Decided to stop by some card collector stores in Ottawa over the weekend to see what's up!…read more This was my first stop! This is the mecca for collectors ! It's pretty spacious and holds tons and tons of wide range sports memorabilia. It was very busy in here and was pretty difficult to get some service as there was only 2 guys working. The high end hockey cards have it's own room / section in the back corner. We had to ask to find it. It was really fun and exciting like a kid in the candy store! Service was great just maybe a bit long as they were taking care of other people. However, they were really nice and kind. Prices: a bit too high .. I mean yes they gotta pay for rent and staff but still .. the cards were 10-30% more than the market value a bit hefty for me. They seem willing to negotiate if you ask them but it was still super pricey for certain things. Overall, it's a very nice and clean place lot's of items to discover have a look if you're into that kind of place like I am hihi Cheers

If you love Lego, you have to check out this store. They literally have everything you can think of…read moreand the Lego displays are so fun to look at. My hubby is a Lego nerd, so he dragged me in here. I secretly despise Lego and all it's small pieces that I end up stepping on all over the house. Reason for the 4 stars? They had a Lego scavenger hunt over the weekend (we had no idea, as we wandered in), but a staff member mentioned it to us and we toured the store trying to find Halloween themed Lego items. Once we found all the items, we won a cute little swag bag with a Lego kit and stickers. Super fun!!! We never felt pressured to buy anything and enjoyed our time wandering around.

I think I have a serious toy store radar. Anytime I'm out on some other errand, I end up spying a…read moretoy store in the distance, and chances are, if Noah K is with me, we're going to stop. No, he's not still into action figures or anything like that, but he loves boardgames, and let's face it - as a former nanny, I still love looking at toys. While on our way to get groceries on Sunday we spotted this toy store and had to check it out. Kaitlyn C is right on the money saying she was blown away when she walked in. This place is somewhere in between Mrs. Tiggy Winkles and Toys R Us. It's not as massive as Toys R Us, but has a great selection. While it's not as trendy as Mrs. Tiggy Winkles (particularly their Lost Marbles section), it's still fantastic. I was really impressed with the variety of things we saw there, as well as the cleanliness and organization of the store. We were also asked a few times if we needed help but friendly, young employees. Their boardgame selection isn't huge, but they do have a few of the Settlers of Catan expansion packs, as well as some other popular games like Pandemic, Scrabble, Monopoloy and quite a few other fun games. The selection is certainly geared toward younger kids with lots of 3 and up games. They have a HUGE selection of puzzles as well. Where I thought this place was simply fantastic was the amount of educational games they have. There's a massive wall of Science and Discovery activities and an amazing selection of children's books. They also have a pretty fantastic dress up selection, some fun old school games. I'm absolutely coming here next time I get the wee ones in my life a present. If you have kids, I would definitely recommend checking this place out if you've got a birthday party to go to, or want to pick them up a special gift. Your kids will LOVE it! The prices seemed very fair and on par with Toys R Us.

I'd seen the first of these stores in Kanata but hadn't checked it out yet. When this one opened,…read moremy sister and I decided to take a visit. We were pretty much blown away. The place seemed a lot bigger than it did when it was used as a Spirit Halloween store and the space was filled with almost every kind of toy you can imagine. They had everything from scooters to LEGO to baby dolls. While it isn't as big as Toys R Us and does not offer quite the same amount or selection of merchandise (especially licensed items), it was just as well, if not more organized and still had quite a nice selection. My sister and I really enjoyed the book section. They had books for all ages of kids and they had quite a few the two of us remembered from our childhood. All in all, it's a really neat place to visit, especially if you have kids or even if you're a kid at heart.

This is such a cool store right from the entrance that's filled with manga (in English and French),…read morefigures of all sizes, and even has two floors. You could spend so much time wandering and taking it all in.

Imaginaire opened on October 21, 2023. It's a chain from Quebec and this location is the first one…read moreoutside of Quebec. It is located in the Rideau Centre and spans 2 floors. It's huge. It has board games, comics, collectible cards, Funko Pop, LARP gear, dice and so much more. Prices are a bit on the high side, and I didn't see any sales while I was there, but their inventory is huge and it's fun to poke around. (66)

I get excited just knowing I'm going there. This is the ultimate toy store. Helpful staff, highly…read morerecommended!

When I was planning our trip to Ottawa, I made it a point that we would come here and all my…read moreexpectations were blown out of the water. Hobby shops like this simply do not exist anymore in New York which used to have a slew of them when building plastic models was popular. There are still a couple of mom & pop places scattered around but not on the scale of the Hobby Centre. Kids these days only interact in the virtual world and hobbies like this will eventually fade away. But in the meantime, I'm going to hoard as many plastic model kits that will fit in my house. My favorite theme for building and painting plastic models are World War II planes, so I was on the hunt for a 1/72 B-17G Flying Fortress or maybe a B-29 Superfortress. Airfix (from the UK) is one of my favorite brands and they stock a lot of their line here, but neither bomber were in stock on this trip. The hunt goes on. They did have a new release of the Avro Lancaster, which I have been searching high and low. I also picked up an Italeri JAS-39 Gripen and a vintage Airfix BAC Lightning. Prices are pretty good, especially on the older vintage kits along the back wall. With the favorable US$ exchange rate, I got some good deals. If I had spent more time here, I definitely would have blown through all the cash in my wallet, never mind my spending limit on my credit card. I just might have to make a return trip to Canada with a large trailer!

I realized during this trip that I missed reviewing a number of places that I had stopped by during…read moremy last trip to Ottawa nearly four years ago. One of them was Paper Papier. Oops! Back in November 2015, I stayed in ByWard Market and walked around. I stumbled across this gem. The store sells stationery, greeting cards, fountain pens, and more. I ended up getting two greeting cards. I got one with a polar bear for a friend who absolutely loved it. I got another one that showed the Rideau Canal during the winter for another friend. I love unique cards and she was thrilled that I thought about her during my trip. I have always loved stationery and pens. This store has a fantastic selection of fountain pens. I remember longingly looking at all the Lamy pens and ink refills. There are plenty of notebooks to choose from if you like scribbling notes here and there. It's nice adopting the old-school method of doing things, especially when you cell phone, laptop, or tablet runs out of battery power. I'm so glad that this store continues to exist and thrive. It's closer to the U.S. Embassy. It's worth dropping by, especially when you are looking for cool gift ideas. (212)

This store is gorgeous! Lovely cards, decorative paper, and notebooks. They have a huge selection…read moreof the popular Leuchtturm1917 bullet journals and planners. In the back corner of the store, there's a beautiful selection of assorted plants and flowers. I also saw a couple of Filofaxes for sale hidden in a cart at the front of the store!

We used to frequent Fandom II when we lived here, but moved to Vancouver about a decade ago and…read morehaven't been back. Walking by it last night, we decided to stop in and take a look around. There was a desk parked in front of the door, and someone waiting by it. They let us know that while you could take a walk around, they preferred you know exactly what you were looking for and they'd fetch it for you. Completely understandable, considering the small store and the state of the pandemic. No problem on our end, whatsoever. We let him know we weren't looking for anything in particular, and would just come back another time, and thank you, but he was adamant that there must be one particular thing we'd be looking for. He was getting weirdly accusatory about it, when we had not at all been aggressive towards him. He asked which particular fandom we liked, and my husband said "pretty much all of them - comics, D&D, mini painting-" to which the shopkeeper responded by interrupting, with no levity at all, "that's what someone who's not actually a geek would say." The hell, guy? Rather then try and defend our extensive nerd cred with this uppity troll, we told him we'd rather spend our money elsewhere and happily visited The Comic Book Shoppe, fighting the urge to swing by on the way back with our purchases, shouting "BIG MISTAKE", Pretty-Woman-Style.

Though I have patronized Fandom II for decades and spent hundreds of dollars here, I was…read moreconsistently treated badly. I think I was willing to put up with this when I shouldn't have. It is every single time I go there that I feel the seething hostility of the owner, for no reason I could imagine. I used to think he was like Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons, surly and acted like you were lucky to be in his store, but I think he's more like the Ice King from Adventure Time, more of a misanthropic sociopath I have reached my limit for how much I can take, I would rather shop online then go here, I will never shop here again and I hope it shuts down, Ottawa would be better served by an empty lot.

Staff... Didn't want to be there, seemingly. Not super helpful…read more Prices high. Clean store. Was intersted in stuffies but just too much $$$.