Welcome to Troxell’s Trading Post!

For those who don’t know, we’re a father and son shop, selling items we make that we think are kinda cool. In case you are curious about who we are, I decided to whip this page together really quick.

So, who are we?

Troxell’s Trading Post

Founded in 2023, with our first ever sales even happening at VoltCon in Indianapolis, the Trading Post is a father and son venture, selling things we think are cool. After our first VoltCon, we started a shop on Square, eventually moving over to Etsy in the early summer of 2024, then moving over to Mayhem in July of 2025. We don’t do many in-person events, because the 3D print market in Indianapolis is saturated with sellers, but we do attend a couple of smaller conventions, and of course, We're here on Mayhem. We also have a selection of their 3D-printed items for sale at Comic Carnival on North Keystone in Indianapolis, and are always looking for other stores that might be interested in carrying our products.

Tony

The person that does all of the writing and shop work is Tony, who is going to do his best to remember to write this in the third-person. Tony is in his late forties, and has a background in costume and prop replication, along with a ton of retail experience. He’s worked in Burbank on projects like The Tick (2000), Blade 2, and Dreamcatcher, while also helping with licensed runs of replicas from Battlestar Galactica and Terminator 2. He started messing with 3D-printing around 2018, and really dove head first into it at the beginning of the pandemic. He started printing so he could make more prop replicas, loving how he could make a Star Trek Phaser using an actual, honest-to-goodness, real-life replicator. After about fifty kits filling boxes in his workshop, and getting custody of his kiddo (more on that in a bit), he turned his eyes to selling prints. You know, because the market isn’t already totally saturated by people selling 3D-printed dice towers and stuff!

Tony provides the 3D-printed items for the store, making sure the prints are clean and ready for customers as well as keeping the printers up and running. He is also trying to dust off his leathercrafting knowledge from the Boy Scouts (from the late 1900s) to start making items like dice trays, coasters, keychains, and even jewelry to add to the shop. He also believes his life can be fixed by an XTool P2S laser cutter, because he would love to find a way to combine 3D-printing, leather craft, and laser cutting into some awesome things.

Kat

Kat is the kiddo. Currently, they’re a junior in high school, getting ready to get their learner’s permit and hoping to find a real job soon. In the meantime, they spend a lot of time talking to their friends and playing Roblox games, but they also do a lot of Perler art and they’re learning how to sew plushies. While the money from Tony’s items also goes to business costs, new materials, and paying off debts, Kat’s money goes partially to debt, but mostly to Kat.

Why are we doing this?

In 2023, we decided to leap head-first into a very saturated market that has prices, honestly, racing to the bottom. We don’t have a large print farm. In fact, Tony has a Bambu A1 Mini, a Bambu P1P, and an Elegoo Neptune 3. The 3D printer display at Micro Center has more machines than him, so we can’t compete on the level of “selling more for less.” The thing is, back in 2023 before the shop got started, Tony had to spend a chunk of time and a good amount of money on his credit cards to gain full custody of Kat. We really don't want to put the details out there, but Kat was in a pretty bad situation, and Tony spent a month in Southern California getting custody of Kat, and letting them finish the final few weeks of 8th grade before driving a Scion xB full of Kat’s belongings back across the country. Fortunately most of the legal fees had been taken care of, but between driving to California from Indiana,  hotel costs, food, gas, a month’s fee at a co-working space so Tony could continue working his day job while out there, and then a drive back across the country saying at the cheapest, sketchiest Hotel 6’s across this great nation, the amount of high-interest credit card debt accrued was not insignificant. Once again, we're trying to keep things vague, but the amount of debt we currently have could get us a brand new, base model Kia Soul.

So that’s why we started the shop.

A good portion of every sale’s profit  goes into paying off that debt. Tony does pretty good accounting work, and keeps track of every sale, and how much of the profit of that sale will go to the debt. Once a quarter, he’ll pull that money out of the shop’s savings and throw it at one of the cards they’re paying off until it gets paid off and he can close it down. Then he works on the next one. So, that rolls into why you should shop with them.

Why shop Troxell’s Trading Post?

As mentioned earlier, the 3D print market, especially when it comes to TTRPG accessories, is completely saturated. There are many large print farms making these things, and making them as fast as as inexpensively as they can. The Trading Post is not one of those farms. Tony pays monthly to a variety of file makers for the rights to sell prints from their files. Then, Tony looks over those files to see if it’s something he thinks is cool, and then prints it in a way he thinks looks cool. He’s not trying to chase fads, but instead he’s making things that he enjoys, and he hopes other people enjoy. He attempts to ship items out as quickly as possible, and he tries not to do the whole “Send a shipping notification when the label is printed, but then wait three days to bring it to the post office” sort of thing. All of this while Kat’s in school full-time, and Tony works a day job in Social Media. Tony is hoping that showing pictures of the actual item a buyer will get will help people choose what he's offering over the generic "Here's a 3D render of a dice tower. You can get it in this variety of colors!" selection that many other printers are going with.

So, we hope you take a look around the shop and if you like something, go ahead and pick it up! Kat and Tony would greatly appreciate it, and Tony would especially appreciate it so he can get those cards paid off before he has to start paying for Kat’s mortuary science degree in a few years!

If you made it this far down, thank you for reading!
Kat and Tony

Troxell’s Trading Post