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 gonna have today guys let's go we are 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 saint paul and we are actually in saint 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 the show about what the show does for the hobby we're gonna 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 gonna talk about on the podcast today so 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 twenty six 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 twenty six 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 and i are business partner we met through the hobby we are great lakes great lakes is the brand i came up with back in twenty twenty ish time during the pandemic got on the 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 saint paul twenty one twenty one 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 caitlin caitlin's been a homie of mine for years we met through god i mean yeah that was back was that twenty twenty ish time one yeah caitlin rolled up to the table first time we ever met and we and i was rebuying dollar cards from her everyone's like dollar packers caitlin was so organized with it i remember telling her this i'm like caitlin you are so organized i wanna continue our relationship with you and now boom you got your podcast i have the shop caitlin even gifted us my favorite gift and and anyone's given us so far caitlin has my o has our o g gift or or not gift card what am saying our o g business card business card thank you the o g business card which i was like it was insane for you to keep that is is meant a ton to me and meant 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 gonna talk about today is kind of how we met what spencer's up to what the shop's up to we're gonna 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 gonna 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 wanna hear a little bit about your origin story spencer you know it's not every day that somebody that's twenty six 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 saint 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 continue to collect kinda stopped during high school in that time little bit it was kind of a just a time where i was kinda focusing on sports focusing on my life down the road yeah and then boom come twenty come twenty twenty 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 wanna get back into this it had i mean i mean i remember the giannis rookie was the one rookie it was the 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 of all players like this is the most random player but that was the card i'm like boom i'm gonna continue doing this started vending at the a vending or set it up at the shows and i just figured out i was like hey i'm making it is a cliche answer yeah but i was making more money at these shows than 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 will add on to the story i met chris actually i have that exact shop that got me back into it i was speaking with the shop owner saying hey at some point not twenty six years old me at fifty year old me opening a store and chris overheard that and we ended up go i was we 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 eleven eleven months into the business and it is going absolutely amazing i would not ask for 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 kinda wanna 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 kaelin we i think the and i'll kinda i'll 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 wanna have every customer that comes into the store that they feel welcomed that's from anybody kids women any any anybody can walk into the shop and they are gonna 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 annaly waters the pickleball goat we have those in the store yeah and we just we look at it and i was actually had a great really great interaction today with this little girl i think she was like four or five and she gotten she was showing she was sitting with her grandpa and she had just her binder of cards i said hey let me see your binder and i'm going through it and she had her pwhl organized she had her go for girls hockey cards and we ended up having a good customer of ours make us some go for girls basketball cards so i'm like let me gift these to her and her and her grandpa we 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 having giving people a welcoming space in i'll kinda 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 wanna give that community to a a where a place where they can feel that they're gonna get a fair market value for their cards rather than getting the thirty to forty percent 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 a hundred and five five star reviews on google with zero being below five stars jordan shrug speaks for itself i will say yes i'm proud to be one of those five star reviewers 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 seventies 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 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 when 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 was 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 can i add something really quick yeah go for it i'm gonna 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 gonna be the vixen i was talking with our vixen our vixen sponsor emily great player she's a tight end super solid rookie she's a rookie this year hope he gets rookie of year yeah she was told 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 gonna broaden their horizons and grow their just their pop 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 of guys ask me today and i'm like they're a a legitimate professional sports team they i mean the vixen right now are undefeated they beat a team fifty six to zero 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 gotta 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 in 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 wanted to origin of spencer origin of great lakes i kinda wanna hear a little bit about what's it like running a shop especially as somebody who's really in it and loves it i wanna hear kinda like when you get up and get up every day and you go to work are you happy to be there 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 yeah 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 i do this six days out of the week close on sundays but we're never realistically we are never we 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 eleven 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 the big part of my job and just working working with just on the tcg side of things we're 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 lynx period reach reach out reach out we can have a debate okay thank you sir i agree completely with that i sign off on that but 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 right now would be the new draftees lauren betts olivia miles hockez ez fudd we with minnesota being the hometown of so many absolute legends like page beckers people are asking about page we also ask people like the typical ones like the the caitlin 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 sydney colson and i mean who else are we getting we're just so many so many other really good role players adi crooks who is gonna be an absolute legend and beast in the w in my opinion and it's 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 yeah for sure it's more than just the links yes the links are a huge part of our business 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 lindsay 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 kinda have on you know shop life is i'm curious to 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 eleven months in what 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 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 don't wanna see him get the biggest return for his dollar and i think that's a wmb space to a t his girlfriend is getting into the pwhl which is great to see and that's another thing i'll kinda go back to your question is the pwhl is a massively growing community too sadly upper deck isn't doing that it do didn't doing that league justice but they'll grow at some point after he i plan on talking to him at the national so we'll 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 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 and i'll just gonna add on a kind of to what 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 gonna have the top shelf is gonna be all of our some of our chase cards our autograph cards our graded cards then we have player stacks so you get your asia wilson's your sophie cunningham's your caitlin clarks we got those second shelf boom is gonna be all links and then our over on the side is gonna be all of our college players bottom shelf will be sealed wax pwhl all that stuff and that 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 pwhl and these other leagues and it's it's huge i kinda wanna transition us out of this like hobby shop owner perspective as much as i love hearing about it i wanna 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 wanna hear your thoughts on you know past current and future so let's start with this where do you think women's sports cards kinda 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 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 call we'll go basketball basketball has forty plus not even that's a tiny number forty plus different sets we 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 the p w pwhl side there is four four formats two hobby boxes that they've 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 well 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're 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 on to that i'll just ask my next question which is what do you think feels different today about this segment of the 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 twenty twenty three prism basketball blasters wnba on clearance from steel city for like two fifty a a a case a case of thirty or case of forty blasters so i got two cases for five hundred 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 a caitlin clark origins hobby box for fourteen hundred dollars which that and that beat out last year's men's box by easily eight hundred dollars 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 gonna 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 be i would 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 it's so much different you couldn't walk into target and walmart and find those wnba blasters well 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 we would have never seen that pre covid that box wouldn't have existed i could be misspeaking we 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 the the 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 you know 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 kinda have that collector gene in their body that you know the proliferation of products really enables them to come participate i guess i wanna 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 kinda 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 so 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 kian so for sure we are seeing i think a lot of a lot of o g o g 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 gonna 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 wanna 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 wanna 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 gonna go and tell you hey that card looks good send it off let me know when you get that nine and ten go for it so for sure yes we have the old school wnba collectors 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 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 kinda wanna 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 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 minks 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 wanna have great lakes two point o at some point figure out where that's at would be a big part of us so for sure growing that even to even if that's not a doesn't come out for four or five years we wanna grow our community we have in saint paul because they had a lack of a shop it was a hobby oasis there was no multidimensional full service as we call ourselves hobby shop that offers the pokemon the everything the sports all that stuff there were 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 saint 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 we are so blessed to be in saint paul the saint paul community has embraced us so much and we wanna for sure give back to that community we plan on sponsoring the cap city youth girls flag football team too we were 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 flag football team they're gonna 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 wanna dig in if you're if you're willing i wanna 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 yeah absolutely yeah so i'll kinda 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 to me to build my career and build up who i am as a person and for us saint paul is such a as i call it the small town in a big city they are so small saint 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'll 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 wanna 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 in a space where it's relatively easy to give back to a community that supports you and they wants to see you grow they're gonna 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 yeah if i leave if i leave my family nothing at the end at the at the end of this sorry but i'm gonna leave an impact on the community that is gonna be gonna be big that's that's my goal absolutely spence that makes me so like emotional feel like when i think about it's fraud when i think about us meeting five years ago and we're dealing dollar cards at a a gym church a gym in a church yep 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 kinda where i wanna 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 a small office and underneath us people are beneath us at the tables and i wanna start with kinda figuring out why you felt the show was needed why did you put it on and to if you could tell kind of the listeners what this show's 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 car women's cards and when we see a grow when we see the growth of the of the hobby turning towards a lot of women's sports and just women's sports even even outside of cards has how big that has grown we're seeing like paige becker's on a coach commercial we would have never seen that yeah 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 youth 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 gonna 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 the ninety four which is a major roadway in minnesota it's it funnels you right into the show we wanted it to be accessible we wanted to to have i wanna 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 caitlin 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 a women's sports cards once once every ten twenty thirty tables but i come in here and i know i'm gonna 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 wanna give those niche collector places a a place where they feel welcomed and heard and that they're they're going to have their expectations met they're not just gonna hope oh i'm i hope i find a card and you know maybe it's gonna be of the team that i like it's like no we're gonna have a full selection every single table is gonna be able to talk to you about what exactly you came for and i think that's super valuable i wanna ask you i guess what what's kinda 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 is it kind of exceeded your expectations today absolutely i mean the challenges we face for sure is first off when chris and wanna chris and i wanna do the show we had to figure out where are we gonna do this what what space is gonna openly welcome us in to take over their space potentially and to be able to do it in a 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 real estate no one ever thinks about it but you physically have to put in it put up the tables you gotta get the vendors to come out you have to coordinate i had to send out emails is super simple i had 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 gonna be the challenges and just figuring out will people come in did we market the show properly did 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 i'll kind of i don't think caitlyn has on the thing but we have two of the mixin the vings the mixin and mix it the vixin and the minx are here our corporate sponsors we have she rips who are they're they're a local wnba breaker they're here doing that the logger that's getting donations just taco truck taco truck that caitlin's been eating 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 guess what has kind of i wanna tap into like what what do what met your expectations how do you think it's gonna 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 absolutely so i mean i'll say this we for sure have seen an increase in attendance 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 cards in general he saw it pop up somewhere i think he might have been a dual citizen customer he came in and he bought his first card today which in that's huge to be able to and it wasn't us it was a different vendor but to be the like i've 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 gonna have forever and that's gonna 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 p w h l twenty twenty four twenty five set with a 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 this love to see it this show has been awesome i guess i wanna ask you a couple rapid fire questions before we get into our q and a i guess i wanna 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 oh to be honest with you i don't know if it's necessarily player we've had a ton of people ask for pwhl today okay a ton which not a ton of vendors had it which is totally fine things that p w h l 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 petey let's go shout out let's get out come on otherwise too i think we've had a couple people have been asking to think the the clarks are there the pages are there page has been really asked about but also too a lot of people are asking about the case hits the kabooms the sublims the downtowns all that stuff those have been asked a lot too but i think for sure pwhl in my opinion what i've been hearing has been at the big ass what do you think kaitlyn i'm getting a lot of my amor 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 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 and the legends are ultra affordable when you can go buy a sue bird autograph on in a here at the show for thirty bucks but you could have to go over and buy rosh hashe on the hawks rookie auto for a hundred when the guy is a benchwarmer come on guys legit this is my big ask guys please please please please please continue to buy the legends let's get their market up let's do it sue bird needs to go up becky hammond sylvia fowles maya moore all those let's not let's don't pump 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 ten 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 come in for this show multi day let's have people come out for this yeah i think it'd be a huge part and i'd love to grow it i if anyone wants to pair up with us and help us grow that or we move it out of minnesota i'll 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's it is it is a need absolutely it's an absolute bead that that is my dream hopefully we can make that come true but let's let's kinda 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 gonna get handed them to you we're gonna start out with a banger i'm gonna ask spencer a bunch of questions and kinda 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 etcetera what are your thoughts on this i think for sure there are a lot of people turning to the physical tangible assets of cards i mean i'll shout out kevin o'leary kevin o'leary is is an a shark tank investor 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 ebay ebay is massive for the w whatnot when they sent out their quarterly thing for us whatnot was up three percent over the nba as a category so yeah people want cards they want the autographs they want the autographed 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 time 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 you 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 wanna 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 now with a human and that there's no community there there is no community in transacting over the internet and we wanna build the transactions in the community alright 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 safe 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 to nba side of things where those cards are transacted way more because people you see you 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 tiktok 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 will you will we'll never see them again ever i agree with that assessment i think the staying power of women's cards in 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 leave people will part with anything i mean 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 caitlin 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 lynx sky game a couple of like last year and they and the the players come up to you and they talk to you go over to the nba side of things doesn't happen and it's too and it's too big time to talk to anybody yeah we definitely see that that's also like minnesotan culture i feel with the lengths flares they love to talk to folks yeah it's a big part of minnesota sports to be a part of the community minnesota twins for example if you ain't winning championships you gotta talk to your fans i'll tell you that much okay our next question comes from our friend jeff who wrote his name on here so he's not gonna be anonymous from jeff in ten 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 box 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 is insane chris and i was the opener olivia miles is hands down she's a beast dropping twenty one in her debut dropping dimes to k mac when she starts dropping dimes to phi 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 yeah i think that question itself is too soon to tell but let me give oh give a 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 we're going fire my hot take is that i think the fire need to be investigated for tanking for juju watkins i think that the temple are a 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 temple but i understand your bias because you love her on the fire so but very valid valid valid i think it's i think i i will second that with caitlin i just gotta give my nod yeah to haley jones i got it alright next question this one's kinda 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 kinda give a i actually spoke with the guy who 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 and i feel too that the the answer i got to the guy was that cheryl reeves doesn't wanna 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 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 absolutely 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 caitlyn 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 sue burton all those legends yes clark is a great player she does impressive impressive 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 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 goat of on the court but nobody can dispute what she's done for women's sports one hundred percent 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 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 page becker's 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 a a personal question for spence this is coming from somebody during the show what's your one one 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 gonna realize people who don't collect cards they're missing out i love it by far oh that's fun i i think that's where our conversation ends today but i wanna 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 saint 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 will continue to just boom and we'll see similar things kind of replicate across the country i i really 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're missing having you here man but yeah we are super pumped to continue to grow women's sports card wnba pwhl and the hobby in general we'll leave it at that and we'll see you guys on our next episode we're gonna be doing an entire series around team collectors so we're gonna 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 the most links oh most links w that was great