, a member directory, and community channels connecting more than 800 members across North American regions. Education, community, promotion of the hobby, and preservation of historically significant decoys and carver histories remain the organization's areas of work.
The North American Decoy Collectors Association was founded in 1966, when a small group of collectors gathered in Ottawa, Illinois, to share stories and trade decoys. The organization operates as an all-volunteer nonprofit serving decoy collectors, carvers, and enthusiasts. Its purposes are to foster the hobby of collecting waterfowl decoys and sporting collectibles, to identify and protect historically significant decoys, and to gather information about carvers and their methods. That original gathering grew into the North American Vintage Decoy & Sporting Collectibles Show, now held each spring as a five-day vintage decoy show.
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For more information about North American Decoy Collectors Association, contact the company here:
North American Decoy Collectors Association
Rick Sandstrom
319-364-8556
flyer180@gmail.com
North American Decoy Collectors Association
112 Goldleaf Ct
Marion, IA 52302