The WNBA Card Podcast: Season 5 Building the Future of Women’s Sports Cards with Great Lakes Trading Card Co. [Live Recording]

Foreign. What's going on everybody? Welcome back to a new season, Season five here of the WNBA Card Podcast on the Stacking Slabs Network hosted by the one, the only Caitlyn at Cold Lunch Cards. A unique start to a season. On Sunday, May 17, Great Lakes Trading Cards hosted its second ever All Women's Athlete Trading Card Expo at a local female owned brewery, Dual Citizen Brewery in Caitlin's home base of St. Paul. The event gave space to a niche collector base of women's sports cards, vendors and collectors and aim to prove why niche segments of the hobby deserve dedicated space and and investment. Today she's joined by Spencer McCaffrey, co owner of Great Lakes Live from the show he brought to life. They talk about life as a young shop owner, why focusing on women's sports is worth it from an ROI perspective and answer the burning questions from showgoers. This is the official debut episode of season five and I'm fired up to share it with all of you today. Hopefully you have been enjoying the WNBA season. I know I have. It is a wonderful time to be a W fan and collector and we're going to keep bringing it to you here on the WNBA Card Podcast. Make sure you're following us on Instagram at WNBA Card Pod. If you want to show your support for the broader Stacking Slabs network, hit the follow button, Tell a damn friend, run on over to the patreon group. Season 5 is here. WNBA Card Podcast. Let's get into it. Welcome back loyal listeners of the Stacking Slabs Podcast to Season five, Episode one of the WNBA Card Podcast. We wrapped up season four a couple weeks ago and I'm so stoked about our debut episode of season five. You know what we say on this podcast is community driven and I'm excited about today's podcast because this is really the, the it's everything coming together about community. It is a high, high level conversation we're going to have today. Guys, let's go. We're pumped. We are pumped. And that is who you're hearing on the mic right now, if you're not watching is Spencer. He is owner, operator, local legend of Great Lakes Trading Cards, one of our amazing sponsors of the podcast here in St. Paul. And and we are actually in St. Paul today at Dual Citizen Brewing Company at an all women's sports card trading card expo. And we're doing a live podcast from up in the loft to talk all about, you know, Spencer, his business about this show, about what this show does for the hobby. We're going to talk all about the market of women's sports cards. And we also took a bunch of questions from the audience from showgoers that we're going to talk about on the podcast today. So we're going without further ado. I'd love to introduce my guest, Spencer. If people don't know who you are, can you introduce yourself? Of course. Yeah. Caitlin, really? I'll start off really quick. Thank you for having us on the podcast today. We are super, super pumped. Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here. A little background on myself. So I'm 26 years old. I am actually the youngest. This is what Chris, my business partner, tells me. I am the youngest hobby shop owner in this state of Minnesota, which is pretty crazy. I would have never expected to own a shop at 26. I was thinking more of a retirement thing for me, more background on myself. I live in Plymouth, Minnesota, born and raised, never left. Armstrong High School graduate. Go Falcons. Let's go. Yeah, just. Oh, Chris and I. Chris is my business partner. We met through the hobby. We are Great Lakes. Great Lakes is the brand I came up with back in 2020 ish time during the pandemic, got onto whatnot and then now, boom, we are here with we're almost a year old being open at the shop. We have our shop in St. Paul, 2121 Randolph. Please come check us out. Say what's up to any of you guys who have swung in already. Thank you for swinging in. And guys, just thank you for supporting Caitlyn. Caitlyn's been a homie of mine for years. We met through God. I mean, yeah, that was back was that 2ish time. Caitlyn rolled up to the table. First time we ever met, we. And I was buying dollar cards from her. Everyone was like dollar packers. Caitlyn was so organized with it. And I remember telling her this. I'm like, caitlyn, you are so organized. I want to continue a relationship with you. And now, boom, you got your podcast. I have the shop. Caitlin even gifted us my favorite gift and anyone's given us so far. Caitlyn has my o. Has our OG gift or not gift card. What am I saying? Our OG business card. Thank you. The OG business card, which I was like, it was insane for you to keep. That is. Is meant a ton to me and met a ton to Chris too. So we love that. Yeah. Spencer's been a really good friend and a really good supporter of women's sports in general. The past. I don't know. As long as I've known him the past five to six years. And what we're going to talk about today is kind of how we met, what Spencer's up to, what the shop's up to. We're going to talk all about, you know, the market and the show itself. You know, in the background, you might hear some noise that's people making deals in the brewery, having some drinks, and slinging women's sports cards. And we're going to finish with the Q and A. But let's start with this first segment, which I'm calling is life as a shop owner. I want to hear a little bit about your origin story, Spencer. You know, it's not every day that somebody that's 26 years old opens a business, let alone a card store business. You know, that's a competitive industry that has a lot of different things going on. And you and Chris, who are both really good buddies of mine, have your shop in St. Paul, I guess. When did you get into cards, first of all? And when did that change from being a hobby to something that, you know, you could monetize and turn into a business? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, so I've been into cards pretty much my whole life, thanks to my grandpa. He got me into it. I mean, I had junk wax cards for my first cards, and I just continued to collect. Kind of stopped during high school. And that time, a little bit, was kind of a. Just a time where I was kind of focusing on sports, focusing on my life down the road. And then, boom, come 20, come 20, 20, when the pandemic hit, I go under my bed, of all places, where my cards are at, and pull them out. And I'm like, yo. I'm like, this stuff is. This is amazing. I want to get back into this. It had. I mean. I mean, I remember the Giannis rookie was the one rook. It was a card that I was like, okay, let me. Let me go sell this thing. I'm gonna go sell. I had two of them. Let me go sell them. Nope, didn't sell them. Walked into my local shop that's close to me, bought a hobby box, hit a one of one like Kyle Kuzma, which, like Kyle Kuzma, both players, like, just the most random player, but that was the card. I'm like, boom, I'm gonna continue doing this. Started vending at the doer. Vending or setting up at the shows. And I just figured out, I was like, hey, I'm making. And it's a cliche answer, but I was making more money at these shows. And I would make in a week or two of work. And just figuring that out, I'm like why, why continue to work in corporate America where I can go own my own business and enjoy my life and enjoy and enrich the hobby. And then another add on to the story. I met Chris actually at that exact shop. That got me back into it. I was speaking with the shop owner saying hey, at some point, not 26 years old me, at 50 year old me opening a store. And Chris overheard that and we ended up going. I was Lee. Both left at the same time. And Chris goes, hey, let's have a conversation, let's talk about this. Let's figure out a plan and let's put this into action. And now, Boom, we are 11, 11 months into the business and it is going absolutely amazing. I would not ask for any, anything else in, in, in my life. Dream, dream, dream, dream job for sure. Hands down. I have to say as somebody that frequents the shop, I'm biased and as being as your friends, but it really is a cool place to hang out and talk sports cards. And I kind of want to get into your mind. You know, we've got a lot of really good shops in Minnesota. We've got a lot of really good shops in the Midwest and across the country, I guess. What were you guys doing differently? Why did you see that kind of gap and why did you think that you had to fill it as a business owner? For sure. Great, great question for sure. Caitlin. We, I think the, and I'll kind of add on to it. The gap that we saw in the hobby was creating a, or in the, in the shops in Minnesota was creating a community rather than just building a customer base. We want to have every customer that comes into the store that they feel welcomed. That's from anybody, kids, women and any, anybody can walk into the shop and they are going to feel welcome. They're welcome to be in the shop. And that's why we focus so much on our first showcase. You walk into the store is women's sports cards, wnba, pwhl, a bunch of other ones. Like I have a, we have a pickleball card. Shout out Annalie Waters the pickleball goat. We have those in the store and we just, we look at it and I was actually had a great, great interaction today with this little girl. I think she was like 4 or 5 and she got, and she was showing. She was sitting with her grandpa and she had just her binder of cards. Let me see your binder. And I'm going through it. And she had her PWHL organized, she had her Gopher Girls hockey cards and we ended up having a good customer of us make us some Gopher Girls basketball cards. So I'm like, let me gift these to her. And her and her grandpa just had the biggest smile on their face. And that's why we do it. We're doing it to enrich the hobby in the, in the women's space and just haven't given people a welcoming space in. I'll kind of touch on our TCG side of things. We are one of the most high paying percentages on buying tcg. So Pokemon Magic the Gathering one piece. Lorcana. We want to give that community too, a place where they can feel that they're going to get a fair market value for their cards rather than getting the 30 to 40% that some shops may offer. That's quite low. We don't usually give a full percentage out publicly, but we are higher than that, I will tell you that. So we always try to be super fair with how we do our business. And at the end of the day, not trying to boast or anything, but we do have 105 five star reviews on Google with zero being below five stars. Jordan Truck speaks for itself, I will say. Yes. I'm proud to be one of those five star reviews. I think like when you talk about transparency, you talk about being fair and you talk about being welcoming. Those are things that are not common in our hobby, especially for people that are not white men in their 70s who have been here for ages. The hobby was built for those people and now we're seeing this influx, especially with the growth of women's sports and the growth of women's sports cards. The that there are more than just that one contingent in the hobby and they need a space to feel welcomed and belonging. And Great Lakes has been that place for me, obviously. And it's that place for a lot of people. As we've seen from today's show. People show up and say, yeah, I stopped by the shop and that's how I knew this show was happening. Or I stopped by a show and I heard about it and it just, I don't know, you think about it full circle. Spence and I met five years ago. You know, I, I was talking to somebody here at the show that, you know, I don't really remember, like being a kid and having a bunch of little girlfriends that collected as kids and now we have them walking around and we're the people that they're looking up to that's. That's real difference. That's real community building that's happening and that's because of you, Spencer. So really, really great work. I had something really quick. Yeah, go for it. Add on really quick, guys. So we actually. So Chris and I, we sponsor two of the professional women's tackle football teams. One will be the Minx and the other one's going to be the Vixen. I was talking with our Vix. Our Vixen sponsor, Emily, great player. She's a tight end, super solid rookie. She's a rookie this year. Hopefully gets rookie of the year. Yeah. She was told me a story about how people are coming up to her. Young girls who may or may not even know that a tackle football team is even available to them. That that's just going to broaden their horizons and grow their. Just their, their popularity. Because I guarantee you if you asked any I'll throw in there. I can't any white male in, in this state. Who is the Vixen? Who is the Minx? I've had a couple guys ask me today and I'm like, they're a legitimate professional sports team. They, I mean the Vixen right now are undefeated. They beat a team 56 to 0. I mean no shade to the packers, but the packers can't do that, I'll tell you that. Go Browns. Let's go. We got to take the mic away from him real quick. That was too much there on the Packers. We can't get that in there. No, but I think your point in saying that is that women's sports general are growing at an unprecedented rate and that your shop is taking real initiative and real money to put your money where your mouth is in terms of uplifting those things. So that's great. So we went into origin of Spencer, origin of Great Lakes. I kind of want to hear a little bit about what's it like running a shop, especially as somebody who's really in it and loves it. I want to hear kind of like when you get up and get up every day and you go to work, are you happy to be there? Are you excited? Is it just like living a dream? And I'd love to pick your brain on any trends you're seeing in terms of women's sports cards. So. Absolutely. Caitlin. Yeah, I really, really love running the shop. I mean it's a absolute dream job that I never thought I would have ever. I mean my day to day, my day to day life now as like my. For my working profession is legitimately Pricing, buying and selling pieces of paper that are in or cardboard that is in plastic sleeves or in hard things by psa. I mean it's crazy to think about that. That is my daytime job. That Judas six days out of the week, closed on Sundays. We're never realistically we are never, we're never closed. I was working on something last night that I can't talk about sadly but working on something last night at home at 11. So it's, it's a full time life thing for me. But I would do it every single day otherwise too. Just coming in and the typical shop owner stuff, ordering inventory, making sure we are up on our social medias, make sure Instagram's looking good, making sure I'm engaging with my customers, engaging with everybody. And just doing that is a big part of my job. And just working, working with just on the TCG side of things were huge. Pokemon is massive right now and so is women's sports. Women's sports right now is by far at the peak, the peak of where it's been at. But I don't think that's, it's not gonna, it's gonna continue to rise. It. They're massive, massive, massive growth in the W space and that's why it's such a crucial part of my and Chris's business. So we're based in Minnesota which is the home state of the minute number one. No, no Liberty, no Aces. The number one team in the WNBA is the Minnesota Links. Perry, reach out, reach out. We can have a debate. Okay, thank you. I agree completely with that. I sign off on we are in the home state of one of the legacy teams of the WNBA has a rich history of women's sports in Minnesota. I guess when people come into the shop is it links that they're looking for when they're looking for women's sports or have we grown past just that local kind of regional aspect of it? Absolutely. Yeah. We for sure have grown in terms of people looking for other players. We are seeing like some of the hot players people are asking for it now would be the new draftees, Lauren Betts, Olivia Miles Paquez. Easy fud we with Minnesota being the hometown of so many absolute legends like Paige Beckers. People are asking about Paige. We're also asked people are the typical ones like the, the Caitlyn Clark, the Sophie Cunningham, the Lexi hall, those the ones you're typically seeing. But also too we're seeing a lot more people asking just for some other random players like Sidney Coulson and I Mean, who else are we getting ready to. So, so many other really good role players. Audi crooks, who is going to be an absolute legend and beast in the W, in my opinion. And it's just cool. So I'm really, really excited to see just the growth of not even not the W, but also women's college basketball as well, which is huge growth. And yeah, for sure, it's more than just the links. Yes, the links are a huge part of our business and in the W space. But yes, there is more than just the links now in Minnesota, for sure. I love walking into your shop and being able to find a Lindsey Whalen autograph at any time. That's a special thing you don't get at most shops, you know, like, that's an experience. The last question I kind of have on, you know, shop life is I'm curious about your opinion on this, about what kind of surprises you when people walk in and they're asking for certain things. Is there anything that sticks out as a surprise for you or is it kind of predictable these days? You're 11 months in. What's up with customer demand? I would, I would say this for us being still so new. I think really we, no question is a surprise to me because we do still have those customers that are new to us or they're new to a different space. I had a customer who switched from doing Pokemon and now he's doing football. And I'm trying to enrich him into doing the women's sports stuff too, because he is such a good customer and I want to see him get the biggest return for his dollar. And I think that's the WNB space to a tee. His girlfriend is getting into the pwhl, which is great to see. And that's another thing I'll kind of go back to. Your question is the PWL is a massively growing community, too. Sadly, Upper Deck isn't doing that. It didn't doing that league justice. But they'll grow at some point after I plan on talking to him at the National. So we'll. We'll figure that out for sure. For sure. Being the state of hockey, I think that Minnesota definitely has a huge collector base of pwhl and there is a lot of overlap between people who collect WNBA cards and collect PWHL cards. So, you know, when you walk into a shop and you see that kind of selection, that is not normal, that, that is not the, the status quo when you walk into a shop. I remember growing up when I walked into a shop, it Was like, packers only packers everything. And that was it. There was not a lick of anything else. So to be able to go into a shop that not only embraces diversity of selection, but also embraces the diversity of the customers that they serve is really refreshing. And I don't just say that because you guys are my sponsor. I really do mean that. That's true. We appreciate it. Yeah, I'm just going to add on to kind of Caitlin said too. So if you guys come into the shop, please come in, come see us. We do break stuff down. So we have our WNBA case that's going to have. The top shelf is going to be all of our. Some of our chase cards, like our autograph cards, our graded cards. Then we have player stacks. So you get your Asia Wilson's, your Sophie Cunninghams, your Caitlin Clarks, we got those Second shelf, boom is going to be all links. And then our. Over on the side is going to be all of our college players. Bottom shelf will be sealed wax, pwl, all that stuff. And it goes over. We do the same thing in all, every category. Twins cards, sealed wax for baseball, Vikings, cards, Timberwolves, basketball, all that stuff. And then TCG is totally different. But we're not talking TCG today. Yeah, just that, that. That kind of diversity of selection is something that's really important. And what we've heard at the show today is it's important to have, you know, WNBA and PWL and these other leagues, and it's. It's huge. All right. I kind of want to transition us out of this, like, hobby shop owner perspective. As much as I love hearing about it, I want to move on to our next one, which is kind of about like a pulse check on the market. You know, you live and breathe sports cards, transactions. Like, I bet you literally dream about it when you go to bed. I guess I want to hear your thoughts on, you know, past, current and future. So let's start with this. Where do you think women's sports cards kind of are right now in the market? Do you think they're at their peak? I know you said something like that before, but they're not quite there. Do you think we're just at the beginning or do you think we're kind of at the, you know, the hypest spot? We as well for sure said. I think I misspoke before. We are for sure still in the baby steps of collecting. I mean, even for there being. You go over to. Let's go basketball. Basketball has 40 plus. That's even. That's a tiny number, 40 plus different sets where you go over to the WNBA and the WNBA has five or six. That's a fraction of what they should be having. And going over pwhl side, there is four. Four formats, two hobby boxes that have released and two blaster boxes of different years. That's it. So absolutely we are in the beginning stages of where women's sports cards can be. I think where we're at just in terms of, I mean I was driving in today to the show. Ion had their billboard up of Ion Saturday basketball. That's huge. And I think we are just still in. We are, of course, we're in the infancy stages of where the hobby of women's cards will be. And there is so much room to grow. And that's why we, that's what we put on the show today is to grow that influence in the hobby. I completely agree. I won't even add anything onto that. I'll just ask my next question, which is what do you think feels different today about this segmented hobby as compared to say when we met or two to three years ago? What, what's changed? I will say this, I believe. I mean, back in the day, hobby boxes of WNBA were cheap. They were clearanced out. I remember in preparation for opening the shop, I bought two cases, I think it was 20, 23 Prism basketball blasters, WNBA on clearance from Steel City for like 250 a case, a case of 30 or case of 40 blasters. So I got two cases for 500 bucks. Now you can't even access that case of blasters for under a thousand. I mean, box pricing has gone up. Those boxes are now not clearanced out. They are now sold for an insane amount of money. I mean, I remember selling in the shop Caitlin Clark Origins Hobby box for fourteen hundred dollars, which that, that beat out last year's men's box by easily $800. So that's a totally different thing. And I think too we are now seeing when you go to any big show, most dealers now are going to have some kind of women's card in their case. And if they don't, they're just missing out. I mean, I will say remembering at the last show we did at the big Minnesota card show in September, you walk up to any showcase, Caitlin Clark galore. Not a ton of movement with her being hurt and kind of in that off season period, but people are now dabbling in it and giving it a try. But even in the space now with us, I did a lot of whatnot before doing the shop. And there was no such thing as a WNBA breaker. That just breaks wnba, which we have today at the show. And it's crazy to think about just the accessibility of cards now is so much different. You couldn't walk into Target and Walmart and find those WNBA blasters where now you can. You can walk in there, you can find the mega. You can find the blaster box, you can find this, the cello pack of. Of women's soccer cards, which is huge. And there it was never a part ever. And now luckily seen that Panini and all the other companies like shout out to Leaf. I love Leaf. Leaf does such a good job with their women's sports cards. With them doing the women's. Women's of sport hobby boxes, which is just women's cards. Massive for the hobby and they do such a good job. And we would have never seen that pre Covid that box wouldn't have existed. I could be misspeaking. Leaf could have continued to do that. But it's cool to see those, those. Those kind of specialty boxes being available in the hobby. I mean, I'll add on. Chris and I opened up a whole case of magnificent, which is the national treasures of Leaf. We pulled Annalee Waters Goat, a pickleball card and a Cameron Brink auto, which those would never appear in any other format. That's not under Leaf, in my opinion. I just think the kind of proliferation of products and the availability and also the accessibility of them has brought in a lot of different people, whether that be people that were coming from different segments of the hobby or people that are coming just brand new, just have never collected cards before, but maybe they kind of have that collector gene in their body that, you know, the proliferation of products really enables them to come participate. I guess I want to hear from you. When people are coming into the shop, are you finding that most people are. When they're looking for women's sports cards, are most people coming from, say, the NBA and they're like, oh, you know, I'm. I'm kind of hearing about this whole WNBA thing taking off or. I'm mostly a football collector, but, you know, I live in Minnesota and I love the links. I'd like to collect some of their cards. Or is it people that are just brand new to cards that are coming in and buying women's sports cards? Yeah. So for sure, we are seeing, I think a lot of. A lot of OG OG WNBA collectors. They're coming in quite a bit because they know that we are the shop that carries their items. I would say also too, yes, we do have a lot of people that are going to be coming out of the football space, basketball space, even tcg, they're jumping over and they're doing women's sports cards because that is something that's important to them and that they want to grow and be able to join a community like we have it today at the show or join the community that we have in the shop to grow their hobby and grow their kind of their assets too. And yes, we for sure, for sure, for sure have a ton of new collectors coming into the WNBA space who are coming to visit us because we have all the options for them and that we care to take the time to talk with them about it, teach them, hey, this is how you can take care of your cards. Come see us. Hey, you want to grade those cards? Come see us. We don't grade, sadly in the shop because we're too small of a shop. But we're going to go and tell you, hey, that card looks good. Send it off. Let me know when you get that 9 and 10. Go for it. So for sure, yes, we have the old school WNBA collectors, the people getting out and for sure, for sure, for sure. Those new collectors which are so crucial to our business and to the growth of the hobby in the W space by far. That's great to hear. I feel like whenever I go into the shop I meet somebody new and they always have something to say about women's sports cards or another niche community. So it's just super cool to see that space available. I kind of want to look ahead with the next couple questions, Spence, and talk to you about where you see the future, where you see the future of cards, where you see the future of your own shop, about women's sports in general. I guess I'll start out with this one. Where do you see Great Lakes trading cards kind of growing from here? Obviously you guys are investing real money into supporting local teams like you said, like the Vixen and the Minx. You're putting on a show that brings out collectors and puts them in a, a space that is like a female owned women's brewery. A real place for collectors to come and feel welcome. What's next? What do you see next for your shop? Absolutely, yeah, we, for sure. Our goals. Our goals. Our goals we've been telling a lot of our WNBA and women's card collecting customers is we want to sponsor the Lynx and the Frost. Those are both two teams we are aggressively going after to become corporate sponsors. Though we believe in Their game. We believe in their growth and we believe in that they would be a crucial part of our business to help us grow down the road. Chris and I, we'd love to open up another shop. That's for sure on the horizon. I mean Chris coming out of. He was a restaurant guy. Chris has owned two or three restaurants in his time of his working career. For sure. We want to have Great Lakes 2.0 at some point figure out where that's at. Would be a big part of us. So for sure growing that even too. Even if that's not a. Doesn't come out for four or five years. We want to grow our community. We have in St. Paul because they had a lack of a shop. It was a hobby oasis. There was no multi dimensional full service, as we call ourselves, hobby shop that offers the Pokemon, the everything, the sports, all that stuff. There was, there was no. That didn't exist. I mean when I have a. My. One of my first customers in were three young kids that had to go half an hour to an hour to go to a shop in Minnesota and it's in St. Paul, the capital of Minnesota and they didn't have a card store to go to to find sports cards. Made no sense to me. And I'm h. We are so blessed to be in St. Paul. The St. Paul community has embraced us so much and we want to for sure give back to that community. We plan on sponsoring the Cap City youth girls flag football team too. We've been approached about doing that and we absolutely will hope to be. Great Lakes on the backs of those jerseys, signs up at the games and us cheering them on. I'm. I want Cap City to be a state championship girls playing football team. They're going to do it. I believe it. So we talked a lot about kind of this idea of community building and how it's a tenant of your business model. I guess I want to dig in if you're, if you're willing. I want to dig into kind of how important that is and why it's important. Most business owners, you know, they're only concerned about the bottom line. And then once in a while, you know, we'll give back. When, when we're doing well, we'll give back. Right. But you guys are new, you guys are young, you're new to the business. You're in a place that obviously has demand. I guess how important and why. Why is it important to be community building? And I guess I'll, I'll add my point which is that, you know, this Podcast is all about community building and you guys sponsored this for that reason. But I guess if you could just shed a little bit of light into the philosophy of why you guys are kind of, you know, putting such an emphasis on that. Absolutely. Yeah. So I'll kind of go backstory for Chris and I. Chris and I, we come from just more of that middle class lifestyle of living, not silver spoon driven. We worked, him and I both worked for what we have. And I am so blessed to have a lot of people who have given back to me to build my career and build up who I am as a person. And for us, St. Paul is such a, as I call it, the small town in a big city. They are so small. St. Paul is such a, like local business oriented city where they would rather go and support us and go buy it off ebay or go buy it off of Amazon. Very similar to. I was at the local little coffee shop and this one lady was like, I, I'll pay the, I'll pay eight bucks for a cup of coffee. Just due to the fact that she wants to support local business. And we want to give back to the people that support us. That's the most important part. We can grow, they can grow. And that's such a crucial part of why, why we do. What we do is to be able to. When you're in a circumstance of being able to give back in a com. In a space where it's relatively easy to give back to a community that supports you and it wants to see you grow, they're going to grow as well. And, and it's just, it's just, it's important, it's important to be a part of your community, truly. Just give back. It's like at the end of the day, I, I tell people this all the time. I, I don't do it for the money. I do it because I have a love for cars and love for making people happy. I mean, my goal in life is to make people happy and leave, leave that legacy. If I leave, if I leave my family, nothing. At the end, at the, at the end of this, sorry, but I'm going to leave an impact on the community that is going to be, going to be big. That's my goal. Absolutely. That makes me so emotional. I feel like when I think about us meeting five years ago and we're dealing dollar cards at a gym, in a church and we're meeting each other for the first time and now you own a shop and you're on the podcast with me, it just Feels full circle. And I guess that's kind of where I want to end that segment and transition us into talking about why we're here today, which is the sports card expo that you guys put on, that Great Lakes put on. We're at. We're in the loft of a brewery right now in like a small office. And underneath us people are beneath us at the tables. And I want to start with kind of figuring out why you felt this show was needed, why did you put it on and if you could tell kind of the listeners what this show is about, kind of the philosophy behind it and all that kind of good stuff. Absolutely, yeah. So kind of backstory in Minnesota in general. As for shows, there is really no. There's not a lot of niche shows. The shows are. We do. You can set up with Pokemon, you can set up with sports. You can set up with anything. But there was not a. There was not a show that was geared towards having women vendors, women, women's cards. And when we see a grow. When we see the growth of the hobby turning towards a lot of women's sports and just women's sports, even outside of cards has how big that has grown. We're seeing like Paige Beckers on a coach commercial. We would have never seen that before the growth of women's sports. So that's why we set up this show and we chose dual Citizen because dual Citizen, as Caitlin's added in there is that there's a women brewer, womenly women owned and they also support the local huge organizations. Like today we're doing for every pint of beer with a Great Lakes lager that we're doing for every pint that someone buys, they're donating a dollar which for a brewery they. I would. I'm so pumped that they're doing that because it's going to a youth girls running organization that's going to help them propel their. Their equipment, their travel fees, all that stuff. So that's huge. And that was brought on by Kyle, who is our guy who we've been contacting with to do the show. Shout out to Kyle. He's doing a great job for us. And we wanted to pick a space that was close to us that we can be accessible. There's 94, which is a major roadway in Minnesota is it funnels you right into the show. We want it to be accessible. We all the two to have. I want to see people that you may not see come to a show because they don't feel welcome in the show space or they don't see they're gonna go walk the show and they might find us. Caitlyn and I or our friends set up with the W cards, but they've seen all those already, and now, boom, we have all these people that are coming together to vend and sell these cards that they truly believe in and that they. That they love this. Every vendor we have in this show right now loves women's sports, women's cards, and that's why they're here. I think it's. Somebody said it to me. They were saying, oh, I really enjoyed, like, these big shows where there's hundreds of tables, but, you know, I only see women's sports cards one, once every 10, 20, 30 tables. But I come in here and I know I'm going to see it at every single table that is valuable. That kind of niche collector base. This is what they're kind of dying for. And it matches the model. Not to, like, you know, plug the podcast here, but it matches the model of the stacking slabs platform, is that we want to give those niche collector places a place where they feel welcomed and heard and that they're. They're going to have their expectations met. They're not just going to hope, oh, I hope I find a card, and, you know, maybe it's going to be of the team that I like. It's like, no, we're going to have a full selection. Every single table is going to be able to talk to you about what exactly you came for. And I think that's super valuable. I want to ask you, I guess, what's kind of like the challenges of putting together something like this? I mean, was it super easy? Did everybody just get along? Was it hard? I guess what kind of was challenging and how has it kind of exceeded your expectations today? Absolutely. I mean, the challenges we face for sure is. First off, when Chris. I want. Chris and I wanted to do the show, we had to figure out, where are we going to do this? What. What space is going to openly welcome us in, to take over their space potentially, and to be able to do it in the way that we can give back to our vendors and have them have a good time and have them feel that they can be able to make money at these shows or just even. Even just to connect and network with people. So that's a huge challenge. And also getting, like, realistic. No one ever thinks about it, but you physically have to put in it, put up the tables. You got to get the vendors to come out. You have to coordinate. I had to send out emails which is super simple. I have to send out the emails hey, when to show up, what where to go, where to do all this. So that's those can be challenges and then kind of working with oh hey we had a couple of people who couldn't show up today for the show which is totally fine. No worries. But re figure out hey do we need to fill those tables? Have we oversold, undersold? Those are always going to be the challenges. And just figuring out will people come in did we market the show properly? Do we have the right people here? Do we have the right amenities which we absolutely this time feel like we knocked it out of the park with stuff and all kind of. I don't think Caitlin is on the thing but we have two of the mix in the Vince the mixing and mix it the Vixen and the Minx are here our corporate sponsors. We have she rips who are their their local WNBA breaker. They're here doing that. The logger that's getting donations just taco truck Taco truck that Caitlin's been eaten a bunch of it's been good, it's been good but no just having having that is a crucial part to bring people out. So coordinating that is very, very crucial for for just shows in general. Okay, so let's talk about what we've heard today. We've been here for a couple hours. We've solicited questions I guess what has kind of I want to tap into like what what what what met your expectations? How do you think it's going to go for the rest of the show? What have you been hearing? Give me kind of a pulse check of of how it's going to Absolutely. So I mean I'll say this. We for sure have seen an increase in attendance. A lot more people not sure total numbers wise but we've had a lot of people are saying hey I saw this online. I wanted to check it out and some one guy's like this blew me away. He's like I usually this guy doesn't do any any cars in general. He saw it pop up somewhere. I think it might have been a dual citizen customer. He came in and he bought his first card today which and that's huge to be able to and it wasn't honestly with a different vendor but to be the like I I my favorite thing is I love being the person who sell you your first card. That's huge. That's a memory that I'm going to have forever and that's going to stick with me the whole time, which is great. And yes, the for sure the pulse of the show today it's busy. People are having an amazing time. They're finding cards they may not have ever been able to find that we have. I mean I did a trade with a guy today who is just today finished his PWHL 20, 24, 25 set for the card I had. Amazing, amazing. And shout out to set collectors. You guys are the bread and butter in the hobby and continue to compete doing your sets. I love to love to see it. This show has been awesome. I guess I want to ask you a couple rapid fire questions before we get into our Q and A. I guess I want to hear from you as somebody who's manning the booth. You're also walking around hearing from vendors. Who do you think the most asked about player is at the show? To be honest with you, I don't know if it's necessary Player. We've had a ton of people ask for PWHL today. A ton. Which not a ton of vendors had it, which is totally fine. Things that pwhl. I feel like a lot of people are asking for Olivia Miles. I had a lot of questions for that. Sadly, Olivia Miles does not have a ton of cards, tops. Come on, let's go. Panini. Let's go. Shout out. Let's get out. Come on. And otherwise too, I think we've had a couple people have been asking. I think the, the Clarks are there, the pages are there. Paige has been really asked about. But also too, a lot of people are asking about the case hits, the kabooms, the subleams, the downtowns, all that stuff. Those have been asked a lot too. But I think for sure, pwl, in my opinion what I've been hearing has been at the big ask. What do you think, Kaitlyn? I'm getting a lot of Maya Moore at my table. A lot of people asking about legends. I think there's like kind of respect in women's sports specifically towards legends, maybe more so than other categories. Because in other categories I think there's a lot of folks that are chasing kind of the money part of it. And when the money says, you know, this is a cheap card of a legend, well, why do I want it then? Well, in women's sports, I think a lot of people want it even more when it's affordable, you know, and the legends are ultra affordable. When you can go buy a Sue Bird autograph on in a here at the show for 30 bucks. But you could have to go over and Buy Rosha Shay on the Hawks rookie auto for a hundred when the guy is a bench warmer. Come on, guys. Legit. This is my big ass. Guys, please, please, please, please, please continue to buy the Legends and let's get their market up. Let's do it. Sub Bird needs to go up. Becky Hammond, Sylvia Fowles, Maya Moore, all those. Let's not, let's don't hump and dump, but let's, let's bump up the Legends, guys. Come on, let's go. I completely agree. I cosigned that. Okay, my last question for you before we get into the q and A is. I don't know, what do you, what do you hope that this show, the all Women's athletes Card Expo, what we're calling it, what do you hope this show represents in maybe five years, 10 years? What do you think that legacy is? I think the legacy. My. This is a huge, huge goal and huge reach. But let's see if we can potentially try to do the WNBA and Women's National. Let's figure out that let's have people across the country coming for this show. Multi day. Let's have people come out for this. Yeah, I think it'd be a huge part. I'd love to grow it. I. If anyone wants to pair up with us and help us grow, grow that or we move it out of Minnesota. I'll travel wherever. So if you, if anyone else wants to partner and pair up with us to build the women's sports card national, calling out other shop owners who love the women's cards, reach out to us. Please do. Reach out to Caitlin, get in contact with Chris and I. We would love to have it be the Women's National. It'd be huge. It would be massive. Please and thank you. It's. It is, it is a need. Absolutely. It's an absolute. That. That is my dream. Hopefully we can make that come true. But let's, let's kind of round out today's episode. We. We did a solicitation of our card show goers, of our fans and we collected some questions. So I think we're getting handed them here. We're going to start out with a banger. I'm going to ask Spencer a bunch of questions and kind of get your take on it. I'm happy to add some color wherever you want, but this is mostly to hear Spencer's thoughts. So our first question is do you see people turning more towards physical trading cards because of the speed of technology taking over the hobby example, Pokemon, TCG app etc. What are your thoughts on this? I think for sure there are a lot of people turning to the physical, tangible assets of cards. Mean, I'll shout out Kevin o'. Leary. Kevin o' Leary is. Is an. A shark tank investor. I mean, everyone knows him. The guy, he's getting into cards because he sees those tangible assets. Something you can hold in your hand is better than a stock or better than an NFT or a bitcoin. You can hold it in your hand and you can transact it a lot faster. And we're seeing that a lot transacting in the W world where, I mean, we're seeing that like eBay. EBay is massive for the W whatnot. When they sent out their quarterly thing for us, whatnot was up 3% over the NBA as a category. So, yeah, people want cards, they want the autographs, they want the autograph jerseys, they want those tangible assets across the board. And we see it, we're seeing a lot in the Pokemon space too, is people are investing in Pokemon because it goes up. And same with W cards, they're going up as well too. So for sure, tangible over digital. I agree. And I think in this age where everything seems to be technology or nothing, digital or nothing, that physical kind of gets that premium aspect, you feel like you're actually engaging with the world. When so much of what we engage with in the world and in the hobby is online. When you have that physical aspect, we understand how valuable that is and it makes it easier for us to assign value and monetary value to it. So amazing question there. I'd love to have an entire conversation around the physical aspect of collecting. I think it's. It's something that's almost like primal or like real, like inch, like integral to like the human experience is being able to hold something and touch it and say, this is mine because. Because I own it. You know, so much of what we see these days, you know, think about, like Amazon, you think about these big digital storefronts. It's like you're practically just renting an online space. You can have your subscription, but once that subscription runs out, it is not yours with a card. It's yours and it's yours until you don't want to get rid of it. And that is worth. That is worth something. So, yeah. Also, I'll add one more thing. It also adds in, as we love at Great Lakes, the community aspect. You can. You meet people and you transact those cards rather than doing a trade with. It's probably a robot. If you're transacting stock Bitcoin NFTs, you're transacting not with a human, but. And there's no community there. There is no community in transacting over the Internet. And we want to build the transactions in the community. All right, our next question is how does women's sports cards culture differ from the men's and what do you love about this culture? Great question. I think in the women's space, the women, like WNBA cards, for example, are so, so hard to chase down your grails. I mean, I forget his name, but he has been. He's a local Minnesota guy and he was chasing after the platinum and gold medallions of Lynx Legends. And for him that those cards don't pop up. So you have to go do your save searches on ebay and find those cards. So I for sure will say women's cards are transacted a lot lower for grails because those grail cards are kept rather than. You jump over to the NBA side of things where those cards are transacted way more because people, you see, you see a LeBron auto pop up. LeBron auto one of one pop up on eBay or transacted in these YouTube videos or on Instagram or Tick tock, you're seeing that transacted a ton more rather than like a fee gold one of one or cards like that because those don't come out of collections. They're there and they won't see the light of day until they're potentially transacted, which most of the times they will never. You, you, you will never see them again ever. I agree with that assessment. I think the staying power of women's cards and collections, they're so much stickier is the word that we say on the podcast is they stick in your. Your collection. They don't. People don't part with anything. And that's a good, good for them. That is a true collector mentality. I will say the W collectors are true collectors. The NBA collectors have true collectors, but there are a lot of flippers in that space. Yeah, for sure. Okay, our next question is, what do you think was a big turning point for women's trading cards becoming so big today? Absolutely. I think. For sure. I will give a nod to Caitlyn Clark, Paige Beckers, Juju Watkins, all the goats of the college game. I mean, I think, I can't remember the exact statistics, but the women's national championship game had more views than the men's the past two years. That's huge. Huge, huge. Huge. I could be wrong. I would take it back if I'm wrong, but I think that's what, that's what the networks were saying and that is a big part about it. And also too, you go like I went to the Link sky game a couple like last year and they. And the. The players come up to you and they talk to you. Go to the NBA side of things doesn't happen ants to ants. Too big time to talk to anybody. Yeah, we definitely see that. That's also like Minnesotan culture, I feel with the L flares. They love to talk to folks. Yeah, it's a big part of Minnesota sports to be a part of the community. So twins ex first. If you ain't winning championships, you got to talk to your fans that tell you that much. Okay, our next question comes from our friend Jeff, who wrote his name on here, so he's not going to be anonymous. From Jeff in 10 years, how will the hobby view rookie cards of top players from the Panini unrivaled release versus the WNBA sets? Will it be similar to collegiate cards or is this something different? Wow. Okay, Jeff, thanks for that question, man. That is a deep, deep question. I feel it could be very similar to the college cards, but I don't. It's. It's such a. That's a really tough question. I think they'll be, in my opinion, they'll be similar to the college cards in terms of like once the ladies get their pro cards, the. The monetary value will go down, but it won't. It won't go down as much as it does in other spaces. People still want their college cards at the same relative value as their pro cards. It's not like the NBA and NFL where the college cards tank when the pro cards come out. I think I agree. I think also the nature of the unrivaled release being an instant product just kind of like inherently devalues it compared to the like Fox production. But I agree. Okay. Our next question comes from our friends Kristen and Matt. They're asking which rookie from this year's draft class do you think will have the most impact on their team this season? Easiest question of the day. Olivia Miles. Impact is in is insane. Chris and I went to the opener. Olivia Miles is hands down she's a beast. Dropping 21 in her debut, dropping dimes to Kmac. When she starts dropping dimes to fee, it's over. No. No more commissioner dress. That's all I'm saying. Agreed. Next question. Which new WNBA team will have a better season the fire or the Tempo? Oh, I think that question itself is too soon to tell, but let me give it nod. I gotta give a nod to one of my favorite players, Haley Jones. We're going fire. Haley Jones is one of my favorite going fire. My hot take is that I think the fire need to be investigated for tanking for Juju Watkins. I think that the tempo are much more talented team with a deep roster with Sykes and Mabry being the face of the country of Canada. I will give it to the tempo, but I understand your bias because you love her on the fire. So I. Valid, valid, valid. I think it's. I think I. I will second that with Caitlyn. I just got to give my nod. Yeah, Haley Jones. I got it. All right, next question. This one's kind of funny. This is written with some ad libs in here, so I'll do my best to capture them. Why don't all the head coaches cough cough. Cheryl Reeve cough, cough. Have WNBA cards like the players. I feel I'll kind of give a. I actually spoke with the guy who gave us this question. I feel that Panini sadly doesn't recognize the coaches as much because those cards aren't perceived as good cards in basketball or football. But I think if they did put them into the women's, into WNBA hobby boxes and stuff like that, they would be collected and would be sought after. I feel too that the answer I got to the guy was that Cheryl Reeves doesn't want to be on a card. But maybe, maybe not. But she is the goat of coaches, so I don't know if she has time to take a picture or anything. But who know, who knows? We'll see if Panini ends up putting all the coaches in there, they can bill us for that suggestion and we'll take a royalty on that. Thank you. Okay, our next question. This is kind of a hot take here, Spence, so I'm excited to hear your thoughts on this. Do you think that Caitlin Clark has proven she deserves the hype behind her name? Great question. I'm actually happy this one got picked. Personally for me, I believe Caitlin Clark still has a lot to prove in the wnba. I will say yes, the injuries do hurt her chances, but I will say I personally cannot consider her the goat of the W ever when you have players like Maya Moore and Subur and all those legends. Yes, Clark is a great player. She does impressive, impressive things. Things. But I realistically, the hype still is to be seen in her game. I personally, my favorite player from that draft class is Angel Reese. I think angel has this the chance to be a hall of famer in the league due to her size and due to just her sheer ability on the offensive boards and scoring. But time will tell. I think I would consider Caitlin Clark the goat of marketing in the wnba. I think we can give her that crown today and then stay tuned for vote of on the court. But nobody can dispute what she's done for women's sports 100%. Okay, our next question. Who do you think will be the new face of the W in five years? Oh, the new face of the W in five years. Dang, that is a good question. I'm gonna take over the mic quick and say Juju Watkins. One million percent. I think that's. I, I would second the juju. I think that's a really. I think, I think for sure juju. I, I think juju could, could be the goat at some point in the W for sure. She's unreal, but hot take with how well she's been playing Paige Beckers, Minnesota native. Let's go. I like that. Take Spence. We'll leave it with that. We're gonna, you know, cap off today's podcast with a personal question for Spence. This is coming from somebody during the show. What's your 1 1? Just one thing, Spence, because I know there's a million things your favorite part of being a shop owner. Oh, I enjoy building a community every single day in my store and working to grow every part of the hobby that needs to be grown, from women's sports to just getting more people to collect cards because they're going to realize people who don't collect cards, they're missing out. I love it by far. I think that's where our conversation ends today. But I want to say thank you to the listeners. Thank you to Great Lakes for not only sponsoring the podcast, but also putting on, you know, a first of its kind show here in Minnesota and hopefully continuing to build this environment both at the shop. If you guys are in St. Paul, head on over. DM them. DM me. If you're there. I'd love to come stop and say hi. They'll be in the shop. And hopefully this show continue to just boom. And we'll see similar things kind of replicate across the country. I think I really feel bad for the folks that aren't in Minnesota because you don't have this to come up to. They're missing out. And yeah, all. To all the guys, all the listeners and viewers, thank you so much for supporting Caitlin. Caitlin's a good, really good friend of ours and she's doing great work. Shout out to you Brett too. We are missing having you here, man. But yeah, we are super, super pumped to continue to grow women's sports card, wnba, PWL and the hobby in general. We'll leave it at that and we'll see you guys on our next episode. We're going to be doing an entire series around team collectors. So we're going to have a team collector on from every single WNBA team to talk about the philosophy behind team collecting. If you're looking for a team to cheer for, hopefully this this season of WNBA Card POD will give you some reasons to pick and choose. With that, anything else to say to the listeners? I'll leave it with Los Links. Oh Los Links. W that was great. Such a fun, authentic and real conversation between Caitlin and Spencer around WNBA cards and collecting. Glad the season started that way. Caitlin has a whole lot of plans that she'll be delivering here on the pod. I'm excited to share those episodes. Happy collecting. Happy WNBA season. Take care. We'll talk to you soon.