A trading card store in Lexington continues to grow since opening its brick-and-mortar location a little less than a year ago.

Palmetto Cards, located at 404 W Main St., opened in November of 2022 as one of the few trading card stores in the state and the only one in the Midlands region. Owner Aaron Cordero credits a lot of the store’s growth to the businesses’ use of social media.

Cordero told the Chronicle that he has been a collector since he was a child, saying that like a lot of people he went through cycles of being in and out of the hobby. He said that starting from, a young age he realized there was some value to the cards and began to flip cards and sell them.

As he got deeper into the hobby, he said that he would take his son and fiance, Jacob and Meredith, to card shows, ultimately getting to the point where they began grading cards, which is another aspect of the hobby.

Cordero said that card grading had really been a growing piece of his business, adding that they started getting cards graded for people through a PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator) as they had a program with the company.

“In essence, 50 people would send us their cards and then we would send them all together and kind of get like a group deal and grade people’s cards for them,” Cordero said. “That blew up, especially during the COVID era, it blew up. We were grading upwards of 15,000 cards for people and we were doing this out of our home and we basically had a finished room over our garage and we had turned that into like the card room.”

He explained that the business uses most mainstream forms of social media with Instagram and Facebook being their most utilized. The company has amassed more than seven thousand followers across their platforms.

The owner told the Chronicle that the capabilities that Facebook and Instagram offer to post simultaneously between the two makes it easier to release content. He added that they try to utilize what each form of media is best with, focusing on pictures with Instagram, using X (formerly Twitter) for engaging with customers, and using Youtube and TikTok to showcase videos of the store and its products.

Cordero said he was always on social media but wasn’t necessarily active, but once his family decided to open the business they started utilizing the tool more and now have a part-time employee who helps manage the content, posting across platforms about two-four times a day.

When it comes to what content the business focuses on, it varies, with the early emphasis being posting updates and bringing followers along for the journey of opening a business. Cordero said they have now added posting unboxings, showing what’s new in the store, educating people on grading their cards, and just sharing the store’s journey.

“Recently, we bought a collection and there were some fake grading cards in there. We knew they were fake, but we wanted to create content around how to spot fakes,” Cordero offered. “So we tried to educate people, we showed people cards where we’re reviewing them for card grading. We try to educate people on what to look for, because grading cards cost money and not all cards should be graded.”

He added that social media has helped the store tremendously as it provides them a way to connect with residents and followers alike.

Outside of social media the business is active in the community and holds trade nights in the store and tries to hold events at least every other month.Cordero stated that they’ll sometimes have catered food and tv’s on with football for some people to watch and enjoy.

“We wanted people to really feel like this is a community thing, it’s not just us, it’s a community,” Cordero said. “It’s the high schools, it’s the dads with sons, it’s the dads and daughters that want to bring them in here and do something together and collectively try to make it a very inclusive thing.”

While the store is mostly sports-based, other trading cards are also available, including Pokemon and Disney cards. Cordero said the store also offers a variety of price points, with cards ranging from 10 cents to more than $1,000.

“Our ultimate goal is on the East Coast, we want to be known as a destination location,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons we try to reach as many people as we can.”