Kelsey Butt used to leave card shows with boxes of unsold women’s hockey cards a few years ago. They were given away for nothing; they were actually relieved to get rid of them. Butt kept them anyhow, amassing a collection that was viewed as a dead end by the majority of vendors at the time. That computation has completely changed. Butt’s table stood out at this year’s Toronto Sports Card Expo, which had almost 1,000 booths crammed into a room full of collectors carrying backpacks and rolling suitcases, because every single card on it featured a woman. “Men would never give me cards now,” Butt stated bluntly as he looked at a table full of Hilary Knight and Marie-Philip Poulin cards. And no one was giving anything away. “There’s too much value.”
Walking the floor of the Expo, which is regarded as the second-largest sports card show in North America, makes it difficult to ignore the shift. Serious collectors who remember the hobby’s explosive growth in the 1980s and the more recent pandemic-era surge that sent rookie cards into the thousands have always attended the event. But this spring, something seems different. The Expo is now the most prominent location on the continent where this shift is taking place in real time. Women’s cards, and PWHL players in particular, have moved from the periphery to truly competitive territory.
Vendors’ perceptions are supported by the numbers. Since the PWHL’s first season, the hockey card category has expanded by more than 9%, according to Card Ladder, which monitors sales data throughout the trading card market. During the 2025–26 season, the league’s ticket sales surpassed one million for the first time, and online merchandise sales increased by more than half. Collectibles have not been an exception to the tendency for that kind of momentum to spread into nearby markets.
The 2024 First Edition set, Upper Deck’s first PWHL-specific product, was released in January 2025, and it seems that even the manufacturer was surprised by the response. Upper Deck’s director of sports brands, Paul Zickler, acknowledged that the company was genuinely unsure whether demand would hold or soften and that early sales exceeded internal projections. It hasn’t become softer. The sets are still selling out, and secondary market prices have continued to rise. Speaking with people at the Expo gives the impression that the market is still in its early stages, which, depending on your position, can be either thrilling or a little nerve-wracking.
It’s hard to ignore the similarities to Caitlin Clark’s card market. For the first time in decades, the collecting community took women’s sports cards seriously after Clark joined the WNBA. Her rookies were suddenly fetching high prices from collectors who had never handled a women’s basketball card, and this change in perception seems to be spreading to other women’s sports. This shift has been measured by the number of American collectors who attend the Toronto Expo each year and the number of vendors who subtly add women’s products to their tables.
The scarcity issue is what gives the Toronto show its special significance. Since PWHL cards with players wearing league uniforms are still relatively new, the supply hasn’t kept up with the demand. Anyone who has witnessed a new sport gain traction among collectors is familiar with this gap, which typically results in precisely the kind of price movement that transforms casual interest into actual market activity.
Naturally, there is still uncertainty in this situation. The league, the manufacturers, and the sometimes erratic collecting community’s appetite will determine whether this momentum continues. However, it feels less like a trend and more like something that has already taken hold when you stand at Kelsey Butt’s table and watch a collector meticulously go through cards that once had no takers.
