welcome back loyal listeners of the stacking slabs podcast two season five episode fifteen of the wnba card podcast my name is caitlin i go by at cold lunch cards and i'm excited to continue to bring you guys collector driven and community focused content to wherever you're listening today today is a very special episode it is the penultimate episode of season five meaning we're at the second to last team of our tour around the wnba and today's episode is all about one of the league's newest franchises the portland fire and today's guest is chad aka at pack to the future podcast chad is a longtime collector and a fellow podcaster who is pretty new to the wnba and after moving to the pacific northwest he went to a portland fire game against the aces and found himself getting pulled into the world of the wnba now he's watching games learning all about the league and the players and starting to figure out what collecting looks like for him so today we're gonna talk all about that collector perspective get to know chad a little better talk about what it means to fall for a brand new team and what it's like to build a collection when you're still trying to figure out all the details so chad welcome to the podcast i'm so happy to have you today how are you doing well thank you i i am well and i appreciate you accommodating my schedule by being up we're recording this bright and early so i certainly appreciate that but i'm very excited to be here and you know as a side note you have done everything to calm my fears but this is like new territory for me so it's slightly uncomfortable and you know you mentioned the podcast world and talking in front of people and like just yesterday i had to give like a pretty important talk in front of my new medical organization i got home and i was like oh it's so easy now having the podcast thing but this like right here yeah i've been listening to your show for a couple of years and you know certainly going through the team process this year so i'm a little nervous being here which which is good it usually brings out a pretty fun side of me so hopefully people enjoy this today yeah this is gonna be a great kinda like peek behind the curtain for what it feels like for a lot of this part of the hobby i think we have a lot of entrants who are in the same boat as you so you know especially for our listeners who maybe this is your first season following a team or getting into wnba cards hopefully this can kinda be like an echo a little bit of an echo for you guys and you guys can feel heard before we get into the wnba of it all the portland fire at all the cards of it all chad for anybody that's meeting you for the first time through this podcast which would surprise me very much if they don't know who you are but can you give us a little introduction to who you are yeah sure thing and i promise i won't keep derailing all of your questions but a shout out brett and stacking slabs you need to know caitlin is the most organized person for an interview that i've ever had and i can't tell you how much i appreciate that because my time you know i have it so structured throughout the day and so having like these notes that we talked about ahead of time i really appreciate that and so so thank you but yes for me i'm a lot of different things so i'm a husband i'm a dog dad i am a runner i'm a disney fan i am a sports enthusiast throughout my life i grew up in salt lake city utah i followed the utah jazz during the stockton malone era i'm a physician who has lifelong aspirations of equitable and accessible health care for everybody i'm a paranormal investigator but for the purposes of today i'm also a sports card collector and and as you mentioned podcaster as well awesome well i'm excited to kinda unpack how those different segments of yourself and things that you identify with carry over into cards and into fandom it's always interesting and you mentioned two things which is collecting and podcasting but as part of that there's also this new element which is the wnba it's a pretty brave new world for you but i kind of want to go back and follow your journey before this kind of entered your space do you mind unpacking what collecting and podcasting i guess was to you before you discovered this league yeah my my collecting boy it's been a journey and it's been very fluid and seems like it's had different chapters in my life so like many people i started collecting in the early nineties so in ninety two i think i was nine years old started collecting basketball cards with my sister and my childhood buddy adam who's the real twenty seven guy and like we just happened to live next to each other and started collecting shaquille o'neal michael jordan and then of course the the utah jazz at the time like basketball was life and i loved having tangible items like cards that i could go chase now back then we didn't have numbered cards so inserts were kind of my thing i loved things that were a little more rare and difficult to get and that was my collecting journey up until about the mid nineties and then high school undergrad med school took over and like i fell away from cards for a while and then got back into it interestingly during residency so this is kind of an interesting tale but it helps it will shape i think our later part of our conversation as well there was a day i'd been out of cards for a couple of decades and there was a day i was post call so i had like a thirty hour shift and i was hanging out at my buddy's place afterwards because like after you do a thirty hour shift you have to go back to work the next morning at six am so it's like do you go to sleep during the day and then you don't sleep at night and it's like this whole mental mind game but we were sitting around just kind of like listening to some music and having a drink and he's like you know what there are these cards called allen and ginter and you can get like relics like you can get a piece of someone's hair like in these cards and i'm like what like what are you talking about that's such a weird you know change from sports cards from what i was used to and you know eventually at a later date we made a time to go to our car local car shop and start getting back into cards that way and a couple years later my buddy from high school ricky i was chatting with him about cards and we're like gosh you know we used to both collect cards as kids and now that we're kind of getting into our careers and established and have a little more expendable income we started going hanging out the card shop and buying boxes and we ripped a lot of wax and this will play a role again in my collecting journey and wax was it like it's so much fun to open up cards and like you get that rush and we enjoyed it so much we'd make a day out of it we'd go get food we'd hang out we'd talk about it and we brainstorm for a while like gosh we think we kinda have fun doing this i wonder if anyone would wanna come along for this ride with us and so eventually we started up podcasting and just you know sealing it for both of us it's a release from our professional side and we get to kind of express a goofy side to keep us in balance but shortly into that podcasting career we had someone on named ross behrman and he was a utah jazz donovan mitchell fan so like my jazz fandom lived all the way up through that time and i was trying to rip boxes to get donovan mitchell cards and he said something to me that is so simple but it changed the whole outlook of my collecting career and he said chad you have to quit buying wax he's like just go buy the cards that you like and you won't be disappointed and it's so simple but it was so true and so at that point my shift or my collecting shifted and went over to more so buying cards of the players that i like now there's some downfalls of that if your team decides to kinda blow up and trade everyone but otherwise it's been ever since that time several years ago my collecting has been less about ripping wax and more about buying the cards that i like and my hobby experience has been so much better for it at least right now through through my current lens so it's a very long winded way to get there but it's been lots of iterations and then i i think a new one is going to be entering with the portland fire right here in my backyard it's just like a i feel like following that story you just gave is like following a a winding road and i think in my collection and hopefully in listeners if for you guys that are listening i feel like in in a collector's journey there's always these inflection points that we hit and it almost feels like you wake up one day and you're like damn why didn't i know that before or like how did i not see this it's almost like your your eyes are open to a new way of thinking and i think that a lot of people see that when they do kind of like the wax to singles transition and they see that when they unlock a new lane it's like it's not crazy you know rocket science but it feels like just almost a complete change in trajectory of how you're gonna go about something that defines you because it's a new way to define your collecting journey and so i want to kind of get into the wmba inflection point that you had you told me you know off the record that you moved to the pacific northwest you went to a fire game and something kinda just clicked you had one of those inflection points what do you remember about that first experience and how it pulled you in there there is a whole lot to it to be honest like even the smaller moments really stand out to me so moving up here we you know my wife and i moved up here and we have a couple of friends who are up here but when you move like you are moving away from your core your base your family like i had all forty two years of my life up to that point in salt lake city and so we have a little extra time on our hands now of course moving is a total disaster and takes up all of your life but we decided to go out and try some new things and i had had some of our mutual friends like carter mc basketball card pc and we have a group chat on instagram for for our show and he was always talking about wnba and particularly asia wilson and the las vegas aces like dude you you gotta go to a game at some point and those thoughts were echoed by sholley by steve yeah by kevin cormier by mark john sanchez and you know these guys were like gosh if you get an opportunity go to a game so i asked my wife like would you want to go to a game with me and she's always been passively accepting of my sports like but it's never really her jam but usually our standing agreement is like if she can get a hot dog and a beer at a game like she she's up for going so i said you know what why don't we go look to go to a game so the las vegas aces happened to be in town a couple of weeks after this thought i'm like why not take her to go see who everyone's telling me that we need to go see and so i got us some pretty good tickets you know i paid for parkings i i can't make it out past like eight or nine o'clock at night anymore so and then i need to be in bed so like we we paid for a good parking spot we got in there i'm like let's go early so that we can make sure that we get food we can check out the arena for the first time and and so we get there an hour and a half early and this game i wanna say is like on a wednesday or thursday it's during the week and sure enough there the doors aren't even open yet to get in but there is a line of people a massive line of people just to get inside and most of these people are kids they're they're adults but also retired age people and they all have their gear most of which portland fire stuff because they wanna go get autographs before the game and it completely blew my mind now as a kid watching the utah jazz that would be a thing but even when i'd go to jazz games it's been five or six years since i've gone you don't get people who are that excited to just go see their favorite team and their players like oftentimes we would see you know people who kinda show up late or maybe their organization or corporation that they work for bought tickets so they show up and like yeah they're kind of cheering but the fans at the game were completely bonkers and i absolutely loved it and it stood out to me it it's infectious when you get people who are that committed to their team and they are so focused on the game when it's going on they're not on their phone scrolling they're not walking around i don't know if that's just a portland vibe up here but i think it's a wnba vibe from what i've heard from other people and it was so infectious and it is impossible not to get caught up in that when you experience firsthand it's just like watching hockey live you you know i've always heard people talk about hey you have to go see a game live in person you catch that and the w game was no different even my wife who you know she'll go but usually the phone comes out by the end of the first half or quarter whatever the game is that we're watching she was glued the the whole time it was fantastic and so that stood out to me more than anything else that like wow these people really care about their team and it makes it hard not to be caught up in that yeah i love that i think that's a similar kind of testimonial that i've heard from a lot of guests especially this season who when they go see their team for the first time or they you know reflect on the experience of going to watch their team for the first time it feels different that's kind of the way that they always put it it just feels different and i i wish that there was a way for me to and you you did a good job trying to capture it but it's so difficult to explain the atmosphere difference between the wnba and all different sports leagues it's just a different feeling you feel involved you feel included it feels like it's made for you whoever you may be the space is for you and i think that's really powerful and it's very commanding and it makes you know the entrance to a new lane especially in collecting so much more fun so i think what you said chad makes a lot of sense i feel like i can say similar things about when i went to my first wnba game i think a lot of people would agree i think portland's got an interesting atmosphere being newer kind of having a chip on their shoulder they've got really good crowd pops in that stadium like it's a good place to be but in general the league it's really just a very interesting and unique atmosphere so i kind of love that enter your entrance into the fire and we'll get more into what that looks like what the fire mean to you how it translates to cards but before we dive into that i do want to zoom us out and ask you a question that i ask every guest on this season which is a big one and so i recognize that but you know you're still pretty new to the wnba which is part of why i wanted to bring you on to this season and i wanted to ask you what does being a newer fan of the wnba but more more generally a collector and a fan of the wnba mean to you chad personally you know this well one of the questions that you sent ahead of time you're like hey this is a big one put some thought into this and you know yesterday my wife and i took a little road trip we had to go pick up some stuff for a container store so i had her go through some of these questions with me and her and i actually talked about this for a while and you know to your again to your credit it's the longest conversation i've had with my wife about sports cards and thought about this and there's a lot of pieces that go into it and i don't think that i can pinpoint it yet but some of the just thoughts that come to my mind is community you know being in a new place and having a team that is there and having the community get excited about this is really important my wife teaches pilates and when we happen to go to the game one of her students happened to be there in sauce and this is a woman that usually i wouldn't go up and conversate with just because i wanna know what to start a conversation about you know she's retirement age and she was there but it was great she stopped by and we chatted for five or ten minutes and you know it gave us some sense of belonging there that we actually knew someone which was nice so i think the community piece was there which really helps when you're a newer fan it it helps to pull you in i think that there's a piece that i wanted to understand more what the wnba was about because as an outsider to sports and collecting for the wnba what you see is caitlin clark and then you see big sales of cards and you see people who flip the cards and then occasionally you'll get you know a highlight clip from from someone who wants to highlight the fact that angel reese can't hit a jumper or that you get a sofia cunningham you know meme that goes viral but not for the reasons that that the wnba is there and so wanting to experience it was another part of it and then there's also a part where you know i think it's important to check out things that are outside of your norm and it's very clear that wnba is expanding and you know women have not had equity in many things in life and health care included and that's kinda my avenue outside of where people actually see me and so that's important to recognize and and be mindful of as well so i think it was a combination of all of those things as to testing it out and then honestly again it goes back to the community not only with our card collecting buddies but also seeing the community that that draws me in and makes it pretty important to see that this means a lot to a lot of people and hopefully i continue to be part of that group going forward yeah we're we're happy to have you here chad i think what you speak to kind of the intersection of community representation all these things that we hit on as wnba fans these are all values that a lot of folks have that are listening that when they go to a game or they listen to the podcast hopefully they feel that reflected and i think it's really powerful to have that in a hobby like card collecting to have that kind of intersection where you do feel included and feel like you have room to to be yourself not only be yourself but to just explore and learn more in that space i think that's something really powerful about this lane of collecting is you do not you in other spaces as well but you really do have permission to learn to figure it out to not feel like you have to be right it's just to enjoy it and i think that's so powerful so i love your answer to that big question and it makes me feel very proud that that question got you talking to your wife about sports and sports cards that that means a lot to me personally so thanks chad oh good yeah you know thanks for the question so let's kind of move into our first big segment of today that was kind of like our intro into who you are kind of background about what you're like i want to get into the the getting into the wnba story you outlined kind of how you got into the fire you know you went to a game could you kind of pull back the curtain and tell me what the wnba was to you before that moment was it kind of just like what you were hearing through your hobby buddies was it something that you just casually followed or was this like brand new territory for you when you went to that first game as a sports fan and a card collector and someone who's also on social media a lot i did have some knowledge of it but mostly it was about what the most popular social media clips were that are distributed to me whether it's through instagram or somewhere else and so a lot of those is you see hype surrounding caitlin clark and a lot of talk there like that that was my knowledge in my mind and again i'll be vulnerable with saying this but it's fine like this was my experience she was the the biggest name in the wnba the the most achieved player and i know that's not not accurate now but you know that's what i saw in that that's what was delivered to me so i knew of her growing up utah had a team the utah stars and i remember that we had someone named margo dedick who played and she was more of a novelty or an attraction because she was over seven feet tall and she waited for the stars for a few years and then the team folded and that was kind of it and it was more of of a novelty to say hey this thing's there and you know utah gave it a go and and it it leaves so it was more of a passive knowledge that it existed but without any real knowledge behind what what goes on and why people are so passionate about it i think that that's a story that i've heard from a lot of newer wnba collectors is it be it was something that pass was passive it was just operating kind of in the background it never stole attention from other lanes that you were collecting in but you were always kind of just seeing it or aware of it i'm curious when you went to that first fire game what was kind of when was the moment i suppose where it turned from passive to i need to be active in this fandom i need to do something about this instead of just going to one game and then that's that's my journey i did it i checked the box i'm done when did it turn to like an active i don't know fandom yeah and and i think this is something that everyone hopefully can relate to and maybe we'll pull in more people who are listening to this who don't necessarily collect or go to wnba games the thought is that that experience which i'll detail a little bit is exactly the same in the same feeling the same warmth excitement dopamine rush that you get with literally any other sport that you watch and collect and it might even be more powerful again because of that crowd pop in the community oh and by the way like portland got smoked in the game that i went to the crowd didn't care the crowd did not care and so i can only imagine if i would have been there for one of the games where they win at the buzzer or the or or other exciting games that they have but it's the fact that you can have an exciting atmosphere with players who are in your community but also card collectors who are so passionate about this so during the game is a little you know pullback carter's messaging me wondering how the game was going he's the you know i told him i bought the tickets and he was super stoked and chelsea gray for the aces in the first in the first half i wanna say had somewhere between four and six three pointers that she made and i knew in my mind i'd seen on espn or somewhere that someone had just tied the record like a week or two before of nine three pointers in a game at at the time it was nine i think now it's ten but you know carter he always knows how to poke the bear with me because he knows i'll do things like this he said hey if she gets the record why don't you go buy a big card and i was like yeah count me in like i'm here on the hype and so then other people in our group chat start poking the bear as well and i start scrolling through halftime see if i can find any chelsea gray cards and i didn't see anything that stood out i'm like yeah you know what i don't really see anything that that jumps out at me and then of course steve finds something and he's like this is the car that that you'll need to to buy if she does it well early in the second half she hadn't hit any and so my wife and i mentioned like my eight pm bed so my wife and i head out a little bit early to the game i'm not gonna tell you how early but we head out a little bit early and we've got the game cast pulled up on our drive back which is only like twenty minutes and sarah my wife she's like oh she hit another one i'm like oh boy and then oh she hits another one and sure enough by the time i get home she had hit the nine three pointers to to tie the record and you know mark's poking me at that point too he's like hey we need to hear about this and so that whole excitement i end up buying the card and like just having that whole sense of community in addition to those other things that's what hooked me it was all of those emotions and a tangible card to have outside of it to connect it to it that hits all the feels for me and that's that's what pulled me in and said okay this wasn't a one and done this is something that i want more of in my life and when these games come up i wanna watch them and i wanna you know take time out of my life to go seek these games and watch more of this i love the concept of chelsea gray being kind of your wnba fire starter like that is such a good which no pun intended being at a fire game but like truly she is quite the kind of kickoff or tip-off into wnba fandom because of just she's just so good she's just one of those players that you know you could you could label chelsea gray as novelty in terms of her passing just how crazy it is it's like it's it's insane it's just a different level and i think when you see that not only in the flesh but when you're watching these games when you're newer to the wnba players like that have a way of legitimizing or bringing credibility to the league making you feel like you're getting a high end product in front of you and so chelsea gray i love that that's kind of one of the pieces that helped you kind of you know put together the storyline of the wnba put together the fandom i'm curious are there any other players teams storylines that kinda pulled you deeper beyond that that first layer besides chelsea gray yeah there was a game between the aces and liberty there was a cup in the middle of the season i wanna say it was the commissioner's cup but i i don't know if it's commissioner's cup but there was one midseason and i had already purchased a big asia wilson card a timeless moments i love timeless moments i've loved them in other sports i collected them and so her one of one came up and that was like my first big w purchase but also right after that the brianna stewart timeless moment one of one was available and i'm like oh my gosh like i if i'm gonna have one i would love to have the other so i go and and buy the other but it was that game too so i ended up watching that game in the battle between these two great players that pulled me in as well it was watching that game and i think new york just kinda rocked him during the game i i don't even think it was particularly close but watching that was another one that that really pulled me in i love that i think those are two superstars in our league that you know watching them battle out we'll we'll look back upon very fondly and hopefully with a lot of appreciation for greatness so being able to kind of like memorialize them in your collection so early on with significant cards like timeless moment one of ones is an awesome start i feel like that's that's you're way ahead of like the point that i was at in that time of my collecting of getting into new things i'm like i i love that you're already kind of sophisticated in your collecting in that way i'm curious it it's recklessness it is total recklessness so there is a perk to moving out of state so like in medicine if you move they tend to give you like sign on bonuses to go move and so it was totally like it happened to be at the time when i had some extra funds and i was just being completely reckless with the funds so i appreciate what you said but there there's no there was nothing that was wise in my financial decision there fair enough it was meant to be i guess that's that's what it what it meant i'm curious what's something kind about the wnba that you understand or appreciate completely differently now in like as we record this than when you first started watching or engaging with the league this you know as i was thinking about these questions this one stood out to me and i think it's a slam dunk for me the players seem to care far more than they do in the nba and i know this isn't a comparison but it's what i have to compare it to and they don't ever stop playing so two nights ago there was a game that was on i forget who was even playing i was waiting for the fire game to come on and it was like a twenty point blowout but both teams usually someone would stand out and dribble out the clock no they're still d'ing them up at half court and both teams are playing till the bitter end and it carries over from the fandom or maybe the fandom carries over because of their hard play they play hard they play for a job they play because they love it and that to me is entirely different than what we see with most other major sports right now and i love that like i grew up in the era again of utah jazz which you know looking back on it's a little bit different view but at the time it was jerry sloan and carmelo and john stockton where he was a gritty coach and he wanted people to play hard so that's what i knew as a kid and that's what i enjoyed as a kid and again my mindset's changed a little bit but seeing that triggered kind of my inner child in me i was like this is what's been missing and i really like this i love that it is a two way street i think with the wnba players put in a lot of effort and fans give it right back to them i think there's a a real mutual kind of relationship in the wnba between the player and the fan and i i don't know why that is i'm sure there's research papers around like kind of incentive incentives and different things like that but i do love the point you make about kind of just like the hard hard playing players just giving it your all i think it probably has something to do with money that's like probably where it starts as with everything but i do love it and i completely agree if you could flip that side kind of like flip the coin to the other side you talk about something you feel you understand differently about the league what about cards like what what kind of surprised you when you entered the wnba lane of collecting either about the cards themselves or the community surrounding them a few things the community is wild like out of the group chats that i am in the wnba podcast group if you miss a couple of hours you are not making it back through that chat like it's it's not possible from a time standpoint so the people who collect are so passionate about it and i think that stands out to me quite a bit i think the other things that that are there is i lose my train of thought about this the cards tend to be not this is a weird lens if you collect other sports wnba cards are not as expensive to collect as the other sports now it doesn't mean that they're cheap or inexpensive but they are you can tend to get them a little bit less at a cost and then lastly the volume of product is not there like it is i mean you get a few sets out per year now there's been a little bit more recently it seems like but you're not getting the same volume that you are with other sports which makes for an interesting way to collect and makes you need to think a little bit differently when a card pops up you know if you think that you're gonna wait because you're gonna get another one or something similar to it you could be very wrong and and i've learned that a little bit about even trying to find portland fire cards that they've come out of donruss even just this year yeah i find the the volume aspect to be so interesting and unique i i think if you had like a ratio of popularity and then product being dispersed or distributed i would imagine that the wnba has like the craziest ratio compared to other leagues in terms of just like the lack of supply compared to demand i'm curious to you when you kinda entered this space and saw that dynamic at play was it hard to kind of adjust to that did you have to take a different lens take a different framing for approaching collecting or was it like alright i i guess this is just the way it is and now i'll have to figure it out from here i'm getting there right now and so the timing for me i think of that as important so it was may right around the time when i started looking at buying the the few big cards that i have and looking at things and scrolling daily and now we're a few months removed from that and i'm starting to see that now it's like okay my saved searches are no longer populating with with new cards and it's not like you can just expand your searches because the other product just isn't there so a few months into it and after some eager buying early on right now i'm getting to that spot exactly as you stated which i i don't like it you know it's it's always been that the volume's there if you can go look for it but i think it adds a different element of fun of collecting honestly because it's not just okay you get the funds go find the card that you want now it's there it's also there there's gotta be some strategy to it and either you gotta make connections for people who have these cards and see if they're willing to move them or you have to be more aggressive when the cards do pop up to be able to get them i love that kind of discussion i think we could talk about that for a long time and i'm sure i would love to but let's kind of like pivot and bring the fire to the forefront of the conversation because that's the team team of the day i guess that we're talking about it what kind of about the fire you know you you talk about in general you went to the game you had this atmosphere you had this community they they lost they got you know rocked by asia and the aces but what kind of about the fire specifically not just the wnba made you want to keep following them because you could have abandoned the fire and said i'm gonna go be a liberty fan or x y z fan what about the fire kinda kept you engaged with them moving forward well i'm so intrigued about what the team will become so i've been someone who for me personally once i have a team i tend to stick with the team and not necessarily flip teams now i i abandoned my other basketball team after they blew it up and ripped my heart out but otherwise i don't flip teams and so i think that for me the fire this being their inaugural year you know they were in portland a number of years ago and then they've come back but being in the inaugural year there's some intrigue there for me yeah i don't know what their identity is now i haven't been the biggest basketball connoisseur over the last five years but watching them i'm like i don't fully know what this team is and i don't know that they have their identity yet maybe they do and i just don't know what it is but that intrigues me to see what they will become but there's also a couple of players that i watched and i was like oh you know this person maybe like flashed some things that i think that they could be really good and be really fun to watch going forward and so for me it it kind of hits those characteristics of my other fandoms that led for a perfect opportunity plus with them you know being in my hometown my new hometown that that makes it a little bit easier too yeah for sure do you mind kinda digging in to the roster of it all you mentioned there's a couple players that flash some greatness or some goodness at least is there anybody that you found yourself kind of particularly drawn to on this roster as they're figuring out their identity they're not really sure about roles and responsibilities on the team but you know that's to be expected with a a brand new team who's kinda like sticking out to you among the roster yeah this is gonna be so intriguing for me to listen to this again in like a year or two years and come back to this right just because of my what i feel is insecure of my lack of knowledge with this so my wife and i actually had this conversation at halftime like hey who's standing out to you like we didn't know any of the players and at the time for me it was sarah ashley barker there was at one point in the first half she like impromptu decided she was gonna full court press steal an inbounds pass and like get an extra layup and i was like yes that's the hustle and grit that that i like like you're you're my jam and i still think that's the case now of course she had a season ending i think it was an acl that that she had but she'll be back for that next year i'm sure but my wife at the time said hey this point guard carla late like she's someone that she enjoyed watching and since that game she has been the one that stands out to me she is tenacious she is feisty she is cold blooded that four overtime game that they had against washington i think it was i watched that start to finish and she hit two three pointers at the buzzer to extend the game like that that happened twice and you know i'm downstairs with the dogs like screaming like oh my gosh and you know no one's there to listen to me scream and i don't know who i'm yelling at but it was it it was a lot of fun and so she has been the person for me that i she's atop my safe searches on ebay for cards for sure and the hard part is like not many of them exist and so far there's only one set that has her in a portland fire uniform yeah but i think she's gonna be the one for me going forward that's a fun pick and i like i like both kind of the players that you highlighted i wanna start with sarah ashley barker and just say in college she was also such an interesting player she played in the sec for alabama i think she transferred since from somewhere before that but she is a player that i've heard comment like also other people talk about her like that is just the effort the hustle and i think that on a new team that builds a lot of trust between the players not only among themselves and the coaching staff but also the fandom to feel like we're we're we're gonna do this for you guys like we we got you and we're gonna put forward our best foot i think sarah ashley barker was one of those players that also had some of those big shots like game winning shots or you know something like that and really got the crowd going so i love that pick i hope she comes back healthy i feel like the fire have suffered a lot of unfortunate injuries especially for their first year but that it's it's a kind of promising roster build it's so interesting it's unlike what i've seen in a lot of the other wnba teams but the one thing that i would say is is similar is you know there was a player that had joined the valkyries when they were creating their expansion team and they were saying we're like a roster of six women like we were overlooked and this team brought us on this community brought us on and we we knew our worth and we played with like heart and hustle and i think we're seeing that a lot in these expansion teams and it's such an interesting dynamic at play and you get to unlock these new characters these new players like lait who maybe hadn't had their flowers beforehand or they're newer and they get to experience the newness with you and i think that's a very unique situation to be in i'm curious you know we're talking about the identity of the fire which i think and i think i heard you say they're still trying to kind of figure it out but we're almost a season into the fire if you had to kind of try to capture the essence or the identity of the fire in three words or less could you do that for us because this is a question that i ask every guest and it's always like a a little brain breaker i think it is it's a total brain breaker so i i've listened to almost every one of your episodes this season and then when you reached out to me for this immediately i was like oh i don't know how i'm gonna do this and so on our little road trip that my wife and i had yesterday this was the longest part of our conversation and i think she had the best answer for this now we argued for five minutes over whether or not this is two words or three but that's besides the point so she came up with comeback kids and i think that's pretty good i like tenacious because i do think they're they're feisty they're tenacious so i'm gonna give you five words and we'll go comeback kids but we'll end with comeback kids because this team never quits and they can be down by twenty and you think they're out of it the next thing you know the game's tied and they're fighting and they've got that grit to come back into it i don't know if that long term is gonna be their identity i hope it's not like i hope they can win some games and blow people out in the future but i think for right now based on my experience that is the answer i will give you i like it i like it i i i think it's always interesting to hear about people approaching this one because sometimes you'll get just like three words in a list sometimes you'll get like somebody attempt to make a sentence or it's just like a you know a persona that it takes on these three words and that's kind of the the avenue that you went with so i like that and i i do echo what you say about hoping that maybe the identity matures and it just becomes like dominating or something like that but for now i think that's a good place to be is to have that kind of effort and heart at the center of the team's identity i'm gonna go rapid fire with a couple more questions that you know we've used across this entire season to build a narrative around team collecting and the different teams across the league the next one is about the disrespect index which is this concept that there's a gap between what a player is doing on the court how they're performing and how their market is performing in the card space if you had to pick one player on the fire that isn't quite getting the attention or value that they're putting out on the court do you think that you could identify that player for the fire values in the eye of the beholder emily inkster i think you can get her cards for almost nothing her top cards i think sell for a couple hundred bucks she's never gonna be someone i don't think who's gonna explode in fiscal value but she is gritty she plays hard defense and she's someone that you want on your team and so given that there aren't other cards that are of our fire player in uniform that's kind of i know it's a little bit of a pivot from the question but that's who i decide to go with for this one yeah i like it it's a tough one i feel like in general in the wnba anybody could be put on the disrespect index compared to say their male counterparts so when we put it in a relative perspective i think that's a fun good pick my last question for you in this like rapid fire segment is that usually we do at mount rushmore i say to the guests pick the four players that represent the league your team's history the best and like who the best players are but there's not a lot of history in to unpack here obviously with a new two new team so i kinda wanna flip it if you were building your own kind of four player core or foundation for the fire today who are the four players on the fire roster that you'd wanna build around two for sure carla leight emily inkster i'm go ahead bridget carleton you know she had her moment at three i think in the three point contest in the all star game and she can knock down some shots so we're gonna put her there yes the the fourth was another conversation in the car do we go to center or do we go with sarah and so we're gonna go with sarah ashley barker i wanna see her be more aggressive i wanna see her be more assertive to score the ball i didn't see that a lot out of her it doesn't mean it doesn't exist i've got a very small sample size at least in my life in medicine that matters and it's hard like it's a it's a cheap answer because that's four out of five starting five when they're healthy but that's that's who i'm gonna give you i love it and you get a extra point from me brownie points from me putting bc in there a former links player who was one of my favorites on my team just a player i i just have to add some like bc commentary here a player that plays when she's healthy with with so much joy which i think is something that it does mean a lot to me as a fan is to see that you're having a good time and enjoying yourself and like you know your your your job is to play basketball you know what i mean i really hope you like it because that's just such a cool job to have and whenever bc was on the was on the lynx she played with so much joy so i love i love your four pick yeah thank you well let's kind of move into the next part of the episode because i think that this could be the most fun segment that we have because you're not coming into this conversation kind of with a finished fire pc and going down the list of here's the best fire cards that i own you're basically at like the blank state stage of trying to understand what you want to do and you've been looking at cards you've made some great purchases based on what i've seen and heard from you with you know asia stewie you know kind of these foundational players of the league and you're starting to figure out what you want your collection to look like so rather than me kind of asking you to just explain a collecting philosophy that you have and just like having you run with it i'd love if we try to like kind of unpack it together i like it kind of as a team so let's start with like a not so easy kind of difficult first question which is when you picture a portland fire collection an a year from now what do you want it to kind of feel like to you so this is another one that it made me think quite a bit i've never fully been just a team collector of trying to obtain volume i've been more so about a smaller number of cards of higher quali stuff with both immaculate and prism and so because of that my hope is that i have a few pieces of high end cards of the players in their portland fire jerseys i've always been a guy that i like to collect my player when they're in my team's jersey so when donovan mitchell left utah i could not get into the cleveland cavalier thing i'm a peyton manning collector but we can leave all those colts peyton manning cards for brett i want all the denver broncos peyton manning stuff that i can get so that's really what i hope and foresee my collection being with them in a year so my guess would be two to five cards based off the players that i would go after and based off the product that has been available in the past and hopefully a couple of very high end cards of them i like the focus of it i think that that's something that you know even though you're new to the wnba space obviously you're not new to the card space in general and that is like a very mature way to approach a new collection that i think if you're if you're brand new to collecting and you're brand new to wnba it's going to take you a while to get to that realization so obviously you have some lessons that you learned in other lanes that you're carrying over that kind of speak to you in terms of collection strategy approach or philosophy or whatever you want to call it and you called out kind of how you want it to be focused you want it to be smaller but you want it to be you know of quality and you want it to be of players that you know reflect or are worthy of that kind of status of having nice cards of having you know they have to be in the nice sets in order for you to collect them based on the players that you kind of mentioned either throughout today or in that like mini mount rushmore segment do you think that you're primarily gonna focus on this being like you know players that happen to be on the fire or is it like a a team a team collection there's kind of like a a nuance difference between those two and and hopefully you understand what i'm trying to say but what's really kind of the difference for you so the difference is how impulsive i am and if i take time and am thoughtful about it then i'll go with what i just described however i mentioned the timeless moments and how much i like those and i think it the timeless moments set really reflects upon me as a collector and a sports fan that i love having the moment the experience but i also love having something tangible to remember it by so that when i see you know for those of you who see any clips of this like you see all these decorations in the shelves behind me these are all little pieces of moments in my life that i can see those things and it immediately takes me back there which is just something that holds intrinsic value to me so with that being the case i also think that i've never been a big tops now or panini instant person but should those moments and hopefully they will develop for the portland fire where they have big moments in their franchise history those will lead me to impulsive buys that will then be part of my collection for that kind of selfish inner intrinsic value that i know those will make their way into my collection as well i love that i i love when people kind of have an anchor a why like i feel like a lot of people including myself the why is because the card looks nice or like i just like the look of it which is also equally as valid but having that moment that that personal tie to something is so much more valuable i think when you kind of like look at a card is that the first and only thing that you're looking for is the moment of it all or are there other aspects or elements of cards that when you look at them you say this one might deserve a spot in that coveted pc the moment will so it's both the moment will make me be more aggressive with my purchase and that value for me trumps you know anything that i think may hold more financial value in the future now going back to my early collecting days and i think a lot of us are current collectors based off of some part of our roots wherever that wherever our collecting journey started i mentioned the early nineties basketball for me and so i collected then inserts and i collected the players that i love watching which isn't that groundbreaking but relaying that over to today you know inserts aren't really the the big thing but it's more there are more rare cards that exist in the inserts of the nineties which were the rare cards at that time and so because of that i do enjoy trying to collect cards that are a bit more rare of the people that i really love watching so i do think it will be both i don't think it'll just be the moments but the stuff that is rare that is harder to get i enjoy having fewer of those but being able to go chase those and i think that going forward that'll be a part of my collection as well yeah this whole approach it feels so methodical to me for somebody that's kind of like entering a new space i'm curious when you kinda look back upon what you're leaning on in terms of other collecting journeys that you've been on you mentioned nineties basketball you've mentioned all different types of things what do you think you kind of want to do differently i think exploring a new lane for me personally kind of gives me permission to not only go through trial and error and like be okay with messing up and then figuring it out afterwards but it also gives me the space to challenge some of the norms that i had created for myself in other lanes is there anything that stands out to you that you brought maybe from your collecting past that you wanna do differently moving forward in relation to this pc oh yeah i i laugh because it's all based on failure no seriously countless times that i would go do things that for the moment were a lot of fun but in the long term i regretted and it makes me not enjoy the hobby as much so ripping wax i mentioned that yeah it's a lot of fun but i mean unless you have unlimited funds and i work in primary care and that i don't have i'm very fortunate but i don't have unlimited funds and ripping wax simply wasn't for me and that was you know a big part that was half a decade of my almost weekly card collecting life and then i went on to pc active players and go really hard into active players and i was burned a couple of times by that those were my decisions that i made and it was my choice to do that but there are countless examples you know with with the utah jazz before they blew everything up donovan mitchell rudy gobert i went a lot like that was a massive part of my collection and and then when they're gone it's heartbreaking i did the same thing with the denver broncos i've done the same thing with the dodgers and so those things it's fun in the moment but i think that a big part of my collection while it may sound like it's well formulated it's all out of you know protection for heartbreak like that that's essentially what this is built on like my collection now is mostly on retired players because unless you know something comes out about them it's pretty hard to change that history that you have so i think almost everything is formulated just based off of past learning and failures and it's good to fail i mean if we don't fail we don't grow we don't know you know exactly as you stated what we wanna become but hopefully i've had enough failures in the past that with this that this will be my guiding light going forward and if not then then we'll learn for it and go from there i love this concept of like protection of heartbreak i find it to be i feel like i'm hearing myself heard in words that i wasn't able to put together in my own wnba card collecting journey i feel like that is a similar path and approach and philosophy that i've taken on as like a links fan is like kind of trying to trying to mitigate it before it happens and that's such a difficult thing to do i feel like right now not to like take us on a links like tangent but i feel that with you know your your favorite player gets signed to a one year deal and you're like is this the end you know and like then you start thinking about is this how the card collecting ends is this it and you're like grappling with all these questions that non collectors would be like what are you why is this even like giving you heartburn and you're like no you don't understand this is like make or break for my collection and so the protection of heartbreak of a future heartbreak which is inevitable in sports you know like that's that is part of why we love sports is that it's tragic and that it does that there's always a loser that's just part of the game hearing you put those words together in that particular fashion is just it makes so much sense to me i just i hear you and i i understand how that can be particularly hard to grapple with and to figure out how to game plan in terms of collecting so i i love that chad i love it it it's tough and it leads me you know on the portland fire aspect of this kind of tying it to the hair the other thing to think about with the fire and i think you're gonna ask me about this in a minute but it ties in perfectly the mascot so don russ has released mascot cards rose rose the portland fire mascot this is a pink dragon that spits out glitter and when they introduced her she was twerking at half court i was like yes this is something i can get behind and so i really hope that there will be a rose card coming out going forward because i don't think that they can trade or cut to make those retire and that that is a good safe way you know steve was picking up he showed us some cards that he bought of mascots and it's like you know what it may sound silly but yeah i'm all in get get me a rose card yeah you're safe with a rose card or with the mascot card they're not in day they're not an endangered species or anything like they're not gonna take them away so yeah i completely agree and i do want to lead into this question i think you're you know astutely anticipating but i'm curious you know do you want your collection to kind of document the beginning of the franchise despite this like you know that something isn't you know these players aren't going to be there forever they're not going to be the best players the fire ever have hopefully god willing or do you want it to kind of let it develop around the players that you personally connect with over the span of however long you dictate and to that end i'm going to add on when you think about like say you know my collection in two years there's going to be different players on the fire in five years there's going to be different players that is a situation that not a lot of people get to experience is to kind of build up a collection as the franchise is being built up how are you thinking about that in your card collecting journey so i think it'll be a combination of of both and some of which to commemorate this first year and so i think for you know sarah myself she she's not a big card collector but she was part of that journey for me with with that first game that went to and then the games that we watch here at home and so i think that there probably needs to be a card or two that commemorate you know our discussion in going to that game so for me i'll pick her something up of carla lake because she was the one like hey we gotta keep an eye on her and i do have a sarah sarah ashley barker from last year when she was not on the fire but i think i need to get something nice from twenty twenty six to have those two pieces that will always be there to at least take us back to that place in time like hey hey we just moved somewhere we went to go experience this new thing which seems like it's gonna be a part of our life going forward and i think that's fine you know even if those players get traded or they move on it's still that place in time but then the rest of it i i do wanna be more thoughtful and methodical because of past failures and prevention of heartbreak but also it's a lane that i have found that serves me the most joy in the hobby too that's gonna be a fun journey to kinda watch you go along i wanna make this kind of practical i suppose we've talked in abstract a lot or like talked about just like concepts that are guiding your collection building but i wanna kinda ask you if you if somebody had say a healthy budget i in the wnba i think a thousand dollars can get you a lot of great stuff you can make with a thousand dollars in the wnba space and you had a thousand dollars for somebody to start their fire pc how would you kind of go about coaching them and i'm i'm gonna throw in like a kind of curveball here with the discussion we just had about waiting or the the protection of heartbreak or the prevention of it and this concept that the team is new so you don't know where it's going to be in say two years compared to five years you can't have a retrospect in the collection are you picking up cards now in this discussion if you're coaching somebody about how to spend their thousand dollars are you telling them hey maybe put that thousand dollars in a savings account and then in five years now let's execute on this strategy i'm curious on both sides of what you're what you're thinking i would go actually a different direction entirely and tell them to stop and fully think about what things are most important to them you know we we've had good conversation about you know whether it's the experience whether it's value of a card that may rise with time whether or not it's a player and whether or not you mind if that player ends up getting traded or moves on and if it's like if you're just a player collector regardless of where they go and put a lot of thought into that like when i say that your your questions that you send me gave me more thought in card collecting and like i truly mean that and i think it's a really good way to help ground what you do so that you do enjoy your collection so i would tell them to absolutely stop and think about that now for me personally on that thousand dollars if someone came to me and said hey help me spend this i'd say well based on my experience when the rose card comes out i need to get a rose card and then i'm gonna pick up a couple of players from this year that were meaningful that will remind me of that first year and if i had to split that budget i would go maybe like eighty twenty with it so maybe two hundred dollars of you know picking up volume or moments that were there maybe go checking out some panini instant stuff and then i would spend the eighty percent on maybe one or two cards of the players that i really enjoyed that are a little bit higher end so that's how i personally would approach it but i think the think exercise would be the most important one for them i love that emphasis i think slowing down and really challenging yourself is something that's often overlooked in this hobby because it's not as sexy as posting a mail day every day right and it's like simple to say but it's one of those kind of inflection points that we talk about there's all these inflection points on your card collecting journey and one of your inflection points can be understanding what you want and you wake up the next morning and everything feels so much more clear you have a direction or a north star to follow and i think that that exercise whether it's asking yourself hard questions listening to other people attempt to answer those hard questions for themselves or trial and error those are all three very good ways to go about this but i completely agree and endorse your message of slow down think about it and then make your decision instead of making your decision and then thinking about it afterwards so love it chad thanks alright well before we kind of round out today's conversation i want to get into my favorite segment that we do every single episode on this season which is called the personal grail i think there's something very fun about asking a collector to kind of narrow down their entire collection to to one card not necessarily the card with the highest price tag or the most impressive one according to whoever person on the internet but the one that carries the most meaning to you to the collector so i asked you to look through your entire wnba collection because i know you're new to fire collecting and new to they don't have a lot of availability to be honest so i asked you to pick one card that kind of represents your wnba fandom chad were you able to do that and if so could you kind of talk the listeners through what you picked and why this this one won yeah sure thing and i think you know if people are picking up on some of the things i'm throwing down here the intrinsic value of things or i guess the sentimental value rather in this scenario is going to win out so i do have a small wnba collection but i have some stuff that i'm really proud of it's not the asia prism gold it's not the timeless moments of either stewie or asia i picked up a jackie young black finite because of that game that we went to but it's actually this one it's a twenty twenty four prism and it is chelsea gray it's got a sticker auto and i hate sticker autos but it's the gold vinyl one of one and it's because this is the card that i bought when she tied the record for those three pointers and it was instigated by hobby friends and like having that moment of chatting with them them knowing that they could push me to do it my wife being there seeing it she kinda helped push me to buy it too all of those things make that definitely my personal grade plus she's a beast on the court like she she really is and she's fun to watch and so i enjoy not only flipping on fire games but i'll flip on ace's games as well just in my free time to go watch her and see how she's doing and and what she's up to so that card in particular is the is the personal grail i love it chad i think that any card that kind of can bring out a memory let alone one that's kind of a first i think that that's so special like to be able to pinpoint one of those not to like keep leaning on this word that some for some reason i'm anchoring on but one of those inflection points it's it's so true like it it represents a turning point in your collection where you said i'm gonna follow this new lane or i'm gonna i'm gonna explore this and i'm gonna do it alongside friends and i think that that's so special and so not only is the card beautiful i love the throwback design i love the super fracture or the gold vinyl excuse me design i just i think it looks so good so such a good pick chad i i love it well thank you thank you i appreciate it certainly a card i love awesome well before i let you go i'm i have a couple more questions as like an outro to the podcast one that i have for you is kind of what kind of has surprised you most about getting into the w of it all in this collecting community easily i'll go back to it and it's it's community and i'll even throw in one last little piece i mentioned that we ran into one of my wife's students from her pilates studio now i i take pilates when my wife teaches and it helps prevent me from getting injured and it's great but i saw that woman there a month or two after we went to the game and again in a point where i wouldn't normally just go up and start conversation before a class began i walked up to her and said hey you know with the fire i'm a card collector you know what do you think who should i be collecting from the fire in the future and we sat there and talked for ten minutes about different players and again it all comes back to the community of it all and a conversation i would never otherwise have but it it's that community again it's beautiful i always find any excuse to be to talk more about cards or basketball with somebody that i wouldn't have before is a little blessing it's one of the benefits that comes with being a sports fan but especially a wnba fan so good call out alright is there anything that we kind of didn't hit on that you want to leave the audience with whether that's about the fire your collecting journey or getting into the wnba as a newer fan that maybe we didn't get to talk about on this hour or so together that you wanna you wanna say i think just to highlight the fact that i don't know what it's going to mean for me as a collector but the fact that wnba the number of products that are released per year adds such a different element of collecting than with any other sport and i find it exciting i don't like it because i like to be able to have those things available but it it does add a different element of intrigue when you're thinking about buying cards and that makes it fun so i think it's easy to get on autopilot sometimes you pick up you know we've got four or five apps basically you can find any auction house or ebay that you want and you should be able to find the card you're looking for that's not the case with some of these cards and so it does add another element that's fun so that when you do find something it gives you that extra special feeling love it okay my last question before i let you go or before we end it with my my final question is for anybody that wants to follow along with you maybe they particularly enjoyed your podcasting skills on full display here today chad where can people follow along with your journey or or anything that you're putting out in the content space yeah sure thing so at pack to the future podcast we're on instagram you can see us on youtube as well we we put out podcast episodes every week and then we do new sports card releases where my wife joins along with that and that's every wednesday so instagram's the best place for it we have a website at p t t f podcast dot com as well awesome if you guys do not follow chad and his podcast you are missing out so one hundred percent recommend you guys checking out all those places that chad detailed well chad every episode ends the same way and it's with this question if somebody is listening right now and they're trying to figure out not just what team to follow and to root for but which team to collect could you make the pitch on behalf of the portland fire oh absolutely no one will declare you a fair weather fan you will be there since the beginning we have a tenacious team who doesn't give up and we have a pink dragon that twerks that doesn't do it i don't know what'll do it for you i love it alright chad thank you so much for joining the podcast loved having you on and for the listeners like i said this is our penultimate episode so you got one more coming next week with a very special guest hint it's yours truly so we'll see you then