Collect them all!

“You’ve got my card!”

Michelle Betos examined a picture of herself and signed one of many items she often does after matches. This particular item caught her attention because it was her Parkside Collectables 2021 NWSL Premier Series card. The Racing players get asked to signed a variety of items after matches from jerseys, to paper plates. However there must be something special about signing a trading card of yourself.

Parkside Collectables, the creator and distributor of the NWSL card set has been featured in The Athletic and if you have a subscription you can read the article here.. In a nutshell, Parkside seized on a gap in the trading card market, and has had a very successful run of selling their NWSL set. Parkside did a limited set in 2020 for the NWSL Challenge Cup and printed only 3000. For this year's set, Parkside printed many more cards and found a couple of distribution partners in Walmart and Target. So far, the set has been a resounding success with fans and is sold out on the Parkside site.

I have always been a collector of things, but particularly trading cards. There's something special about opening a pack and not knowing what you're going to get. One Easter I got 10 packs of 1991 Upper Deck Baseball Trading cards and pulled the Michael Jordan insert out of one of them. Another time I opened a pack that was all inserts (special cards not in the base set). Over the last few years, I really haven't bothered much with trading cards, and I thought I might never buy a pack for myself again (my wife still collects NFL trading cards and has frankly a ridiculous collection). Then I heard that the NWSL would be having a trading card set this year, and ordered 5 packs from Parkside. While waiting on those cards to arrive, I stumbled across a few sets in Target. Over the next few weeks, I started monitoring eBay and searching Targets and Walmarts. I had become hooked.

I wasn't the only one. On Twitter and Facebook, groups started popping up that were interested in trading cards. One of the leaders in the effort to get organized around trading cards is Luke Fritz. I have traded with Luke a couple of times and asked him about his experience.

Tell me a little about your collecting history...I'm guessing the NWSL trading cards are not your first collection.

Luke: I used to collect sports cards growing up, then in middle/high school I collected (but did not play) Star Wars CCG. Since then, I have not purchased or collected any cards, so it has been probably 15+ years since I have collected cards.

What was it that made you take particular interest in the NWSL cards?

I have been a huge supporter and advocate for the NWSL since its inception in 2012 and inaugural season in 2013. I was born and raised in Portland, and so making sure I did everything possible to help the Thorns and league be successful was (and is) very important to me. When the cards were announced last year, I knew for sure that I wanted a Christine Sinclair signature card (she is my favorite player and I watched her play a lot in college), so that was an easy hook in.

What do you think of the set?

I like the set! It has been fun to collect and there are a ton of inserts that will interest almost anyone interested in trading cards and/or the league itself. I also know that as a first big release for Parkside, there is always room for improvement and cutting down on errors.

What's your favorite pull so far?

Definitely a Simone Charley autograph, which I *finally* pulled after not pulling any autographs in 45+ packs. It was also a fun pull because I bought the pack in a Target in a different state on a whim, as I was there for a totally different reason.

Let's move on to the trading aspect. This set seems like a true "trading card set". You started a Google doc and a Twitter group to encourage trading. How have those technological advances enhanced your newly revived collecting fascination?

I knew from the 2020 Parkside release that it was somewhat challenging to find traders - it sort of relied on Parkside itself retweeting those who might be trading. When the current set was released (and the checklist was unveiled), I knew that there needed to be a better way to organize trades. I am a high school teacher and I use Google Docs/Sheets all the time in meetings with colleagues, so it seemed like an easy way to just use similar templates and share it with everyone. The Twitter group was really only so that I would know who to share the document with once it was ready for editing.

Are you using Facebook as well?

I am! That was also cool to see - that someone both joined the spreadsheet to track their inventory and created a Facebook group to more easily facilitate trades. I would guess I have made about 20 trades so far, about half via Twitter and half via the Facebook group.

Do you think Parkside will release an update set? They seemed to misjudge the demand a bit for the 2021 initial release.

It sounds like for sure that they are going to make a series 2 set, at least according to indications on their Twitter account. As for the demand part: it's funny, because the 2020 Challenge Cup set was *seriously* misjudged in terms of demand. They only made 3000 sets/packs, and they sold out almost instantly whenever they went on sale. So I'm not surprised that a print run of 140,000 for the 2021 set is in demand, given how hot the trading card market is at the moment.

Do you consider yourself a "completist"? I'm sure you have a full set. What other subsets are you trying to complete?

Haha, I consider myself a completist when it comes to the team I support, Portland Thorns FC, yes. My aim was to collect every card possible (within reason - the Chrome 1 of 1 set would be impossible to collect all 20 of) for the club, both for 2020 and for 2021. I have just about accomplished this, pending receiving some final cards (including the trade that we just made)!

What the longest distance between you and a trading partner so far?

I think Long Island, New York is the furthest away. Portland to New York is about as far as it gets in the continental U.S.

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The set has really been fun to trade and there are a lot of cool inserts. Of course it has been difficult to produce a set of cards for an expansion team when you don’t have any game action shots from the previous year to use for your cards. There are two unsung heroes that made it possible for Racing to be included in this year's set. Toni Geiger of EM Dash Photography and Joe Robbins of ISI Photos are responsible for the action shots and the headshots respectively. Toni told me that Parkside reached out about some photos she had taken for ISI during a preseason march. You have seen Toni and Joe's work on the Racing website even if you weren't aware of it.

For me, trading the cards has almost been as much fun as collecting them. I have mailed cards to Portland, Newport, KY, Port Orchard, WA, Columbus, OH and have made an exchange with a fellow fan that sits in my section at the Fam. It has been really cool to see people just give away cards to help collectors fill in their sets. I am hoping for an update set later this year to include Salmon, Miramontez, Bonner, Nadim and Matthews.