welcome back loyal listeners of the stacking slabs podcast to season five episode fourteen of the wnba card podcast my name is Katelyn i go buy cold lunch cards mostly on the instagram machine but on another few corners of the internet as well and i'm excited to continue to deliver collector driven and community focused content to all of you today wherever you're listening whether you're driving to work driving home from work i hope or just listening about your day today is an exciting episode today's guest is none other than jared aka wmbacardcollector on instagram he's been collecting for more than three decades and after collecting across different sports different eras he's kind of found his way to making the wnba a key focus of his collection he's a big atlanta dream fan and a really dedicated ryan howard collector which i know is you know everybody's ears are perking up everybody loves ryan we've had a lot of folks on this podcast you know kind of love ryan and i'm excited to talk about her but jared i'm excited to have you here welcome to the podcast thank you caitlin it is good to be here and be happy to talk about my dream absolutely well for anyone kind of meeting you for the first time through this episode do you mind introducing yourself giving us a little bit of background around who you are sure i'm jared i live in north carolina i'm been collecting for quite a while i started i think i started with garbage pail kids in probably nineteen eighty seven eighty eight something like that i remember being in scouts and trading like the the mean gene for the the oh was it live mike i think anyway yeah all the old garbage pail kid cards and then i got into baseball cards after that like pretty much everyone else did in the late eighties so i remember buying so many packs of eighty nine tops and looking for the greg jeffries rookie because i thought it was one of the most beautiful cards and then the the big thing was to look for the ripken the billy ripken error card and the eighty nine fleer and of course griffey when when you could find upper deck which is rare in my small town so i've been collecting a yeah quite a while of course i took breaks like so many people did i've stopped collecting after probably in early nineties stopped for ten fifteen years something like that picked it back up in the in the aughts and here we are now haven't stopped since then i love that that's a that's a long journey do you mind kinda like expanding on what kinda kept you coming back to the hobby what is it about cards that you know you're like okay i'll take a break but but i'm back now what was it right well when i got out of it there were no shiny cards everything was was just cardboard it wasn't whatever chrome is so when i got back into it and i saw there was all this stuff i wasn't really excited by it i started going into vintage it went the other way it went into vintage baseball so you know being it was back then and things weren't as crazy as they have been since covid started i've you know had the few fifty two mantles run through my hands and i just thought there were so many of those old cards were so beautiful when i got my first fifty one mantel rookie the bowman rookie the actual rookie you know it's just one of those you look at because it's just art it's not a photo it's just art and it was gorgeous and that got me going pre war and t two zero sixes and cards like that so the the beauty of it and the nostalgia i love the nostalgia of baseball love the story of baseball don't watch a lot of baseball now but the history of baseball if people haven't listened to the glory of their times whether you even like baseball or not the glory of their times the audiobook is amazing the book itself is great but it's just the audiobook is the interviews with these guys that played from the late eighteen hundreds on through the babe ruth era in nineteen twenties and thirties and it's one of the most interesting listens because you're just hearing the story straight from these guys' mouths so i i love that and that kept me into collecting those players and then then i found the w after that then you found the w found the w this is gonna be a fun rabbit hole for us to go down but before we get into wnba specifically because i know there's a lot to unpack here i do wanna ask you kind of a a bigger question a zoom out question admittedly heavy question that i ask every guest this season which is you know part of this podcast the whole goal is to make space for a community that doesn't hasn't historically had a lot of space to talk about why they like collecting these cards why they like watching women's sports of the wnba in general so my question to you is what does being a fan of women's sports and a collector of women's sports cards mean to you because you know you just kind of introduced yourself and we're here in different lanes we're here in vintage baseball you know we're here in a whole series of collections but what about women's sports in general is it what does it mean to you i think it's kind of the great litmus test if you tell someone you collect if you tell another collector especially pre caitlin clark if you told them that you collect women's sports cards wnba cards the reaction of that person tells me if i wanna be friends with that person or not and they don't have to collect that they just need to respect it and when people say oh you know you wanna watch the super bowl and i say oh i only really watch wnba and seeing their reaction you know or that's still around or what whatever kind of bs answer you get from some of these people it's i just know you're not a person i really care to associate with and it's not that i am saying that i care about basketball in and of itself that much it's you know how much respect do you give to women and give to that space period and i'm just at the point in my life i only wanna surround my people myself with people that i respect and they don't have to be exactly like minded in interest but they have to be like minded in values because why waste your time with people who don't care about those things ugh i completely agree with the concept of this litmus test i think it's something that a lot of us in this community feel and that it makes this community feel so special is within the hobby we have this almost like sub community of people where we know when we're buying selling trading with them that you know our values probably do align and that is not something that exists in other lanes of collecting at least that i've seen and maybe just up values in the opposite direction but it is interesting and i have found that this space has provided me a community of people that i do want to surround myself with and and the fact that cards are kind of vehicles to introducing us to those people is very powerful so i love that and i love that that's kind of setting the tone for today's episode all about women's sports cards and about you know wnba cards in in specific so you've mentioned to me and you mentioned to the audience that you've been collecting for a long time but that today wnba it's what you primarily watch and collect that's it like that's that's where the line is and and that's a decision that has to be made so i kind of want to ask you about that transition of how things changed when did the wnba kind of enter the picture from you from a card collecting standpoint it was twenty twenty and it was another vintage baseball card collector he had he mentioned a sue bird card and i will be very honest i had no idea who sue bird was i had watched the w just a little when it was brand new like so many people did in ninety seven it's this brand new thing but you know you know lisa leslie you know cheryl swoop but then there's just not this huge gap and i was like what is this and i saw he posted a picture of the superb rookie card the fleer ultra i was like that's awesome that is it's such a cool looking card with that green background and just a gold foil and that is amazing and so i started talking with him and he became sort of my you know original mentor or whatever into card collecting he's got one of the best wnba card collections out there but he's very private and he's he's not on any social media or anything like that and he he was nice enough he had a large enough collection where he i i said i would love to get into this and so he kinda set me up with a starter kit and he said okay well these are the the original ones you need you need your lisa leslie you know the pinnacle the ninety seven pinnacles and then he said and this this is diana taurasi i was like who's diana taurasi and he showed me the the fleer ultra rookie of her and he said i'll sell you this and it'll cost you this much and the raw raw cards and yes i want that that's the one i want and so i think in my first envelope i got from him it was probably the you know the big four or five of the original ninety seven pinnacles and then a terrazzi and i would that just had never something about the taurasi card just looks so different it's you're used to seeing that style of card with kobe bryant or whoever on there but seeing it with taurasi it was just badass it was really that's what i want and so that was i really kinda think of that tarasi as my first w card and while i got it before i started my instagram account it's still the first card i posted on there it's just just the raw tarasi because it was awesome that's sweet i think like we could all use somebody like that in our lives that's like hey here's the kind of foundational cards that make a wmea collection when you start that sounds like a a perfect introduction to the hobby i'm curious when you received that kind of like first envelope of cards was it immediately alright fifty two man out the door i just don't imagine that that's how that went down but adam what was that transition like yeah i was still in baseball i had a you know pretty extensive baseball card collection but the problem with it was i was never really focused i said okay let me do signed assigned card from each year and then that turned into assigned hall of famer that turned into assigned rookies signed to assigned rookie hall of famer and then but it it never you can't you just can't afford some of these things when you start going back far enough or you're only getting a card to check a box but it's not a card you like and what's the point in having an ugly card with an ugly signature of a player you don't really care about but paying a lot of money for it that's that doesn't do anything for me so i was a very unfocused collector and and i i just i i had i still collected vintage but then i was i don't do a lot of group chats i don't do a lot of social media i have my one instagram but i've i was in one baseball group chat and now i'm in one wnba and that's it but in the baseball one i would start tell telling these guys hey i got this look at this this is asia wilson oh who is she you know and this is twenty twenty four she was a name to w collectors and people that watch women's sports but not to vintage baseball collectors but the little group was a small group of guys that were really open minded and they're oh that's awesome that's cool so they were really supportive of it and then i just less and less was in that chat and i would sell off my vintage baseball to to buy w cards and the thing is i didn't really get into prism right away i was not excited by prism i did buy some twenty twenty prism you know there's sabrina chase back then but i didn't like it i didn't like shiny cards so i was just buying all luckily looking back now i was buying all the rittenhouse and the fleer cards which i rarely made smart decisions in baseball cards but i i made some smart decisions in buying w cards before the place where we are now where you can't even afford an asia card it's like do i buy a car or an asia rookie so and it's a real question yeah i wonder if that yeah that's such a interesting i guess like change to make is to go from something so broad and historical to something so new and and so focused with wmea cards because of the limited supply especially at that time i'm curious to hear kind of like your tldr of how how the collection shifted or like where it is now compared to say when you started to make that transition is it all dream ryan howard ultra modern or are we talking you know the entire lineup of wnba cards since the league's inception i'm just wondering kinda like what kind of cards jared's collecting sure i'm not a completest i'm not a set collector i do not need to have everything that that doesn't excite me but i've i've pretty much got all the cards i want so in in vintage baseball people just tended to be chasing grades and get a higher grade because you know everything was a oh it's a three and now i've got a five because the car is a hundred years old so you're not gonna get a nine or ten and you're paying crazy amounts to go up a greater two well in here everything pretty much everything we have is an eight or up right you everything in the w era most things are tens so i just i could have everything i wanted i was i wanna buy all of the ones that i wanted all of these key rookie cards i've always been a rookie card collector for the most part so i could buy all of those key rookie cards and they're gonna be in great shape i don't even care if they're graded or not for the most part so i really got into the w twenty five set and and trying to have the best version of that set that i could and that was the first time i'd ever tried to build a registry set and i i i did pretty good i think i was third i don't know where i am i haven't looked in a year or two but probably fourth or fifth or something but i did like doing that because those are just some of the best players and the best cards you can have and that was really exciting to build that and i just kept selling off the vintage baseball to do that i don't have any i just have some vintage baseball but nothing super noteworthy anymore no big key rookie cards or anything like that it's it's all been liquidated down to just the ones i keep for sentimental reasons and then it's all w it's so interesting like a lot of i i have to admit i i've dabbled in vintage baseball and vintage football it's something that i find very interesting it's something that i hope to learn more about because it just feels like a history lesson but a lot of the themes that i'm hearing you talk about when you when you talk about your collection of women's sports cards it does feel kind of learned from vintage baseball i'm hearing a lot of those same themes around respect for greatness respect for you know condition respect for what matters and and it's so interesting to hear how those themes carry between lanes and i'm curious to to kinda introduce here this topic that you mentioned slightly before which was your preference of rittenhouse over maybe the more panini era things i'm kinda curious about what it is about these kinds of cards and this is where the themes come in to me of like vintage baseball paper less going on not as flashy what kinda resonates with you about rittenhouse and do you find yourself thinking about those themes between you know maybe your old life of vintage baseball to today yeah a couple of things about rittenhouse one if you think about it the entire run for a whole year of rittenhouse could fit on a small dining room table every card that was made that year could fit on my office desk right here just stacked this high not even to the ceiling just you walmart gets more twenty twenty five prism in one shipment than the entire rittenhouse run was for many of those years that's amazing yeah having the chance to have that that's so cool so i at one point i owned one percent of all the brianna stewart rookie cards you know like i've got one percent of the whole market because i've got five of them right and but the other thing is they were really great looking cards each year and this is why i hate prism prism i can't tell you the difference here i'm i'm not joking i can't tell you the difference in a twenty one twenty two twenty three prism they all look alike to me twenty twenty was a little different the other three i just know who's in it so i i know what year it must be they just made the same card for three years basically rittenhouse every year looks different you've got some that look really dated like the what was it the twenty fourteen like caleb mcbride or the analyst thomas you know the in the twenty thirteen when neca's rookie year this some are you know goofier than others but it's cool how all the rookie cards were so often very different there were some years where they would just put a little banner on there but a lot of times they would just make a fully different thing and they made it difficult too like what is it o six smote augustus rookie card where they're the blue ones that are so condition sensitive and there was one like per every one and a half boxes so just one rookie card for every one and a half boxes you would get so hard to find that so they're like little treasures when you're able to find them and so i've opened a lot of that and i got a bunch of crap and i think i got one candace dupree so one decent rookie card out of all the boxes of that i opened but the cards they were just they're great looking cards i think the twenty eighteen the last year of rittenhouse was just one of the coolest looking designs so minimalist so good oh so good and their stock was thick they just felt like quality cards and you know normal baseball cards if you could even buy just regular paper cards anymore it's just flimsier and they didn't feel like anything special even all the baseball cards looked alike in that era so it's just it made for a really nice experience for holding it in your hand and it sounds like i'm like writing down as we go i'm trying to like analyze kind of your collection preference as we go but it sounds like as you transitioned away from you know the vintage baseball world where you know there's you're chasing after manufactured scarcity in that it's it's about condition it's about the grade now you're moving towards something that is also manufactured scarcity but in print run and that that's it's it's a different kind of chase it has a different feeling of reward i don't know when you reflect upon that does that resonate to you or is that are you like no caitlin that's not what it is it's it's something completely different well it was a different kind of manufactured scarcity yeah it was manufactured because there was no demand for it no they made five hundred sets because they were hoping they could sell five hundred sets right they you and you see people you see the same people on ebay selling sets because they would buy ten or twenty sets on there years ago because not everybody was buying them there were so few people buying these that i don't think of it as manufactured scarcity in the way that prism numbers everything and makes you think oh i've gotta have the red i've gotta have the blue wave i've gotta have it's not in the same way so and with the manufacturer's scarcity of grades it's you know just that's how whatever psa wants it to be so that's i i became disenchanted with that of course i wanna have the nicest cards i can but why pay double like if you've got a psa five of a hank aaron rookie card why pay double that for a six that may even be more off center and look worse but you're just paying for that grade and that doesn't appeal to me anymore yeah i hear you on that i'm curious i think in the past and maybe i'm wrong this is just from my personal perspective of where i sit today and the people that i see which we only see you know even one percent of what exists out there it does still feel like rittenhouse cards are often overlooked by wnba collectors especially those of us who came after the caitlin clark boom what do you think it is about rittenhouse that maybe hopefully is gonna have us you know not have that same that same phenomenon of overlooking it and and what about rittenhouse cards do you think collectors today could look back upon and and appreciate well i think they're gonna appreciate that that's where the roots of the whole sport are is are in these people and the the advantage we have over other sports like looking at old football or old baseball cards or even old basketball cards is you can watch these people you can go watch all of their games i don't just buy you know i didn't just buy rebecca brunson cards because i've heard she was good or something i go back and i'll watch the old links games and see what a tenacious defender she was and that made me really like her so oh i wanna get i wanna get her rookie card in platinum so i got right that's sick we they're they're out there you know the you can go back on league pass go to what twenty fifteen i think unless they bumped it up a year but you can still go on youtube and watch old games and so you can really see how these people played and see how the sport changed as well from the kind of sloggy games where it's fifty three to sixty two was the game score now you know half the games are breaking a hundred so you're you're able to to know who you're collecting and those are the ogs and greats of the sport and they're they're all in those pinnacle rittenhouse and early flares so yeah and and they're just so scarce you've gotta think you know that with old baseball you're in just spokes of your tire of your bike tires or your mom threw your collection away and that made it scarce but in this way they're just they're just such a limited amount that if you get it you've gotta be really happy about that you may never see another one because if there's only two hundred and twenty five or whatever however many more rookies there are yeah at some point people are gonna keep those in their collection and they're not there's just not going to be more available and when one does come available people are gonna want it and it's gonna be a stupid ridiculous price yeah i hope that you know through this podcast or other avenues people kind of start waking up to the greatness of rittenhouse selfishly i hope it doesn't happen overnight because i still wanna get my hands on a lot of those but like i think that there is just such this big opportunity when it comes to rittenhouse from a collector perspective of just exactly the the things that you were hitting on whether it's scarcity aesthetics quality just the names that you get in there every it's almost like all the things that we beg for today as collectors to manufacturers existed then that's it yeah yes so yeah i love this conversation around rittenhouse i'm sure we'll get into it more throughout the today's conversation but i kind of want to move us into you know this season is focused on quote unquote team collecting i it's i've kind of adjusted it as we go but we're using one team to anchor on for an episode and so today's anchor is the atlanta dream and you've talked about kind of your journey into wmea collecting and now i wanna get into the dream and the ryan howard of it all mhmm well well it was just locality the dream was the only team within a somewhat reasonable driving distance for me so that was my first game twenty twenty two drove down and just went to a game all by myself really wanted to see the storm though because they were playing the storm sue bird was still playing stewie was on there so i really wanted i was actually wearing a stewie jersey to the game oh and then i saw ryan and cheyenne parker at the time which is parker play and cheyenne was scary she i've never seen such she was just a a brick wall then it i don't know if it was just that time or that game but or i i just wasn't ready for that seeing it in person i've been watching since twenty twenty but seeing something about seeing her in person it was so intimidating and ryan was she had a lot of that too her her defense is so good and that's one thing i will say is overlooked about her but she's just so smooth and so cool i don't feel like very few players look as cool and effortless with a basketball agree than she does she slithers you know she'll slither up to the net and and score and it looks like she's laying down on a cot when she's on her way down back to the hardware or something so i and i was converted to the dream while i'm sitting there wearing a storm jersey so right that that they became my team then even though i just thought well it's a local place to go see a team and then when i found out that ryan was from my hometown i was like oh well then that's that's my person that's my player that's who so i'm gonna follow yeah you cannot say no to that that's like all the stars aligning like it was meant to be i'm curious to hear from you because atlanta i say this about well i admittedly say this about like every wnba stadium stadium that i wanna go to all of them but atlanta is at like near top of the list for me because of just the environment that it is do you mind speaking to kind of the difference between being a fan from afar say in carolinas and compared to being like at the game in that arena watching the players every seat is the best seat you can get it's so small if you sit on the top row you you don't feel courtside but you feel like you're about fifth row at a normal stadium it's you just feel so close i think my first game i was maybe eighth or tenth row something like that and i felt like i was sitting on the court it's a it's a great environment it's loud because everybody's just right there on top of each other it's it's an amazing place to see a game and i've been so fortunate to to see a handful of games there of course i wish i'd seen more but you can't always make that you can't make the four or five hour drive every weekend so no that's a lot to go when i can i think that's such an interesting point because what we're here to talk about today is cards and part of why a lot of people collect cards a major reason why i collect cards and maybe you feel the same way is because i want to feel closer to the game and it's always just about how close can we feel personally to the player that we collect to that card to the memory it invokes and so when you when i hear you talking about the stadium when i hear you talking about it just makes you feel closer it's all these kind of variables that come together to create fandom and to create team affinity and i just find it so interesting and i've always found that dream fans when i talk to them about what kind of makes the dream feel different what what is it physically about the dream the arena always comes up and it's just an important factor of fandom so i i wanted to hear your your take on that and i'm glad that it's you know just as cool as it i thought it sounded so yeah sports fans in atlanta are are just super cool people too they you know when they're swag surfing you everybody's got their armor on everybody it's you're you're just in it and it's a really welcoming environment and people just get down and it's fun to watch i love that i'm i'm kind of reserved sitting there sometimes just wanting to to watch but then you get sucked into it and it's it's a lot of fun i love that i'm curious i i ask this question to every collector that we have on if you had to describe kind of the the franchise in three words or less since we're on the topic of the dreams personality could you do that and if you did would you like to explain why you picked those three words i'd heard you ask other people this so i thought about it and i'm gonna describe it as i'm gonna use my three words are where i think they're going and i'm gonna borrow a line from hamilton and it's just you wait because i think they have really put together a great team i don't i mean yeah they're looking good and they're in the playoffs i don't think this is their year but i think their year is coming up i think in the next year or two you're really gonna see something special from them so i'm gonna say just you wait i love that i'm waiting i i'm a i'm a i'm a dream fan from the sideline i feel like i say that about a lot of teams i mean i just love the game of basketball and women's basketball in general but there's a lot of great players on that team and it feels like when they kinda click things just they just go well and it just feels undeniable so i'm excited to see the future of the dream i'm curious another question that i ask every guest is kind of talking about the players that came before or or right now on the franchise if you had to pick kind of a a top four a mount rushmore of sorts for the atlanta dream are you gonna are you gonna pick some of the players playing today actively on the roster or who are you going with well you've gotta go with angel mccoughtry i mean that's you've gotta go with that and this is someone who didn't watch the dream back then but has watched old games so i'm sure i'm missing some there's probably some real legit dream fans from way back that are gonna be screaming at their phone right now why are you are you seriously saying that but i think another one i would pick although she only played a couple of years with the dream but it's what she's done after would be renee montgomery with now being an owner after getting rid of the the other owner during there was a rafael warnock yep yep so i think that has been a huge turning point for the dream and again this is bringing it up into my era too but we both know there weren't a ton of stars on the dream in years of past i mean it's it's not it's not a chock full you it's not your your sparks or your liberty or anything there's not that many people that most casual fans could name i don't think then i'm gonna go with ryan because i feel like we're in her era just like the angel mccoughtry era before and then i'm gonna be controversial and i'm gonna say angel reese yes i do if she's both a dick with us then she's a difference maker and i love angel i am an angel fan i was an angel fan the first when they when her and caitlin first came out they feel like you had to make your choice are you gonna be a caitlin fan are you gonna be an angel fan i said i'm gonna be an angel fan and i found someone that had the select so what gold vinyl per rookie card and he had it available and i i got it i was like i'm going for this i'm going all in on angel i still don't own inequality caitlin cards sorry no offense to your namesake there but i'm all in on angel so i think she can make a huge difference with this team i think what she can bring is super unique and nobody else is doing what she's doing in the w so that's my four two angels ron and renee i love this not rushmore i was like kinda nervous i'm like what is he gonna pick i don't know what he's gonna pick but i am like stoked about those four i think it tells the story of the dream as well just like such an interesting franchise like you said that was kinda built as you know team players and now we're seeing kind of the birth of stardom happening down there where it feels like every starter that they have is almost a star themselves especially with angel and everything that she brings as not only a player but as a icon of women's basketball i just i underscore i endorse i say yes to all four of your pictures i love it and i do think i know i don't have this in like our our script and i'd be curious to hear your thoughts on it before we get into the ryan howard of it all but you did touch on like kind of the dreams i don't know moment they had a moment there in say covid ish era of change of ownership and i think it's given a different complexion to the team you know for anybody listening that that isn't quite aware the dream made a lot of sound waves i suppose politically and speaking up for what was right at the time in georgia and across the country and i think that it's kind of given the fan base a different complexion a different a different feeling and i think that that's something that's you know not necessarily unique to the dream but the dream have always been on the forefront of that change and i'm curious to hear from you is that something that you value as a fan is that something that comes into making it easier to root for this team because when i talk to dream fans they always bring it up and they're proud of it and i find that to be that's that doesn't happen okay that doesn't happen in sports that doesn't happen all over the place what does that kinda mean to to you they weren't afraid to rock the boat they're gonna stand up for what they think is the right thing and i was right there with them it made me so proud of my little team and i feel i feel like they're a little team they're yeah a team especially before angel and especially before ryan the people weren't talking about them the first couple of years when i was watching sport nobody was talking about the dream so i was really proud of them for doing that and yeah it really endeared me yeah i i don't know what other reason you really need to be a fan this team is i find this team so easy to root for but i'm also like a such an angel truther like yourself that anywhere she goes i would definitely root her on what was the feeling kind of when when you heard that angel was gonna be joining your team oh i was stoked stoked yeah i mean i had i've got a sky sticker on my car i don't even have a dream sticker i have a sky sticker on me it's still there from i'm a sloot fan too so i was bummed when she went to new york but i was i was a sloot fan and then an angel fan and so i was really happy to root for this guy and then then angel came even closer and like well this is just perfect it's perfect i'm happy when bg came too and tina charles and everybody a couple of legends made little stopovers so that was cool to be able to see tina charles play and i did not get to see bg play i never made it your game where she was actually playing so that was a little bit of a bummer yeah but i have got to see angel play so it's a lot of fun that is sweet i'm curious if we don't if we don't mind i feel like if i could talk to you for like five hours and we could go on and on but like i want to hear from you about the ryan howard of it all maybe take me back and walk me through why ryan why why are we so enamored by ryan and what is it about her that made you transition from being a fan of ryan howard to being a collector she's not controversial she's wants to be in the background she's not trying to to hog the spotlight and she may or that day she may or may not be the best player on the court but she's gonna look the best with the ball and she's gonna make a lot of important plays out there and i just loved it it's funny to say i'm an angel fan and a ryan fan because i feel like they're as far away from each other as you can get as far as one is i don't wanna say you know not hogging the attention but angel loves being in the spotlight she's very happy to be in the spotlight and whereas ryan if they're doing a postgame interview you can just see her sliding away and she just wants to be there to support her friends and it's a bunch of friends there and that's what makes it cool seeing her and alicia and nas just hanging out and having a great time it's like i would like to be with them everyone's posting the being on a flight who do you wanna be sitting with now and it's like yeah let me sit with ryan and nas and read a book because that's what they'll be doing so someone that's that just lets her play and do the talking and and she's not she's inconsistent and i don't mean it as her skills but there will be games where she takes one shot in the first half and she misses a three and that's it zero points in the first half and you know are you serious we really need you right now and then in the fourth quarter she gets twenty two points or something like that so it's it can be maddening to root for in that way but i'm always happy to do it and again the hometown connection that's what got me there in the first place but just having someone that's that just gets in there and does all the dirty work too she'll be the point guard she'll she'll have three steals and you know whether she's making shots or not she's gonna keep shooting and i don't know she's just great to watch yeah i i love the style of play that ryan exhibits on the court complemented by her kinda like fun like interesting personality off the court i would expect somebody with such a big i guess skill set on the court to have also like a major personality but she she really isn't she's just like easy to go home and do legos yeah exactly go play with lego or paint or something yeah i kinda love that like i kinda love some of my players just a little quirky like that and especially when they're so good on the court i think you hit on it of like any given day she could be the best player out there the best player not only on the court but in the league like she is that good when she's hot she is hot so yeah i completely understand the the joy of collecting and cheering for somebody like ryan i'm curious when it comes to your ryan howard collection how are you going about that is there kind of a formula or a checklist that you're working through or or how do you approach collecting her well i'm mainly a rookie card collector so that makes it real easy to stop at some point you know when you when you reach when you've got them all then you're just sort of done in a way things i would like to add would be like a ryan rookie jersey you know a game worn jersey or something like that i've got i brought my cards over here with me and you know some of these i i pack pulled you know i've got just your your normal prism run here i don't even have everything because like i said i'm not a completist so i don't feel like i need to have every single card i've got them all in ten but these were all self subs i don't think i bought any of these maybe the purple maybe but but i love autos too so i was really happy to get the autos and i've got woah quite a few of those and then my favorite ones i have this is actually a recent pickup this is one of my more recent things i got i got the the black gold five this is when i bought raw from someone and i was so happy i love green pulsars i think they're just they don't get talked about enough they're such great looking cards and so i bought this one and it's the only one graded there's twenty five of these but this is the only one graded and it's a ten but then the big one and this was pulled by a school teacher in kentucky who i was able to get it from and this is how you know it was pre caitlin clark because i got it mostly in trade trade i remember i traded in a candace parker rookie and i traded a lot of non w cards for it as well but was the the gold vinyl of her rookie card so the one zero one the rookie auto so the main other card i want i know i don't have just a regular true gold in here i'm gonna make some enemies i'm not a huge fan of the gold so many people love them i think the black gold while having half the print run is just a better looking card usually not in all years some years it looks stupid but if i could ever just find the regular gold vinyl non auto i don't i don't wanna think about how much i would have to pay or would be willing to pay for that one but that's the one that i need but it hasn't been pulled yet and if someone's pulled it they haven't graded it so it's still the one that's just out there in the ether somewhere well if it's out there and somebody has it that's listening i think i know it i will pay you two hundred and fifty dollars right i love that well i'm curious to hear from you if you don't mind me asking i'm i'm kinda hearing competing priorities here i'm hearing a love of a player and a love of a rookie of a rookie card but then i'm hearing kind of a distaste for say the prism of it all or the ultra how do you balance that as a collector how do you live in those two truths since that's my player i'm gonna buy the prism cards and i don't enjoy it i think the gold vinyls are cool the green pulsars are cool the red and the purple and the green i don't care it's just it doesn't do a lot for me the you know mojo like okay the twenty five that doesn't excite me that's just me trying to have a a good and thorough collection i'd i'd i don't think i've ever sold a ryan card they're all keeper but i only buy what i i'm gonna keep for myself i think that's another thing in with other kind of card collecting is you would get cards knowing you're gonna flip it to make a deal and now in the w i just buy the cards i want that are gonna stay with me and very rarely do i sell something just if i happen to have an abundance of it i got lucky with a lot of twenty eighteen sets and was able to like move in asia and move a set and that would you know free up funds for something like the gold vinyl yeah that makes sense yeah but i so i don't love them no i've other things is it okay if i show a couple of non ryan things on here yeah of course do so i but we'll stay with the dream this is one it's it's the only one graded so maybe there's more out there i don't know but it's alicia gray signed rookie signed in person so that's a that's a fun one because it's better than the signature if you saw the little video for her and asia talking about their signatures this one is not a g a line g line this is it's she's got an actual signature on there so this is signed you know in twenty seventeen so that's kinda fun and then this is the first auto i got in person i got it at her dream game and i had to stalk her before the game and after the game and finally got it as they were they were kicking me out they said you gotta go you gotta go i was able to yell at her i said jj she came over i said would you sign this and i had a blue sharpie and she said no i don't sign in blue and she started to walk away and a recent repop said i've got black and so she okay she came back over and she she signed her rookie card so i was so so happy to get that one that one made me really happy because i love signed rookie cards i love in person signed rookie cards i don't have a rhine one but i've i feel like i've got so many of our other auto rookie autos that i kinda don't need a an in person signed one and when i met her i i just all i wanted was a photo and a quick talk i didn't wanna get anything signed or or you know can i have your arm sleeve or what no i just just like just wanna say hi and let you know i think you're really cool that's sweet i i really like those in person autos on those rittenhouse cards too i i think like any i i personally like when i have in person cards i much prefer them on a paper stock as opposed to say a more chromium stock i don't know why i just think it looks better i just i just like it personally so i really like that gray that is like sick like i i love that super cool collection i'm sure you got a lot of other stuff kind of like hiding in the in the pc but thanks for sharing some of those i'm curious my next question for you is one you know i'm trying to move us along because i feel like i like i said before i could talk to you all day jared but one of the questions that i wanna ask you about is this concept of the disrespect index and for anybody that maybe is you know this is your first time listening to this podcast this is like a concept that i think brett and i came up with as it pertains to cards you know a couple seasons ago talking about you know there are certain players that perform really well on the court but for whatever reason their market value has doesn't seem to catch up it doesn't feel priced correctly and that gap can be scored hopefully one day we'll put it into quantitative analysis to figure out who has the highest score of the disrespect index i'm curious too jared if you had to pick somebody on the atlanta dream that you think would score the highest who would you pick probably jordan canada a great point guard a great defender and nobody talks about jordan so and as far as cards go angel reese do you until recently there's been an uptick recently but you know her cards compared to to caitlin's it was a thousand to one basically it's what you'd pay for clark versus angel and look what she's doing so i feel like if she keeps doing these things that's gonna catch up but jordan canada i like jordan when she was on the storm and she was learning from sue and kind of the backup to sue but since sue was so consistent jordan rarely got to play but i remember i bought a pair of her signed sneakers from a charity auction when she was back on the storm and so i was so happy when she came to the dream too and got to see our first game with the dream and jordan is someone that i think should be talked about a lot more mhmm nas hillman too but it would have been better if i said that last year her year or her sixth woman yeah yeah yeah you know this year is just the numbers haven't been there for her but i still love nas yeah i i think the dream are full of underrated and undervalued in terms of the card market that you could pick almost anybody on there and i would think that you know i think they should be worth more especially on the trajectory that that team is going on or at least where i think that team is going it really feels like you know now's the time and it's been the time so we'll see if those prices ever catch up but good picks there my next question for you is if somebody is listening today and they're like i'm a dream fan i'm liking what i'm hearing i'm liking what this team has to offer where would you kind of tell them to begin when they when they think about starting a dream collection if you could put on your hat of the guy who you met that was kind of your mentor when you started but had to focus it to the dream what would you tell somebody if you're gonna be a dream collector just pick a few cards that you think represent them sort of how we talked about the mount rushmore although i don't think all of those are are gonna be exactly spot on but get a two thousand nine angel mccotra this is coming from a rookie card collector again so you're gonna hear me yeah for you to really talk about that get an get a twenty seventeen alisha gray get a twenty eighteen jordan canada pick your favorite ryan rookie from twenty two and then get get an angel reese rookie and i always think you should get the best card you can afford that you like how it looks so if if you can if you think it's a a great looking card i'll say the gold vinyl i got of angel i think it's a really cool looking card it's i don't even know again i'm not a shiny card person it's select it's number five in the set i don't know if it's a there's concourse and there's something i don't know what it is i honestly don't it's but it's just cool she's like standing at the free throw line it's just the way it's it's a great looking card it's not the one with the big swooshy thing it's really centered so it it's a cool looking card so i was excited to have it even though it was a shiny card yeah but it was one of the shiny ones i thought looked really great yeah i think like to distill your advice would be to think about what's important to say the historical context of greatness and players but anybody can do that anybody can look at the stats and tell you who the best player was or watch x amount of games and tell you who they think the best player is but not everybody has the same taste and so take that list and then reconcile it with your own personal taste and bang you can't go wrong and i think too many people sometimes overthink that but the formula that you just kind of explained and hopefully what i reiterated is is not that complicated if you follow kind of your your own taste and your own beliefs so i love that advice and for anybody listening i hope you take it because i wish i would have taken that when i got back into the hobby instead of just listening to you know the first part of it all right jared well i'm going to move us into my favorite segment of these episodes which is called the personal grail i always think that there's something i don't know just super cool about asking a collector to forget about all those things that we just talked about forget about all the things that the hobby tells us to care about whether it's monetary value rarity serial numbering or what somebody else might consider quote unquote the best and instead take all that away and and put the challenge of inventorying your entire collection and try to tell pick one out that tells your story or represents the most to you so that's what i'm going to ask you to do i asked you to go through your collection of all your dream all your wmba and say which one kind of matters the most to you and i'm curious and i'm excited because i know what it's gonna be what did you pick and kind of what's the story behind it okay i'm gonna give a runner-up okay oh i love this so one thing i also love collecting so i said i'm a rookie collector but i love i love the history of the sport so i love tickets and there's just not a lot of wnba ticket collectors it it's in other sports it's a big thing it's just not as not as big here so i'm hoping that'll take off even more but i've been able to get a lot of really cool tickets without paying a whole lot some i've got here like lauren jackson's debut ticket right here got the the the first all star game complete ticket this one's cool it's from asia's game where she hit the thousand point mark in a season but the one that took me the longest to find this is my runner-up okay is the a ticket from the very first wnba game and this one took me a long time to find and i was so happy when i found one it's not in great shape it looks nice it presents well but it's a two but i've just was so happy because how many other sports can you get a ticket from the very first game ever that's amazing so that's my runner-up but we're here to talk about the dream and we're here to talk about ryan howard so that makes it pretty easy that my personal grail does her debut ticket signed by her and i it's a psa nine and the auto is a ten so i got it i got it raw i knew it would grade well i wanted this in grade i wanted it really just to keep it in good shape honestly but it's cool i knew the auto was perfect so i was like well that's a that's a ten she wrote w m b wnba debut on it that's exciting i just i love this one it's one i love looking at i maybe don't have a great place to display it right now in my my little tiny collecting space but it's one i like getting out and looking at a lot so that's my personal grill i can feel like the emotion that it kinda invokes it it it feels so special i think something about and we haven't had anybody in the personal grill segment without a ticket so you are the first person to do this what is it about tickets that kind of feel different i'm curious because i i have a couple tickets that i do have tickets so i'm a ticket person but maybe you could articulate what they mean to you compared to say cards well it's it's a personal thing that ticket was there when that thing happened well i guess if you've got a full ticket technically it wasn't there but still that represents it's a moment it's not just a season or a photo of this one player it's a moment and it's also something most people throw away and you it's really hard to get them now i was at the game in atlanta where asia scored fifty three and so i got to see that live but i didn't have a ticket and i didn't when i left they the box office was closed i couldn't get them to reprint me one i emailed the box office the next day i said could you please reprint me a ticket here's all my information i promise i was at that game they couldn't do it so i can't get a ticket from that game when asia tied the scoring record so it's it's just a it's an i was there and it's just it's a more personal thing than a card to me so i think tickets are just really neat and they're gonna be going away and pretty soon there won't be any tickets for any event except the the season books and those are sort of more commemorative tickets than than actual game tickets so i i'm gonna miss tickets when they're gone but hopefully we can still find some of the old ones out there that are meaningful i've got a few more that i haven't graded i've got a lot of first games for a certain team i've got sue bird's first ticket things like that but i've still got a long way to go with that wanna get stewie wanna get dts yeah i'd like to get a few more yeah those are they're just so cool and you know we keep hitting on kind of the same notes here which are getting closer to the game having something tangible that gets me as close as i can to the players that make me feel different about sports it's just it's just something different and i find as also somebody who has tickets in their collection that tickets bring me just one inch closer sometimes and sometimes it's that one inch that i need to make me feel you know this is it and so i can feel it i understand it and and and a lot of people i think don't have that or or haven't even like considered it an option for collecting because of just the the the supply it's it's just not you can't just go out and buy a ticket you gotta go game and and these days like you said which with the digital era of everything it's almost like they they're extinct and so now it feels even more special and and so i really when you sent me because i do ask people to bring like to tell me before the episode that way i can prepare when i saw ticket i was like oh this is fun this is different and like everybody has their different niche and this is just such a cool part that i think doesn't get enough love and attention in the in the hobby in general but especially in the wnba so just a great picture and i i love it like i i saw that the good auto the nice inscription just everything about it and then and then present it in one of those lunch tray trap slaps too i love that gotta have a backpack just to carry those slaps around yeah for sure well that's kind of like i suppose us rounding out the conversation on the atlanta dream on ryan howard but i want to give you the floor before we go is there anything about your pc maybe about ryan or the dream in general or collecting that we didn't get to touch on that you think you need to say to the audience buy now i'm i'd i'd say if if you want to get a ryan a higher end ryan card buy now i if she if her consistency continues i think you're gonna see a really special player continue to bloom and then you'll wish you had gotten something a little bit nicer than what you've ended up with yeah unfortunately it's gonna be prism and i'm sorry unless you can find a ticket if you find a ticket let me know please i'll take another one but yeah just you know look for the dream to contend i think like i said maybe this year is not our year it'd be great if it was that would be amazing they got a shot yeah they got a shot but the lynx and the aces the valkyries there's some teams we just can't beat i don't even know if we beat the valkyries this year but you know some teams are gonna give us fits i feel like we're an inconsistent team too so i think i'm i'm putting my money on the next two years we'll have a little mini dynasty of two years that'd be great that'd be awesome well for anybody that wants to follow along on your journey i know you said you're not too active on social media but that's how i found you where can they find you online if say they do run into something that maybe you would like or just wanna chat about the dream where can they find you yeah it's i'm a wnba card collector on instagram and that's that's pretty much it which by the way is great username i was surprised that you have that whenever i see you believe it was available i felt like such a fraud coming in that late to it like these cards have been around for twenty two years and here i am able to grab kind of the best username come on hon it feels i feel like a poser but whatever well that's where you can find him at wnba card collector jared thank you for joining the pod but before i let you go we end the podcast this season the same way every episode which is somebody's listening out there that isn't tethered to a team they just like the wnba and maybe they're not sure who to collect or who to follow do you mind on behalf of the dream making the pitch for why why they should follow the dream because they have the most fun and they're not mean spirited people they're the most fun arena to see a team in and their friends on the court their friends off the court and you feel that when they play and that's what i like i don't watch a game to feel bad i wanna watch a game to feel good and they make you feel good can't ask for much more than that jared thank you once again for joining the wnba card podcast and thank you to our audience for tuning in each and every week as we continue to bring you on this tour de la wnba of team collecting so jared thanks for repping the dream and we will see everybody next week