CardVault by Tom Brady opened Saturday at Town & Country Village — the Peninsula's new spot for trading cards, sealed boxes and a museum-style display of autographed memorabilia. Open seven days a week, with trade nights on the way.

The crowd that waited eight hours in a Palo Alto parking lot Saturday was there for Tom Brady, and Brady — a San Mateo kid who called the homecoming "very surreal" in an interview with KTVU (external source, opens in a new tab) — showed up, signed memorabilia and cut the ribbon. That part's over. What's left is the actual reason to care if you collect: there is now a card shop at Town & Country Village, and it's open seven days a week.

What: CardVault by Tom Brady, the retailer's 17th location and its second in the Bay Area. Where: Town & Country Village, El Camino Real at Embarcadero — next to the chocolate shop SWISS55. Hours: Open seven days a week; doors opened at 10 a.m. on Saturday. Confirm the daily closing time before a late run. Getting there: It sits directly across El Camino from the Palo Alto Caltrain station and Stanford, so the train leaves you a five-minute walk away. Driving, Town & Country has its own lot off Embarcadero, but it fills on weekends — the Stanford-side streets are your backup.

The centerpiece inside is what the company calls its "signature vault," a museum-style case of autographed helmets, jerseys, bats and balls that co-founder Scott Heigelmann pitches as "part clubhouse, part gallery, part theater," according to Palo Alto Weekly's coverage (external source, opens in a new tab). Around it runs a working store: single cards, sealed boxes, loose packs and collectibles, plus on-site help authenticating and preserving whatever you carry in. The chain says trade nights, guest appearances and product launches are on the calendar — the part worth tracking if you want the shop for the hobby, not just the opening-day spectacle.

Here's the honest read. The region's card-shop map has thinned out, and the Peninsula especially has been a gap. A Menlo Park collector told the same KTVU broadcast that there was no shop within a 20-minute drive he could actually get to, and that having one close enough for a weekly visit is the real change. That's the useful line buried under the celebrity crowd: this is a place a Peninsula collector can now make a regular stop, not a one-day event.

Some context on what you're walking into. The chain started in 2020; Brady took a 50% stake in 2025 when it ran three stores, and it has grown quickly since. This week it named a new investor group — including, KTVU reported, Jay-Z, Aaron Judge and Dana White — with Brady floating a footprint well beyond 100 stores. So expect the polished, branded version of a card shop: a giant photo of Brady on the storefront, a limited Palo Alto hat handed to the first 25 through the door on opening day, rather than the dusty-longbox corner store. Whether that's a selling point depends on what you want out of the hobby.

If you've got an hour: come on a weekday, skip the weekend crush, walk the vault first, then dig through the singles. The chain's other regional stores are the San Francisco flagship across from Oracle Park, which opened in February, and one in Sacramento, if you're closer to either. But for anyone on the Peninsula who's been driving half an hour to flip through cards, the nearest option just moved a lot closer.