Logan Merkle received his first bobblehead — Shaquille O’Neal wearing a Cleveland Cavaliers uniform — when he was 4.
The Wadsworth boy carried the jiggling, bulbous-headed figurine with him everywhere, like many kids carry a teddy bear, Logan’s mom, Amanda Merkle, said Saturday. Whenever a piece of bobblehead Shaq broke, Logan’s grandpa would patiently glue the pieces back together.
But Logan, now 11, has apparently outgrown his bobblehead sentimentality.
He was among the youngest wheelers-and-dealers Saturday at Akron’s Bobblecon, trading items from his collection — now about 250 bobbleheads strong — for some new additions.
Pedro Avalos II of East Akron organized Bobblecon in the event space at the Ancient Order of Hibernians on North Main Street in the North Hill neighborhood of Akron. Avalos grew up in California, where he met and married Sara Lillie, an Akron native.
When Avalos first visited Akron in 2014, he fell in love with the city, too, because it was affordable, laid-back and friendly, like the small town in Mexico where part of his family comes from.
“There, everyone you pass greets you, acknowledges you with a ‘good morning’ or ‘good afternoon,’ ” said Avalos, who works in facilities engineering at Summa Akron City Hospital. “Akron is the same way.”
In California, Avalos collected and traded bobbleheads from Los Angeles sports teams. But in Akron, most bobblehead collections were made up of Cleveland and Pittsburgh teams.
To keep trading his California collection, Avalos founded Bobblehead Addicts in Akron, which now has more than 6,100 members around the world. In 2016 it became the official online community of the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum in Milwaukee.
On Saturday afternoon, about 150 bobblehead collectors mingled at the Hibernian club looking to trade. Many knew each other from standing in line at Akron RubberDucks, Cleveland Indians and Cleveland Cavaliers games on bobblehead nights.
“How much for Einar Díaz?” Drew Trecokas of Parma asked.
“I don’t know. How about $10?” Ian Miller of Painesville responded, reaching to open the box containing the bobblehead of the former Cleveland Indian turned coach for the Baltimore Orioles.
Trecokas — who was wearing a T-shirt that said, “My wife told me to sell more than I buy” — said he was scouting the Diaz bobblehead for a friend.
Miller, whose bobblehead collection hovers around 600, said he collected baseball cards as a boy. Once he slipped a player’s card into an album, it just gathered dust.
He said he started collecting, like many people, after getting a bobblehead at a sporting event and wondering what to do with it.
“Then I realized there was a club for people just as nerdy as me,” Miller said.
About an hour into Bobblecon, 11-year-old Logan had traded away five of his bobbleheads, a collection he documents on his Instagram page “bobbleohio.”
In most venues, Logan can be shy, his mother said. But not at Bobblecon, where he headed into the crowd of adults looking to trade.
Logan earned his first Boy Scout merit badge for collecting bobbleheads, his mom said, and his parents hired a carpenter to build shelves along three walls in Logan’s bedroom to hold the collection.
A few minutes later, Logan emerged from the crowd with his arms full of new bobbleheads. His sister, Faith, verbalized what Logan’s mom was already thinking: “We’re going to need bigger shelves.”
Amanda Garrett can be reached at 330-996-3725 or agarrett@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @agarrettabj .