Hi Everyone!

I'm Matt Greenwell, the owner of Trade Oak Park. We opened our doors in April of 2025 in a tiny space in the older Oak Park downtown area, the "Hemingway District". Within 6 months due to overwhelming support we expanded into the larger space next door and now host birthday parties, draft and watch parties, Trade Nights and other group events.

I opened the shop because I love collecting cards, and I love building spaces that bring people together. I've been a collector of basketball cards since I was 8 and throughout my many career changes and moves from city to city, "doing cards" has been a meaningful happy place. I understand deeply how much this hobby can mean to people, how a legacy can be written and a life story told through a collection of cardboard spanning years and decades. It can connect parents and grandparents with their kids and grand kids, it brings you closer to your favorite teams, athletes, and characters and most importantly there's no wrong answers. When you collect what you love, it's yours, and you can find peace and joy in that.

What I've also learned too well, is that there's a darker side of the hobby too. Where sports memorabilia, online gambling and liquid asset markets meet, there's inevitably those who are motivated by greed and profits. Sadly, our little community card shop was broken into on Monday night/Tuesday morning and it was a wake up call for me. In order for me to continue advocating for the family friendly, community based hobby that I've loved for 30 years; I need to do a better job safeguarding the shop against the bad actors out there. Though my pride has made me hesitant, I'm humbly accepting any contributions that will allow me to add additional security measures, improve the durability of our displays cases and cover the costs of what was stolen.

Through all this, the silver lining has been the unbelievable show of support from family, friends and neighbors. Friends brought over pizza and beer and helped us clean up glass and get organized, cookies were delivered, a young boy rode his bike over to the shop and offered me a $5 donation, another young customer offered me his card collection to help restock the shelves. This is what taking care of one another looks like. This is what Trade stands for. It's my honor to offer a safe, fun, happy environment for all of us to enjoy.

Thank you in advance for your kindness and generosity.

-Matt