Jim McLauchlin published a story on July 3, 2023 that might be the best history of the brand that I’ve seen to date–including (especially) the brief history I put together when I first started putting some content up on this site.

Interviewing a couple of former employees of Shinders, some tidbits include:

• Every musician who played First Avenue went there. Jay Leno would talk about it on The Tonight Show
• The original Shinders Brothers had three locations–two bookending Hennepin Avenue on 6th & 7th, and a store in St. Paul
• Apparently they didn’t get along, and weren’t even the same company technically
• Joel Shinder bought out the three original brothers, merged them into a single corporate entity, and made the moves to the suburbs, starting in Edina
• The Edina location opened in 1976, taking over the location of a tobacconist that had a small news business
• He also hired Steve Kupetz, who was the driving force behind the growth
• The downtown location of Shinders I remember (although don’t think I ever visited) was actually on the corner of 8th & Hennepin–they moved there after the original block was targeted for demolition (now Block E, I believe) due to the reputation of the area
• By 1992, Shinders was the Topps Trading Card Company’s fourth-largest account–behind Walmart, Kmart and Target

A seriously great story for anyone who spent time at any of the Shinders locations–it also sparked an interview & segment on KFAN when Paul Charchian hosted, which led to the single biggest day of traffic this site has seen since I bought the domain, and sparked me to get the redesign started.