welcome back loyal listeners of the stacking slabs podcast network to season five episode eight of the wnba card podcast where i'm trying to bring you collector driven and community oriented content as often as i can my name is caitlin i go by cold lunch cards mostly on the instagram machine but other places on the internet as well and first of all i just want to say thank you all for being here and listening i've been so busy i know a lot of you have been busy with the national with fanatics fest with a massive circuit of card shows going on across the country so thank you for your patience as i get these episodes out the door and today is one that i hope will be worth it i know i'm excited for this conversation today's conversation is with a good friend of mine carter and if you don't know him he goes by at mcbasketball pc on instagram carter and i have now known each other for a while at least a year and he's a big aces i don't know aces fan aces truther we'll get into the dynamics of this but there's one thing for sure he's an asia wilson fan and collector so carter if people don't know who you are which they should but if they don't do you mind introducing who you are where you're from kinda like what what they should know about you yeah caitlin thanks for putting this together i think for those of you who don't know me carter at nc basketball pc on instagram and i'm based out of memphis and if you thought you knew me before this caitlin's intro might have confused you now so you'll just have to listen to the rest of the episode to make sure that you do know me but i yeah big big asian collector and we'll get into that in a second but yeah yeah i'm excited to have you here i feel like we've had lots of instagram dms we've met at a show in person before which usually for my guests is is not the case so this is kind of it's gonna be a fun one but this one is gonna be a little bit of a different episode and the what i mean by that is that the rest of the episodes this season have mostly been focused around like hardcore team collectors somebody who focuses on a team and then they get attached to players because they play for that team we're taking it from a little bit of a different angle here because carter is an asia truther like through and through like asia wilson is the north star and she happens to play for the aces so that's kind of the the angle that we're gonna take on today's episode as opposed to say the rest of them and the other thing that i wanna mention kinda at the top as we get into this conversation because it's gonna be mentioned a few times and something that i'm very proud of is that carter and i were both i guess interviewed asked questions about whatever whatever you wanna say for the same psa magazine article written by ryan fagan who wrote all about asia wilson cards and so as we go through today's episode a bunch of what we're gonna be talking about kinda derives from some of the things that we each independently submitted to that article so with that being said that's kinda where i wanna start today carter what was it kinda like seeing your name and your collection and your thoughts on asia wilson in print as opposed to maybe just like on an instagram account or somewhere else yeah that was fun i think for those of us who really collect out of like we're just a real hobby and we're just trying to make progress one card at a time one connection one hobby friend at a time one experience one show where we meet up with folks you don't really realize the progress that you're making at a high level until a writer for psa gets in your dms and asks if they can talk to you about it but that was that was really cool just to see that something that i've built is able to be a part of the story of the player that i'm collecting and and their kinda card catalog so to speak and i was really happy to see your name in there i as i was talking with ryan you know he asked a lot of questions and i was like you know based on the questions you're asking i was like i think you're trying to talk to caitlin from the wnba card podcast are you familiar with her and he's like no i don't know i was like i sent her i sent him your information and i was like you need to talk to her so i was like i know he found me through instagram because of my asia cards and that makes sense but it's like the questions that he was asking me i could tell he was looking for you and so i was really happy to see that you guys were able to connect and i thought what you added to that article just framed it so so well i was really grateful for that yeah it was i was honored to be mentioned alongside somebody like you who not only has an amazing collection that has real heart soul passion integrated into it but somebody that knows what they're talking about when it comes to greatness when it comes to women's basketball cards and being a fan of the game so that kind of article for me personally like it made everything feel so real i bought a couple copies and gave them to my parents and it was like kind of just a surreal moment like you said to have somebody recognize you and it means a lot that you kinda like made that bridge there to ryan as well for me so yeah as we go through today's episode i'm gonna be kind of relying on quotes that maybe carter or i gave out or other people that were interviewed for the article so if you guys wanna check it out it's actually the victor wembanyama copy i've got it here and i'll post it when we post this on instagram but i'm holding it up for our patreon viewers but yeah just just for may twenty six yeah i think so may twenty twenty six yep and if you have any of the short prints of this hit me up i'll buy them from you something just super cool to see your name in there so carter i guess let's get back to the topic of today which is asia wilson and i wanna talk to you about how this whole thing happened because you're not in vegas you're not in south carolina but yet you are the biggest asia wilson fan i know and something that i learned as part of reading the article is that your origin story is super interesting because it almost came from a villain perspective you talked about how you kinda had a grudge because asia wilson beat your mississippi state bulldogs in the national championship game in twenty seventeen and i kinda need to understand how this happens because me personally if somebody beats my team i'm not collecting them i refuse to collect sabrina because of this very issue despite the fact that i like her very much so maybe if you could take me back to that game and talk about what you remember about it and why asia kinda came out of that as a collection yeah so it was before i had started collecting women's sports cards or cards in general that was when the twenty seventeen game happened and mississippi state went back to back that year to the those two years seventeen and eighteen to the finals and lost both of them first to south carolina and asia wilson a lot alicia gray all them and then to notre dame the following year enrique hit a game winner jackie young made a game saving steal you know marina mabry all all kind of players were in there and that was very sad because we were at the height of women's basketball at that time mississippi state was we had vic schafer who's now with texas and victoria vivians was on that team tierra mccown was on the team they both had solid careers and i yeah i was really pissed about that that was that was frustrating but then when i started to finally collect the wnba and i needed some players to get into vivians t mac they were really easy you know they were having solid careers with this irrelevant team called the fever my helpings have changed right but they were it was a dumpster back then and so it was really easy to pick up their cards and i was like i want something that's a little more challenging i wanna pick up like some hot young superstars that are like really starting to burn down the league and so i chose the two players that killed us asia wilson had like a twenty ten double double stuffed the stat sheet in that twenty seventeen championship game i was just really impressed with her i was like you know what she's she's nice and and then i also started collecting enrique for that same reason just converting that hatred into respect and and then since then like asia's really been the one who's stuck in a big way one hundred percent i think it's not a bad thing in cards if you can't beat them join them and that sounds like kinda what happened with you and i i can appreciate that because asia beats everybody so i understand completely i kinda wanna get into the cards of it all because as you mentioned you weren't really collecting cards when this happened that came at a later point did you get in during the pandemic did you get in a little before after kinda what did the market look like for specifically asia but also in general for women's basketball cards when you entered and you were starting to formulate a plan of who you wanted to collect yeah so i started collecting at the very beginning of twenty nineteen started collecting nba you know i'm from memphis born and bred and nba is just like in my blood and so that's what i immediately was drawn into with with cards i was like what do you mean there's all these cards of my favorite players and i get to like own little squares of them and look at them all day so the nerd in me was unlocked that has been dormant since i like collected pokemon as a kid and and then the pandemic was like wearing on through twenty twenty there was no sports of any kind and so we all kinda leaned into cards like it was our sports and in between that like void that existed but also just the nba cadence of having that off season where it's like i need basketball i was like i'm gonna check out the w yeah you know because like i know some of these players i need to just watch it and then once things go back to normal like i'll have hoops year round so twenty twenty was when i started collecting wnba cards and really really went in heavy into don russ that year because it was the only thing that was out and then eventually prism started coming and you know the rest is history it's a good moment to join at that point i think if we go back into card ladder and look at the prices of asia cards we're all kinda kicking our butts about what it used to be like and you know i guess hindsight's twenty twenty but i would have killed to be buying asia cards in twenty nineteen that is one hundred percent sure speaking of kind of like buying was there ever a moment where you knew this had turned into like a real kind of pc that you were working towards and building or did it just kinda like pile up over time yeah it took a minute i was collecting vivian's and macauan i was collecting enrique i was collecting asia and then i was collecting like hall of famers here and there that as i could pick them up and trying to like spread the peanut butter yeah and i thought wba cards are so cheap they're so like accessible what whatever's out there you know and there's not much i was like i could buy up everything that exists pretty quickly and that didn't stay true although everybody who got into collecting ten years before that that was absolutely true there's several people who just own everything everything that era and it's wild but you know the what rose to the top was the greatness that kind of emerged out of that and so i kind of had no choice eventually but to prioritize asia wilson just because of how freaking exciting it was you know there was just there was no other option but like how can i justify spending money on anybody else when i can have this cool collection take place of asia wilson so it really just snowballed over time mhmm i love that the word that i associate most with asia wilson is undeniable i think it's just like at a certain point you just have to accept how great she is and at a certain point you have to accept that if you want to call yourself at least in my opinion a serious wnba collector she has to be represented in that collection it's just like it wouldn't make sense for her to be absent from the conversation so we're gonna get more into what it's like pc'ing asia wilson cards pc'ing goats the conversation around goats and cards but before we get there i did wanna touch on since this is the the aces episode i know you do collect some other aces players namely jackie young chelsea gray etcetera but maybe at a smaller scale than your asia pc is that because you like the players and you have like a history of liking them and they you know you somehow have an emotional connection with them or is it because they're kinda like asia's teammates and therefore you feel kinda indebted to also support them yeah so i wanna make i wanna make a a comment before i answer that question and just say that first of all shout out to all of the long time las vegas aces fans out there who heard caitlin's intro of this guy doesn't even follow aces he just likes asia and you're like rolling your eyes as you roll in your car down the street my goal in this episode is to do as much justice to the franchise and its history as possible while acknowledging that it really is all about the greatest player in the history of the world so that frames my answer of i don't collect any jackie or chelsea just because they're asia's teammates i really do want like one of their triple autos i haven't gotten one of those yet that would be for that reason of like what they've done together right but i collect i try to collect as something here and there of like the great players in the league and if you don't think they're some of the great players in the league truly i mean they have in their own right established themselves as worthy of adding to any respectable wba players collection and that's why they're there period but it it helps asia out a lot so you don't have to play against them one hundred percent i think when i look at the like ace's roster recently i'm like olympian olympian olympian and like these players are like true superstars that if asia wasn't on that team would be number one like there's no doubt to me and so i think it's really cool that you know that we're talking about that and we'll get into more of just like how that shows up in your pc and what that looks like but i'm glad to hear that you're a fan of them jackie young is one of the players that i've thought about pc ing for a long time i haven't quite pulled the trigger but just one of those players that just moves differently operates a little differently i saw a previous guest i had on mike kaye who also collects asia wilson and jackie young like put out a post recently that was like the robin to asia's batman is jackie young and i kinda do like thinking about him like that because i don't think asia like asia can do whatever she wants obviously but having jackie there like you said does make her so much better as well as the point guard and others on the team so oh she's she's scottie pippen to asia jordan right and i say that because scottie pippen in his own right unbelievable dominant player right but we always just think of him as the sidekick when he could've in the right situation just torched the league and probably given jordan a lot of problems and i think jackie's the same way i think she could plug and play put her on any team any team gonna be jackie young it's not situational one hundred percent alright before we kinda dive into and like zoom into asia i do wanna take us back one step away from the aces away from asia away from all of that and something that brought this whole podcast together was all about community just bringing together people that have a fondness of the wnba and of wnba cards and i've been asking each of the guests this question which is what does being a fan of women's sports and collecting women's sports card mean to you and that's like a big question so carter if you could try your best to answer that i think we can do that and then we'll get more into the the asia of it all yeah well i mean i'll say like i really only do pro hoops and so it's kind of just this but for what for what it is wnba collecting i mean i mentioned before like functionally it allows me to be a pro basketball fan year round right and so it fills a legitimate need that i have as a sports consumer right and i think that's something that that gets missed a lot when we talk about following women's sports is how much it fills a legitimate need that we have and those can be all different kinds of needs right but more than that i mean i i appreciate watching a league like this grow and getting the opportunity to do that because you you don't get that opportunity a lot like a lot of the pro leagues are like legacy leagues yeah when it comes to men's sports in women's sports they're not legacy leagues they are much more in the upstart phase right now or you know still kind of making their climb towards the top and and because of that you get to watch these athletes carry themselves in a different way because they're in a growing league and they're trying to build upon something instead of just walking in to a finished product and so i think that players they market themselves with a lot more intentionality they they take their role i think as sports entertainers a little more seriously right whereas i i think sometimes like male athletes who are in who are in these multiples they actually took a privilege to have to watch you know and and so i just really like the change of the team and i think that translates to the community of people who watch the sport i feel i feel a a different kind of connection to to people who watch the wnba with me than i do to just you know any nba fan i agree i think the like fabric of the wnba community specifically the wnba card collecting community is just a little bit tighter and not only is it because it's objectively smaller than say the male counterpart leagues but it just feels special to be able to say i'm here before it gets big because it it's growing like you said it has been growing and it will continue to grow and to be part of kinda the foundation building be part of the success it just like you said it feels different so i like the way that you put that in into words and i i don't think anybody has previously talked about kind of like the schedule side of it and i i do like that call out because i think a lot of us that collect cards are here because we love sports and that's like the driving factor and if there isn't sports to watch what cards are you gonna collect and so yeah i like that call out a lot so i kinda wanna try i'll do a hard pivot here for the listeners but we're gonna get into asia cards and i wanna talk about a number first that maybe not all listeners are aware of so the number is one thousand twenty five that's the number i want you guys to remember that's kinda like the number that broke my brain when i first heard about it and what this number represents is the number of asia wilson rookie cards in existence not one thousand twenty five parallels which today by today's means is not a stretch of the imagination not one thousand twenty five variations just one thousand twenty five cards total that breaks down to about five hundred base five hundred autos twenty five platinums out of all twenty eighteen rittenhouse the product that asia debuted in as a rookie it was also the last year of rittenhouse before it lost its license so that's the entire like catalog of asia wilson rookie cards that exist is one thousand twenty five so as i kinda like go through this segment with carter i want everybody to keep that in the back of your mind because it just feels unfathomable compared to today's standards when we talk about print runs of hundreds of thousands and that's not even an exaggeration so let's start with this question what is kind of your overall collecting approach look like when you look at asia wilson cards what kinda has to be true in order for a card to enter your collection as to put something that you just say that's nice but it's not for me i have to like it that's number one okay and and i think there has been more options for likable cards recently especially like we've got a couple of high end like objectively high end quality sets in like one and one and impeccable that are available now i i like something that reflects the player herself you know and so i think that's why i gravitate naturally towards autographs is like she had to take the time to sign it and so i think there's there's a a stronger connection that that card has to her especially when it's an on card mhmm autograph you know like panini's even posting reels on instagram of like her holding those cards and it's like yeah that was a moment in time and this card is from that moment in time it wasn't just printed about her you know but we can we can get in that later but yeah i think for me it's just about what is gonna make this collection stand out to me where when i open the drawer and i look at these cards i'm like oh yeah these you know it's not just a a pile of asia wilson cards like it's the ones that i've put together to really tell the story of all the kinda different kinda cars that are available to hers would you say if you and this isn't on our questions that i prepared for you carter so i'm hitting you here but would you say that scarcity as opposed think about like different factors that go into when you decide if a card when you say i like it is it the fact that it's rare is it fact that it's scarce is it the fact that it's the aesthetics in auto patch something like this is it the set kinda when you think about all these factors how do you take them into consideration for asia wilson cards specifically yeah it's it's all of those things never all at once obviously but i i think i mentioned earlier in my collecting i was like trying to spread it around like peanut butter in terms of the players i collected i was trying to collect everything of everybody and it was chaotic and i've matured a lot more since then to where now as of last year i had a cutoff on the number of asia wilson cards i was gonna keep in my collection and that has just been an accelerant on the quality of the cards that i've been able to get because when you don't have a limit on the number of cards you're just gonna pick up everything you see which means you're never gonna have enough enough to afford the really nice ones that come along and so i didn't realize how much i was limiting myself but now that there's a limit i'm like oh man it's really easy to get the i mean i i have a fifty card asia wilson collection which sounds big and small at the same time and it feels small once you kinda fill it out with the cards that you like because then you have to make these really conscious decisions of if i add a card i have to take one away in order to maintain my limit so this card has to be better for me and so what i'm working on right now is really just making sure that those cards as best as possible show a lot of different things about what's available for her that's autographs that's case hits that's rare cards that's numbered cards it's really shiny based stuff and it's really you know obscure stuff that i just like that that's kind of what i'm going for is not just having all of the same thing but having things that i think really show where you could look at it and you go go i now know what's available for asia wilson in general and i know what carter liked as a collector that's kinda been my goal that's a really interesting take i think a lot of people will resonate or not resonate with that personally for their their collection because it's really hard to do that like this is something that probably took you years to get to in terms of just like even recognizing your purchasing patterns your holding patterns and your selling patterns to be able to come to this conclusion and when you think about building a collection that i'm gonna use the word sustainable but over time is going to matter this is an approach that helps kind of like make that real as opposed to saying which is totally valid as opposed to saying my favorite color is blue therefore i'm gonna buy every blue asia wilson card this makes it a little bit more objective you still get the flavor of carter and carter's favorite cards in there but it's also kinda respecting the entire card ecosystem that asia has available and trying to have that fully represented so i think that that's something that's really interesting and for asia it's especially interesting because her cards have become infinitely more scarce and difficult to find over time something that you mentioned in the psa magazine was that her cards have become almost ghost like when did that kinda happened for you was it immediately when you joined the the hobby space that you found it difficult to acquire asia cards or was it yesterday that it became a little bit harder to find her best cards yeah so when i joined things i i did not think that things were ghost like i thought you could get any asia wilson card you wanted at the time because i didn't fully understand the wnba collector ecosystem and i didn't they were so ghost like that i didn't realize it because because of the the the super rare stuff the gold lasers the you know optic golds the gold vinyls all that those were already sewn up by collect by small number of collectors who helped each other and had a lot of intention right the rittenhouse platinums were already sewn up by collectors who when it came out they were like alright let's all go and do this together and there was not a sense of competition it was like a cooperation to help each other succeed and and as i got into that that's been one of the things i appreciated most about collecting wba cards is like just that collaborative piece i mean that that has been available widespread in a way that that i haven't experienced with anything else but i would say it's those first three years when i was talking to ryan for psa magazine that i was referring to the twenty eighteen rittenhouse they're ghosts the the twenty nineteen the good twenty nineteen don russ and optic stuff goes like twenty twenty prism the super rare cards they're not available you cannot just go online and buy those cards if you see them online they're for these exorbitant prices and now that's already expired information what i said in psa magazine even that stuff that's exorbitant online is getting purchased and so i think it's those first three years before the print runs really got kinda wild where you just you you cannot say okay i'm an asia wilson collector now let me go out and get her rookies and her twenty nineteen stuff and her twenty twenty stuff those iconic sets that matter a lot because the rest twenty twenty one after is kind of just cards of players right those three years was just one product that year and there wasn't very much of it hobby only all of that those are tough those are tough you don't just go get them one hundred percent do you like that do you like that kind of hate it you hate it i mean i i hate it i i want more of it you know like somebody sell me an asia wilson gold prism from twenty twenty somebody sell me a gold optic from twenty nineteen you know i want a platinum rookie i can't get that stuff you know and that would go really nice in my collection yeah but i i guess i do look at my the stuff i do have from those years i'm like i couldn't get that now if i wanted to that's kinda neat but that's not as cool as if i just had all of it yeah i i hear that i i i find that her stuff is becoming more and more difficult to find but with that as you mentioned we're having kind of more premium releases right now with products like impeccable yeah pinini one and one etcetera as an asia wilson collector are you looking ahead to these kinds of releases or are you more so still trying to target those early years and if the answer is both how do you kinda just like think about your chase comparing the two yeah i mean the answer is both because the because the stuff that's coming out right now is a very active process it's it's very it's much more frequent like i can buy cards pretty reliably of those things and then the old stuff that i have to reach back for is a big swing and so it takes a lot of intention and so i do have to balance the two but it's not like i have to pay attention to them all the time because going like last year at the national when we were hanging out like i went for that that prism gold twenty twenty auto and i mean that took a lot more than it's taken me to get any any card from more recent years but it it requires a lot of consciousness all the time from us as collectors to think what do i really want to be in this collection long term and am i getting that or am i just getting the next cool thing that's available and we can easily you know default to the the latter one hundred percent i mean it's way easier said than done we can sit here and talk about it but me and you both know that we'll both have mail days of shiny new stuff that comes out and we just can't help ourselves but that that's kind of a good lead in to the next couple of questions that i had which is around long term asia collecting in the article in psa you said something about the fact that you're collecting somebody who is undoubtedly going to end up in the mount rushmore of their sport and they're continuing to play you're trying to actively build you know the best collection that you can of her and that because of the prices of wnba cards at least relative to nba counterparts that this is relatively attainable and when i say relative i'm you know recognizing that some of asia's cards have exploded in price and are thousands of thousands of dollars but we're not talking hun we're hardly even talking tens of thousands of dollars and i i don't mean that in like tens of thousand dollars isn't a lot of money that's crazy but compared to say her counterparts in the nba we're talking millions do you see that as kind of like a a permanent advantage of collecting asia wilson or do you see that as a shortening ever shortening window of ketchup yeah i think the window is is shortening for all of us but not in an accelerated pace i know her rookie cards kind of it felt like overnight relatively got out of control it almost feels like a a small handful of people found out about them and and just caught them just threw around that that michael jordan money and all of a sudden you know it's a different landscape and i think we've all kind of been hit by that this like shock you know i was gonna collect all of her rookie autos i got one and her rookie card you know her base card and then prices started to go up i waited for them to come down and here i am still still waiting and and that's not gonna happen but i think for me it's not a permanent advantage that i have built up so much while she's affordable but i think i've been able to prolong the advantage to where when i add a card to my collection and you know thus i take one out to maintain that number of fifty i don't necessarily just throw that card on ebay like i'm i'm able to have this the cushion to kinda put it in a box somewhere and say let's save this so that when asia's cards come up i'm not having to catch up i'm i'm taking those out and those have come up as well hopefully if they're the right kind of cards and i can use those to help me close the gap that may grow between where they have been when i've been collecting them versus where they are now so i'm i'm hoping to play it in such a way that you know maybe the the advantage is not forever but where i'm able to accomplish my goals and and do what's needed now to see those goals continue to be accomplished you know through the life of my agent wilson collecting does it ever feel kinda like i'm gonna use the word weird but maybe a better word could be like puzzling does it ever feel puzzling to you that somebody that's this great and we'll get into the numbers of her greatness but is this relatively attainable to you as you're collecting her and and once again i'm gonna emphasize relative because i can't afford ten thousand dollar cards so like it's not attainable for me or but but relatively does it ever feel puzzling to you does it feel kinda like you're you're like folks what are we doing here this doesn't make sense like everybody kinda why aren't you on board with this what is that feeling like too yeah i mean sometimes i and two therapists to handle how much i talk to myself about it i'm like this is great this is wild that asia's probably not even one of the top three most expensive players to collect despite easily being a top three player all time and probably gonna end up just being number one by herself with everybody else a mile behind her i mean it it could happen she's she turns i think thirty and like i looked it up before this podcast i think she turns thirty like a in a day or two okay you know so like she's got so much time and so much left in the tank theoretically that it is strange that folks are going for all these young players hoping that they will be this great player one day and they're play paying these premiums and like what do you want that player to do what do you want that popular young guard to accomplish do you want them to win four mvps maybe five would that be nice to you do you want them to win three titles do you want them to win multiple finals mvps multiple defensive players of the years do you want them to be probably number one all time in career points rebounds blocks because asia's either done all that stuff or she's on pace for it and it's like why are we spending ten times what asia's worth for those players and for some people it's legitimately just because they love that player for that reason but i feel bad for those folks because they're paying such a premium to collect their favorite player and i feel almost bad over here collecting the greatest player walking the planet right now for like pennies on the dollar because there's other people who are who have hopped on to their favorite player trying to make a buck on the hype around those players i'm like that's that is so goofy to me when we look at just the card market in general things are going out of control right now i mean prices for everything but wnba i would say yeah are insane and it's like every day you wake up and prices have gone up for every card that exists and you know who's leading the pack on that michael jordan who wasn't like these kids that are collecting him were not alive the last time he touched a basketball and yet they are still prioritizing him at the very tip tip top and i'm like what needs to change for the wnba to act like that you know not just with asia wilson but with diana taurasi and maya moore and tamika catchings and all these folks like who if they were nba players would be untouchable right now it's a big question i i wish we had like a good answer but it's probably for like an entire like socioeconomic class like like big big picture thinking but i think for anne marie's class yeah anne marie's class would be a good one on that but i i hear you loud and clear i i i find today's landscape to be i don't know it doesn't make logical sense to me for somebody like asia to quote unquote be lagging behind at least in the price increases that we're seeing in other categories so i hear on that and at that point you know or to that point what we're talking about here this whole kind of like through line is asia's greatness and i just heard you rattle off a list of players that are also great and so this segment i wanna talk about greatness i wanna talk about goat i wanna talk about everything that that means to you especially because you and i have had i don't know it feels like lots of dms or conversations obviously i am a nafissa collier truther i'm a minnesota lynx fan and therefore i have particular biases around maya moore the like so my question to you is is asia wilson the goat right now is that in progress and where's the line for you yeah i i'm trying not to get philosophical with everything that you asked me but the goat conversation is something that i sometimes i don't just think about the conversation itself but like why do we have that conversation what is a goat conversation and why are we so obsessed with this sports fans i think the best answer i can come up with caitlin is like we i think we want a goat here's why i wanna go is because it sets a standard for the rest of the league to work towards right it sets like this beacon point for everybody else to strive for and so when we talk about who's the greatest of all time what we're really talking about is what does everybody else have to look forward to you know it's not just this status of i think it's this person and i'm right although for some people that's absolutely what it is so i'm not gonna have that conversation of i think it's just the greatest and you are wrong and you suck and because that's not it's not worth it but i think that what asia wilson has done and is doing and is gonna probably do is redefining what success looks like in the wnba i think we can all agree with that right one hundred percent and that's why i think she's the greatest is because she's put together this package of accolades and dominance that just hasn't been matched right and i think it's gonna be the standard for every other player to work towards and so yeah she's she's probably the greatest player of all time if she's not then she will be and there's also gonna be decades and decades of greatness that comes after her where you know we're gonna keep our eyes up for who's next you know who's who's coming after who's looking at her right now you know in a poster on their wall while they're lifting weights you know right no it's true it's one hundred percent true i really like the call out around just kind of like level setting on goat conversations because i find them to be sometimes just like two boys yelling at each other most of the time and it's just like talk show entertainment of like just who can be more argumentative my i agree with you on the take on kind of like goat means you're setting the standard and then the hope is that by setting that standard one day somebody else will push that standard standard further yeah and so what asia is doing is each year it feels like she's moving that bar herself and that's why i consider her to be a goat that's where i'll leave that there my i i just have to like i can't it's the you have to have a slight i cannot do i cannot like not pick maya moore just because i'm a lynx fan but that's not me disrespecting asia at all i think if they went up one on one asia would beat her so i can maya moore has been my goat thank you okay so we can agree we can agree if asia takes the crown she takes it from her that's so we can agree on that and everybody else listening can just kind of you know rage into their earbuds sorry about it yeah we've said it so now it must be true yeah yeah now just like don't come to my dms freaking out but to me i think like if you're talking about goat it's asia wilson maya moore and catch those are like the three that come to mind for me and if you wanna throw terasi on there i think that that's totally valid those would be the four that i would go with do you is that would you agree would you throw in a different lineup there i am gonna sound like a hater i've never understood the thing with tarasi i i mean obviously she's un she was unreal good but like i there's too many players that i stack up against her and i'm like i would go with that player and to me one of them is lisa leslie okay valid and so if i had to pick four taurasi's probably in my five but i know that's even that's just disrespectful because so many people consider her number one like i just i don't know i i struggle to see it but yeah for me it's it's asia already everything else she does is just gravy on top of that she's already in the top five and then you know i would say more as maya's up there for me along with probably tamika catchings or cynthia cooper lisa leslie i don't know i don't know if four is a number i can make a cut off at yeah fair enough we could keep going and going but i just needed to hear who's up there with asia but part of what makes a goat to me undeniably is winning i think that is a essential part of the equation of making a goat and so as we've talked about asia has won a lot she's won three championships in four years the aces are a dynasty by any means that you measure it whether it's in the wnba or compared to other leagues and a lot of it happened where while as we were talking about people were busy looking at the shiny bright toys in indiana dallas in new cities with rookies what's it kinda like watching a team like the aces win like that when your way in was just one player and you just happened to kinda like inherit this dynasty yeah it i know what it's like to be a bandwagon fan that's what i love about the the wnba is it gives me this totally different outlook caitlin i have come up as a memphis grizzlies fan one of if not the smallest market in the league we cannot sign a free agent we cannot make a solid trade to save our lives we draft these great players and we never put it together and we are just like kind of this can that gets kicked around in the league but i love that team i love my terrible team and i love when they over perform and it's all fantastic and then it comes crashing down and all this and in the wnba i get this totally different outlet where i just get to pick something because the closest wnba team to me is dallas or atlanta and they're like six seven hour drives in a car and so i get to just say you know what who do i wanna watch on tv who am i gonna enjoy asia wilson one hundred percent las vegas aces awesome and so following the aces for these last years i mean i i say like my most cynical side is like the minute asia wilson leaves the organization you know i may not watch another aces game again like unless they're playing asia but the reality is she's never gonna leave that organization you know why because they're extremely well run and they are doing what they need to do to capitalize on this moment and it doesn't mean it's perfect i have a lot of issues with how they create their rosters outside of the top three or four players but the the fact of the matter is that like they've they have not just ridden asia wilson's coattails they have put it together with some intention yeah and i think that's commendable i think anybody who's who's a real fan of the vegas aces and didn't just jump on it from the other side of the mississippi river they should be really proud of that because it's super cool especially coming from such humble beginnings like the san antonio stars they were like the memphis grizzlies they struggled like just to put anything together and and look where they've come now it's great yeah speaking of where they've come from now one of the questions i've asked everybody is to take a look back at the franchise and think about if you could to pick a mount rushmore for the franchise if you had to pick a maximum of four players to kinda enshrine as the mount rushmore of the las vegas aces who are you putting up there i already know the biggest one's gonna be asia but who's next to her yeah to me that one is easy to me it it is asia it's chelsea it's jackie and it's becky hammond period yeah who just was a superstar for them as a player and now as a coach is just legendary so you know it may be cheating to count both of those halves of her career no i think it counts it counts but i also think she could make the mount rushmore of that franchise on either one of them i have it's not often that i have no notes for mount rushmore because i have lots of hot takes that one i have none i agree one hundred percent wholeheartedly i'd be curious who people would replace up there because it feels so by far and away correct to me so if you guys disagree let us know but that's i i completely agree with you carter the next question that i have for you i've kinda got like three rapid fire questions here the next one is around this term of the disrespect index it's this concept that players aren't necessarily players that are performing well aren't necessarily converting that into market sales in cards if you had to pick one player from the las vegas aces could be current or past who maybe would score the highest on the disrespect index who would you choose and why i think it is jackie young i i bought a prism gold of hers the other day for like fifty bucks no way like how is this a thing and i was like did i just was no one paying attention to this and i went back and looked at her sales for her prism golds yeah they're about fifty bucks i mean that's that's just kinda wild and and it came in the mail the day after she scores a triple double like a twenty eight point triple double and yeah i just i think i'll i'll compare her once again to pippen i mean that was the theme of his career was the disrespect that he felt you know especially with with his contract like he got signed to this dismal contract despite overperforming it a million times over and jackie young doesn't have to deal with that she was the first million dollar player in the league but but i think for her sports cards and probably just for her overall appreciation of league she just got named to the to the usa world cup team i mean she is one of the most reliable players in the league she can do anything you want a guard to do literally i mean just name it like she could probably do backflips and she's like she's not controversial yeah it's quiet silent assassin one hundred percent i think collectors just i think they want something a little bit less silent in a player they want something a little bit more exuberant perhaps and so i think maybe she just gets underrated as a a collectible player in sports cards because of that but man i mean you could put together a super solid jackie young collection anybody could pick up this hobby and and accomplish that right now i think it would be nasty too because of like the black color match that you could get on some of those like super rare one of one parallels of hers would be like actually nuts so i i yeah i've thought about being one of those people that tries to do it but it feels wrong i don't know like the aces aren't my team so i don't wanna like do that but jackie young's i i would one hundred percent pick her as well for the disrespect index so two for two carter so far the last one that i have for you is something i've also asked every guest which is that if you had to try to define the franchise in three words or less one could you do it and if you can can you share that that's tough i mean you could pick all kinds of things like you could go trophy trophy trophy you could go asia chelsea jackie you know but i i actually did think about this and i think when i think about the franchise as a whole not just their stint in vegas but everything that's happened start to finish what came to my mind was the word start reset and accelerate just if i had to tell the story of the vegas aces franchise in three years i think that's what i would say you know because they they got a start early in the league and it was hard for them being one of the tiniest markets you know they had some really good stuff that happened but never got there and then they reset and moved to vegas and it it's been all gas no breaks since then getting three straight number one picks is talk about rocket ship acceleration i mean that's that is unbelievable and then like acquiring the best point guard in the league you know who won a championship for for la i mean yeah they just really they went zero to sixty so fast that it's like they're an unrecognizable organization at this point from where they were i like those three i like the way that different people approach that question some people try to form a sentence some people just pick adjectives you kinda went with like a theme i like to pick carter before we kinda round the corner on this today's conversation i i wanna get to my favorite segment that we do each time which is the personal grail segment i ask everybody to share with me beforehand their like kind of like not best card it could be their best card but the card that they think represents your aces or your team or the player that you're collecting on that team that fandom for you and carter i'm excited about this one because i kinda like i know about this card i know the story but for people that don't what card did you pick why did you pick it and if you don't mind sharing the story i would love for you to tell it yes so you know i have a rookie card of hers in a psa ten and i was i was gonna pick that because it's by far her most expensive card that i own and i was just gonna flash that around but that was not the correct answer and so i went with a different one and it's this card that i picked up last year at chicago national and it is a gold vinyl top tier prism insert this one of one is really special to me for a few reasons so i'll run through them quickly the first one is that i love i love the insert set the top tier theme to me fits asia wilson perfectly because she's always on instagram or in a press conference or wherever when someone asks her about what she achieves her accolades you know you won this you did that you're the only player to blah blah blah she always her catchphrase is like it's top tier blessings right her sneaker commercial right so asia wilson's on top can't take her spot she's top tier something something something i can't recite it or jump rope as well as little girls could but but yeah it's to so to me it's just like for the theme of the card to fit the player so perfectly you know it's like in in nba cards there's an optic set called splash and it's like hitting long threes and so collecting the steph curry of that card is like iconic you know because he's a splash brother and all that to me this is like this is the equivalent of that and so i love having the one of one of the very first copy like this was the first year that they did this insert set in twenty twenty three so i love having the one of one of the first one that's really cool to me but that is only the like sideshow of what i love about it what i love most about it was us being together you and me and a bunch of other wnba collectors at dinner one night and mark mj sports cards underscore sports cards he and i have been talking about this card for a while we've been going back and forth about this card for a while we were trying to make this happen and we made it happen over dinner together with all of us just sitting around having a good time and that just felt like such a fun connection point like when the card and you know when i traded him went across the table it was like this is us doing it right this is all of us like collecting together and not making a big deal out of it not fanning the cash out on the table and taking a photo for instagram just like doing what i mentioned wnba collectors have been doing since wnba cards existed which is like collaborating and helping one another and i remember him saying like i'm confident this is this card's in the right spot and i love that and i love that he said that and that makes me like this card more you know and so yeah i think a a card that has a story is always gonna win out to me over one that's like super expensive one hundred percent that that story to me is like the highlight from that probably any national i've been to just like watching two friends who are also just like ballnowers and understand the weight of what a card can do to one's collection is really beautiful and so like to be a part of that situation i loved it i loved watching the deal go down that to me that card that you just showed is like a like a how do you say like a sister card to the asia card that i picked up the same day and it almost felt yeah i i have one as well and i picked it up the same day that carter picked up his and it was almost like i don't know it was perfect timing and now forever i see that card and i think about that moment and it feels almost like these two cards exist with one one another and they're in their forever homes and they understand that and i think there's something just very special about that and it's something that at least in my experience can only happen or has only happened for me in the wnba card collecting space like you said so yeah thanks for for sharing that one it's a beautiful card i also like the red on it as a red truther it just looks nice reminds me of just like i don't know early asia i just i really like it so that's a that's a great one carter i get i guess before we kinda get to my final question do you have anything else that you wanna say or plug if people wanna find you talk about asia wilson cards maybe they have something that they wanna sell you where they can find you yeah so i'll reiterate mc basketball pc on instagram you can dm me i've got a wnba collector's chat that we've got going that has a lot of folks in it it's a it's a fun time it's not too many folks but we have a great time talking cards and hoops in there so let me know if you wanna join that it's it's pretty open and yeah i just just talk to me about cards like ask ask me about my collection tell me about yours i i've had the best time getting to know people who who find a connection point through cards with me and and vice versa one hundred percent well every episode this season has ended the same way which is with this question if somebody's listening and maybe they're just trying to figure out which wnba team to root for but also to collect could you make your pitch for the las vegas aces if you wanna represent the aces and if not if you just wanna represent asia wilson you can make that pitch take your choice yeah i'm i'm gonna go back to my analogy again if you could warp back to the nineties and collect sports cards what would you buy and why would it not be michael jordan and the nineties bulls like would you really be out there spending money on dan majerle cards because dan majerle was a freaking bucket back then and he would be so expensive right now if we lived in that time but if you could go back knowing what you know now you'd be buying up every bulls card in sight especially especially air jordan himself and guess what with the wnba you have the opportunity to do that and that's why i do it i mean so if if you're looking to get into some some cool cars for a really affordable box and and that are available i mean i don't think you can go wrong with it beautiful i agree i endorse this message and we'll leave it with that carter thank you so much for joining us and thank you everybody for listening we'll have more episodes coming out sooner rather than later and i appreciate you all being here yeah thanks caitlin