welcome back loyal listeners of the stacking slabs podcast to season five episode sixteen of the wnba card podcast my name is caitlin i go by coldlunchcards on the instagram machine but other places as well and today i'm joined by none other than the man himself brett mcgrath at stacking slabs the man that made this podcast possible i am so excited to be here with you today brett how are you doing i'm back we're we're reversing roles here or the tables have turned caitlin you will be playing the role of team fan aficionado and i'm excited to get into your the links of it all with you we're recording this well in advance of when this episode will be published so who knows what will be going on across the wnba right now but i'm well i am spending almost all of my time free time watching the wnba i've watched more ball this year than ever before there's a we we chatted about this a little bit offline there's so much discourse and noise around the league i'm excited for this this season of what's happened because it's focused on the teams and collecting and ball and maybe we can spend a moment talking about the ball like it's been such a fun league this year i say this now as the the fever my squad are rolling the links are just certainly the favorite to win right now no pressure i mean yeah wow the what the links have done this season has been awesome there's been obviously incredible stories across the league so this has been i've been listening to everything it's been a good zone it's been fun to connect with other members of the community but yeah it's a lot to say i'm well i think the wnba from a product perspective is in a great place and there seems to be more conversation around cards than ever before yeah i agree this season has been so fun both the season of the wnba card podcast but also the wnba season itself i feel like we've unlocked a lot of new characters that maybe people hadn't heard from before and be able to amplify those stories during a time like you said that there's just so much noise that us collectors have to work with not only from the discourse perspective but also just from like a product standpoint there's a lot coming out there's a lot of news and to be able to be a place where hopefully a lot of people can feel heard and seen talk about cards and ball it's been it's been a blast and it's made it more fun that my links are doing much much better than i anticipated at the start of the season missing my favorite player nafissa collier and still being the favorite is truly like unexpected but also been a lot of fun and challenging at times as a fee truther to come to terms with the fact that she's not out there all the time and we're still playing pretty well so it's been an interesting roller coaster of a season i bet we're gonna get into all of that but i would love to just this is i'd love just maybe we share one thing across the league this this year or that's really get gotten you excited and it can't be anything related to your team is there like what is a storyline who is a player what is something happening right now that you're excited about oh that's tough because i'm so laser focused on my team but i've been just like super excited about the expansion of it all to be honest with you it feels like the addition of these newer teams whether it be golden state portland etc the reveal of the cleveland sirens logo and the branding it just feels like momentum continues to grow so i've been excited to see how different people in our space in the collecting space are responding to that like seeing people that maybe don't have a team and then there's a team coming their seat city like cleveland or detroit and having that kind of hype build up that's been the storyline for me that i'm excited about because i'm not trying to pay attention as much to the other teams right now i'm focused in on the links but those like newer teams who are a little bit less threatening has been fun to fun to find things to know about it's funny you mentioned that because i what i was gonna talk about is right online of of that and it falls in the etcetera category that you said and i'll call them out but involving a tempo player the marina mabry story of twenty twenty six has been an absolute thrill and delight i just and i'm not saying this from a place of like being a notre dame fan but i'm that certainly helps but i'm saying it from the perspective of like how fun is it that you have this player that has been bounced around her entire career finally ending in a expansion team and having her best season and she has become the identity for the toronto tempo and had her first all star and had fifty three points and every time the tempo are on i'm watching because i'm like she's got flames coming off of her right now but that to me that's been like outside of me watching the fever and getting trying not to be involved in all of the conversations but just be a fan that's been kind of the storyline i've been enjoying this year i love mabry i love everything about mabry to be honest i know she's polarizing because of the killer winner mentality that she brings on the court but man she can ball and i just love how she ended up on a team that almost represents an entire country it just feels right like for her to be there and to be welcomed with open arms i see a parallel between her being in toronto and then veronica burton in golden state just a team embracing somebody who maybe was more of a six woman type of player that with the right minutes the right coaching the right play the right city to embrace them becomes like you said the identity of a franchise and yeah watching her has been nuts like she is a she's a hooper yes she is so we've got a lot to talk about today and this will be the last episode of this season i think it would be appropriate first and foremost for anyone who's just tuned in this season and just heard you on the questioning asking side for you to maybe share a little bit about kind of yourself as a collector and just i know things evolve we all evolve as collectors but like how would you describe kinda your collecting philosophy or collecting life right near right now as we record this here in august well my collecting life is complex it's not simple it's not easy for me to define in a couple words or a couple sentences it spans leagues it spans players it spans decades it spans everything you could think about we're talking nfl mlb which is a new lane that i'm exploring wnba collegiate hoops non sports i really run the whole gamut here i like i really enjoy dabbling in all that hobby has to offer and i try to create a collection that reflects me so that when you look if somebody just looked at my collection of cards that i've put together they could be like that looks like caitlin and only caitlin it doesn't look like somebody else and so i've tried to create this kind of like curated pc of cards that i think long term represent who i am as a fan and as a person and so what that means for me today as it relates to wnba is collecting the links because of being a a minnesota fan somebody living in minnesota my favorite player in the wnba fee is on the links my focus for women's basketball cards has been the links have you changed anything in the way you think about collecting the links or your own collection based on the volume of conversations you've had with other team collectors this year on the wnba card pod absolutely i feel like each season brings me like new perspectives new rocks that are turned over that i haven't think thought about before and i think this season the thing that i've learned the most after talking to people who specifically team collect is that i need to go to more games like being near the stadium and being in that atmosphere while i do frequent them as much as i can it just feels like when i talk to collectors that are there you can just feel the difference of their collecting habits of their appreciation for their team the appreciation of the history because when you go to those games you see the banners you see those hanging in the arena to see those things and like be constantly reminded of them i think translates to collecting so my biggest lesson that i've kinda like taken away from these conversations is that i need to go to more games and i need to be in the in the stadium more yes you should you should be there you've got a fun team and product to watch that's a great takeaway i i've had conversations with my wife already this year and i'm i might this taking here is like i think we should get fever fever season tickets next year and my wife's like really i'm like yeah you know i could take a girl we get two seats and i could take the kids every now and again she's like yeah it's not a bad idea so i'm like i've got some i've got like some interest so i'm trying to convert that because i think i've often said this like i think going to the wnba games is like some of the most fun you can have going in all of sports based on just how different it feels and just like such a unique environment and the play is always competitive no matter who's in town so yeah go to go to more games i wanna see you at every playoff game paint your face are you a face painter kayla i i'm not but i think i think if if there's a team that would make me do it it would be this team well let's let's talk about your origin story with the links because i don't know if i know this obviously like you grew up in wisconsin so like by proximity the links are like the closest team to you but like maybe get into the origin story of you as a links fan like how did it start when did it start where did it start those sorts of things sure so this is like complex to think about because being wildly transparent and honest when i was a kid my women's basketball sports fandom was less focused on pro basketball and more focused on like the hyper local scene like i'm talking like high school players and collegiate players at uwgb or these other nearby colleges that to me were larger than life like to me that was making it as a women's basketball player was being the star of your high school basketball team or being the star of your local college and making it to march madness and going on you know national television and seeing the green bay phoenix in the tournament every year was like you made it you know what i mean so the lack of a professional team in wisconsin and in green bay made it so that my focus wasn't always on the wnba it was more focused on that hyper local aspect that being said when i was growing up and when i was playing basketball very average basketball player i just have to like caveat that the people that i looked up to were there was like one name two names that stuck out it was elena delle don who at the time was playing in chicago and then maya moore who was playing in minnesota these are like two generational players that are often overlooked but to me were the two players that i grew up idolizing even though they weren't necessarily representing my community or my state those were the ones i felt connected with and so when i think about like the origins of my minnesota fandom it doesn't come till later that i would consider myself a true real dedicated like biased fan you know what i mean like i i feel like growing up i was very objective i just watched the sport as a whole and enjoyed it on the average when i moved to minnesota for school i moved to school in twenty nineteen to go to the university of minnesota it felt like i couldn't cheer for obviously i couldn't cheer for the vikings because i'm from green bay and those roots run way too deep i couldn't really root for like the timberwolves at the time because i didn't feel connected to the nba in any capacity i'm not a big hockey person like i enjoy going to watch it but that left me with like this almost non competitive i don't know view of the links it wasn't like i was competing against a rival that i'm abandoning at home because there was nothing to abandon at home so this felt like home to me and so the links kind of became my team where i could embrace my community that i'm actually living in without betraying say the wisconsin or the green bay aspect of it all so that's kinda like the origins of how my my linx fandom came to be i think this is such an interesting way to become a fan there is easy buckets are like they're my hometown team i live here i'm gonna root for them or i follow said player they change teams and i'm gonna continue to follow them and be a fan of the team wherever the player is but like i'm not sure i've ever really dug into in any conversations around the topic of like i moved to a city that has a professional team and or professional teams and i don't have a wnba team or whatever league it's in i'm i'm going to adopt them because while it's not my home home it is my new home and for you that's really like post college that area has really become your new home exactly so as a part of that you've brought in a team as you that wasn't necessarily your team but to be your team like what what has that process been like for you and just in terms of like your fan your identity as a fan the way you think about collecting like how what has that done for you it's done a lot i i talked about you know the lesson from this season being that i need to go to more games and i think so much of what that means to me is just feeling part of a bigger community i think in cards you know we're collecting cards of people that we don't know that aren't you know like people that we see every day or whatever we're idolizing these things and to be able to be in person and to see them means a lot so when i'm in minnesota when i'm in minneapolis when i'm in st paul i feel connected to the links as opposed to when i was living in green bay that distance did not make the heart grow fonder it it felt like i was far away and therefore i wasn't included in this group when i'm here i know that i'm included that this space is made for me that minneapolis saint paul area will embrace the links and i get to be part of that it feels kind of like just so community oriented to me that it strengthens how i want to collect it makes it feel more more real more tangible that the team that's down the street from me is who i'm collecting as opposed to the team across the country it just feels a little bit more more real and therefore i feel a little bit more conviction collecting it we're all on this in this like zone no matter what you collect where there's always like the potential of starting a new lane and that could be a new player pc a new team you wanna collect or a team you like and you just haven't collected and it's like these like decisions are always hovering around us and some of the times we're blocking it out because we just wanna focus on our main thing or our main things but then other times we like take the jump and obviously like through this maturation of you being a collector and being a lynx fan like you eventually at one point made the decision like i'm going to buy this card and make this connection to for my collecting to a new team i like do you remember like when that moment was like any in early cards or like when did you jump in to be considered a lynx collector i had to go back i like meticulously track all of my purchases so i was able to track down to the to like the time that i picked up like a lynx card and while i have this podcast and i would consider myself like a serious wnba fan and collector i'm still new i'm not the expert i i've only been in the wnba space i looked it up twenty twenty three is when i bought my first wnba card and tracked it that being said i remember getting autographs on tickets of like my high school like when i was a kid getting high school autographs of the girls that played for my high school when i was like six and still have those so like i was collecting women's basketball but it wasn't until i had matured in other lanes of collecting that i found my way to wnba and to links card so it was twenty twenty three was the season which obviously was like we were entering the caitlin clark era like we we knew of caitlyn clark we knew of what was gonna happen but the lynx really that was when it became like a lynx collection obviously the next year we skyrocket to the championship and live like lose in heartbreaking fashion so that's kinda like the when it started to become even more serious was was post that result so i think obviously like anyone who's watched the league over the last three years or in that time frame or watching it this year the links have been a contender it's been a very good position for you as a fan to be in to watch your team like compete for a championship which is not a lot of teams can say that but it it it there's a rich history in minnesota with insane players you mentioned maya moore the list goes on obviously you gotta mention cheryl reeves but the history is there and you said like you really started to adopt this team you know when you were living in there going to school maybe like how have you taken on like the history of the team even though you might not have like sat there and been a fan back then like you're a fan now like how do you absorb that history with all of the players in the moments in kind of your current collecting or your current fandom i try to absorb as much as possible while still like respecting the people that were here before me like i don't think people realize that minnesota in general doesn't win a lot of championships at least on the men's side okay like they don't win a ton but you know who did was the lynx like they they they won and they and they didn't stop winning it's always been a winning culture here and the city's really embraced them so when i moved here and when i adopted this franchise i think like a word that could be tossed around would be bandwagon but it wasn't it was just so happened that i lived here so therefore i adopted this team but when you have a team with such a rich history of success and expectations and standards and fans that have always expected the best like always that kind of gets like it kinda bleeds into how you think as a new fan it's not so much that i was like i don't know expecting like them to be awesome when i first joined the linx fandom but i did have this understanding that people in minnesota and linx fans we we we want to win and we know we can win and therefore that's kind of like the the mentality of the of the fandom so like even minneapolis has like a bar that's dedicated to only women's sports right you walk in there and you see maya moore you walk or like the posters of maya moore you walk in there and maybe k max signing or you see a signed lindsay whalen jersey those things are plastered all around minneapolis people understand that the players that made that dynasty you know in the twenty ten's are real legends here and they're treated as such and so i tried to kinda take on that same kind of mentality of being like well i wasn't here for this i sure as hell am proud of it what we don't i mean i've listened to all the conversations and there hasn't been a ton of dialogue around like coaches of these teams yeah but like in that light like what is it like having a coach like cheryl reeve that exists in kind of two different worlds in two different eras of minnesota links and is is is like seeing her like on the bench as a fan does that like give you as a fan like this confidence that like this team that we're currently watching is a team that could win a championship almost every year having somebody like cheryl reeve means that you're never really counted out right like she's a master of putting together lineups of picking out players on other teams that maybe aren't being utilized in their best fashion bringing them over and empowering them to play as hard and as good as they can and i've seen that firsthand watching her having cheryl reeve here you know recently cheryl reeve had a had like a press conference and somebody asked her what it meant to be with the city of minneapolis for this long and how we've kind of embraced each other and she talked all about how you know it was such a welcoming space and she felt so empowered to to coach how she how she knew was best and that there would be a sort of trust there and i think that's what i feel with cheryl reeve is like girl i trust you i know you're gonna make like the right roster decisions you're gonna make the right you know if somebody gets hurt pulling them out keeping them out i just feel like there's a lot of faith there and that comes from a track record of excellence that just just doesn't happen but in addition to like the encore like on the court excellence that she expects and makes happen she also has this off the court personality which is super cool you know like she is i remember like when i was at pride in minneapolis she was the like head like on the big float you know like she's like in the city she's always speaking up about things that are important to our team and to our community and i found that that translates over into the court because i feel like i can trust her not only in basketball but outside of basketball which i think means a lot we're gonna spend a lot of time talking about kind of new era of the links and specifically your favorite player but i wanted to definitely give you some space because i feel like she deserves it and i know you have affection for her but like i'm just gonna let you cook on maya moore for a little bit because i feel like she needs to be a part of the chat you're a you're a fan of her what is it about her her being maya moore that makes her such an intriguing figure in the lore of minnesota lynx history dude she's just a legend like she's almost immortal you know minnesota has produced a lot of legends sports and outside of sports i'm talking people like prince right just legendary figures that almost become like folk tales like it's like oh what used to be when prince used to live in uptown and it was this booming culture cultural center or when maya moore was here we just never lost right like it just something about maya moore's essence of being so just like under underappreciated on from the like from the country or the league perspective right but then in minneapolis people being like dude that's the goat like and there's no argument you can name xyz player but here it's always gonna be maya you ask any links fan it's always gonna be maya and i think that there's a certain amount of respect that she earned because of her winning mentality and the way that she broke barriers i talked about how i was kind of like a casual wnba fan growing up i was not a casual maya moore fan like i feel like she broke a lot of those barriers to say like non wnba fans or non women's sports fans or just non sports fans in general because of her affiliation with michael jordan and the brand michael jordan is the biggest athlete of all time right like he has the most recognizable names in cards and outside of cards and you know who was framed as michael jordan's female counterpart was maya moore and it wasn't an exaggeration by any means she was the best i think she's the best basketball player ever but she was certainly the best female basketball player when she was playing and i think that the amount of publicity that she got right like with the infamous wings poster which i have hanging in my bedroom or with the rings photo where she has all her rings and she's like posing like jordan this kind of like parallel between another great we haven't really seen that before and i don't think we'll ever see anything like that again maybe you could say caitlin and curry are kind of like similar in terms of like the marketing aspect of it all but the maya thing came ten years before we're like this is like a different era of and she just was there and so i think that combine all of what i'm saying with on the court play with the legendary the mystique of it all you have this added layer of leaving early of retiring and just leaving at the mountaintop of success never even giving somebody the like the chance to get you know to be lessened or to be to fall off it's almost like she just left and said that that's all you get and i could still play today and you'll never know but but when i played i was the best and i think there's a certain amount of allure and respect that comes with that especially for people that maybe don't know i am more left to fight for prison justice and like you know do a lot of important social justice things that you add that on top of it and you get this almost perfect package of what if of well what if is is that she won and she never stopped and she didn't even allow herself to keep it just it just that's forever what she was and i think minneapolis really embraced her like that and maybe the overall culture of the wnba understands at least like the ball knowers but today i look at the market and i'm like damn we we ain't talking about maya more or not and so i wanted to ask like who do you think is the most underrated or underappreciated player from a crafting perspective okay so my so it's it's interesting that we're there because as i'm hearing you talk about my more i the like other sport player i'm thinking about just leaving at the top of his game although he didn't have the championships is like a barry sanders like barry sanders was the best running back in the league and just called it while he was on top never won the championships we look at like collecting football cards it's like collecting nineties football cards it's like and you're not collecting a quarterback it's like terry sanders is like or or maybe jerry rice but barry sanders is like the top of the mountain so why aren't we there yet with maya moore is it just because like the wnba card community is like the infrastructure and everything is still forming and people are still trying to figure it out like what's your perspective dude i don't know i don't know how much more you need to know about maya moore besides looking at her wikipedia page and reading it like how much more do you need you know like i i think obviously that the answer is much more sophisticated and could go into an entire like collegiate course on why black women in the wnba are not being amplified and you know shown the market success that maybe others are i think that's a component of it i think that's very real i also think like the era that she played in despite being kind of like poster woman of the wnba like with magazine covers and having that publicity it just wasn't at the same level as we see it today the accessibility was so much lower you couldn't turn on the tv and watch maya more if you did you had to be at minneapolis and you had to be on like espn ten or something like that like i just really do think it's in we're in the age of information right now and we weren't at the time like we just didn't have that information and i think as we look back as we exist in this era of information people got to start recognizing that you know maya was was different and like if you if you're a ball knower you understand that but i don't know why the market specifically in cards hasn't hasn't picked it up i i wish i knew i i wish it did but at the same time it's kinda nice being able to collect a player that's underappreciated because in my opinion she's the greatest player of all time okay like i know i had the asia episode i know we talk about dte i know we talk about all these things but she's my goat she's my goat maya is my goat and so to be able to pick up cards of her for relatively cheap i i don't know but i do kinda selfishly like it i'm glad we could create that space definitely needed some maya more conversation in this and this leads me into something you've been putting your guests on the spot and that's asking for their mount rushmore so who's your who's your links mount rushmore we're not there's no alternate spots there's four just four four people who you got i got it maya number one that's like the biggest head in the mount rushmore it's gotta be like just massive and then next four washington spot yeah like huge like biggest first spot has to be maya in my second spot is nafissa collier i think that you know obviously i have a little bit of bias here because she's my favorite player ever but phoe kind of fulfilling the prophecy of maya moore is something that i think is also important so i put her right next to maya moore after that i put a minnesota legend of lindsay whalen she'd be third i think being a gopher and then playing here is just like gophers aren't aren't all that it's not like you're playing at yukon you're not like some amazing blue chip school she was so good here and she then came back and it was just beautiful so she helped us win a lot i put waylon there and then i put simone augustus i was pivoting before between a few players and like trying to justify but i just think she's a winner and she was so integral to the dynasty that i think you've gotta have simone up there that's that's a a tough they they've got such a great history with so many great players that that couldn't have been easy i that that passes the sniff test for me okay we we gotta we gotta get into what are the you you ask these you ask people like what are the three words or whatever to describe like the team like what is what are the three words for you like that they describe the identity of the minnesota links and kind of why those three words dude first of all i was like i i'm gonna have to answer these questions i've been asking people and they're so hard they're so hard to end with told you by the way i was like i i've taken what you've done with other guests and kinda like mix it up a little bit but i had to put i had to turn the tables on you caitlin i know and so i had to think about it i thought about the mount rushmore i thought about the top the three words and the three words that i came up were legendary surgical and fun and so i'll explain legendary doesn't need a lot of explaining we're a winning franchise we expect to win we've got literally a resume of just legends legends you could just go down the list and you'll get olympians champions just legends of the game surgical was kinda like my exciting pick that i was like okay this is pretty good i think that everything that the links have represented is so intentional the way that the game is played is from a team perspective we're not just like isolating and just like go do it it feels so calculated so surgical so fundamental that that has existed throughout the at least cheryl reeves tenure as coach but like the links to me show that surgicalness of just we're gonna we're just gonna cut you up like it's just gonna be exactly how we planned it in practice and then the last one is one that's often overlooked with the links i think the links get advertised as this is business baby we're here to win and this is the job and then we'll go home but i do think the links are really fun and i think in this current era we have players like courtney williams who have ushered in a whole new fandom a new a new side a new angle to what it means to be a wnba fan to have this kind of like unfiltered look at what it means to be a wnba player and i think the dancing part of it you know we're we're the team we dance after every game that we win this is kinda like fun energy that comes with the link so legendary surgical and fun those are very strong words very well done we have to get into the nafissa collier of it all and spend some time on that which i know you're very excited about when i think about you we've been friends for a while now i think about just like if you if like i had these like thought bubbles that like came up in my head and someone asked me a lot about you as a fan like i would like it would like anthony bourdain would like pop up in my head like green bay packers would pop up in my head and then like at the top of it would probably be nafissa collier so like you are unapologetically nafissa collier's like top fan like you adore her like you just like will defend her till the death and i appreciate that sort of passion when it comes to like backing a player maybe like take us all the way back to your fandom with fi like what did you see in her before maybe other people saw that you gravitated towards like what is it about nafissa collier that like makes her irresistible to your fandom it's so many things i feel like i could write like a thesis on why i think nafissa collier is like the best player to be a fan of you know what i mean and i'll start with just like pure on the court play because this is a game of basketball and that is the first thing is you gotta be really damn good at basketball for me to like you and i think that fi what kinda like drew me in early was like her composure like i talk a lot about how and i think a lot of people can understand that basketball is very emotional it's fast paced there's a lot going on there's a lot of things to unpack there's a lot of factors at play a lot of variables happening but the one thing that stays steady with the minnesota lynx is the nafissa collier it feels like you could be up by twenty or down by twenty and it's the same amount of commitment and just like focus from nafissa collier every single game she seems so calculated so surgical that it's almost like i said it's it's business i'm here to do my job i'm gonna handle it and then i'm going home and when i get home it gets me to the other part that i like about fi which is that she's not just a basketball player that's like the fourth thing on her resume like she is a strong powerful black woman she's a mom she came back after playing like after giving birth after like three months came back and played at a higher level than she did before i don't think people understand what that actually looks like like i can't even fathom that it's just like all these different factors of just like being so composed so professional and yet so outspoken and not afraid it's not like she's like toning herself down in any way she just lets her game speak for itself and then she on top of that is like hey also i'm gonna have these core values that i stick to no matter what position i'm in and i adore that a lot i think for me personally and i'm kind of going on a tangent here when it comes to collecting i have a really hard time collecting people that i have questionable like our values don't align it's just tough for me i have a hard time separating the player from the person or the artist from the art some people can do that and that's do your thing for me if i'm investing my hard earned money into a collectible that one day might be worth zero dollars i wanna feel like i made a good bet and that i feel confident in it and one way that i feel confident in it is that the player represents something that i believe in and so not only does nafissa collier represent the links in winning but she represents all the things that i believe in she believes in social justice she believes in pay equity she believes in all these different things you just go down the list it feels like every time she speaks i know that she's speaking kinda like how i would and that's so powerful because there's this kind of trust that i have with her i feel represented by her which i think is really powerful that was awesome great breakdown i could feel it i think one thing which i kinda just opened the floodgates and had you cook but one thing i'll just throw out there that i appreciate about her is and it's just the risk taking and like the entrepreneurial side of her where it's like i've identified a gap in the offerings for female basketball players and we're gonna start this new league and i'm just gonna go all in and make it happen and so like when i started do it well yeah i'm gonna do it well do it well when i started to understand like becoming a fan of unrivaled and understanding why unrivaled was happening i was like okay like i enjoy watching her play basketball but like she's much bigger than just playing basketball she there's a lot going on with her and you don't get that that's like we're talking like being at the top of your game as a person and as a player you know that's that's not easy to come by these days and i just find i have a lot of respect for her and that's why i feel so like enabled to collect her is it feels so welcoming to me it's like almost like it's like begging me to collect nafissa collier it's just like i have to why wouldn't i collect nafissa that doesn't make any doesn't make any sense why wouldn't i and that's how i know it's like the right thing to be collecting the the question i have that might be a little challenging because like we spent all this time talking about maya moore and we spent this time talking about nafisa collier's is is there anything that nafissa collier can do to maybe steal that top spot of the mount rushmore from maya moore or is it just like no matter what that's just just the way it's gonna be no okay and i am the biggest fee proponent i think that i know and i think it's maya moore's franchise she made it she built it in maya moore's like retirement jersey retirement speech or whatever it was coach reeves said something along the lines of the fact that maya moore played so that girls like nafissa collier could also come play they're from the same city they're both from jefferson city missouri they both went to yukon and they both got drafted to the links and they're both legendary players on and off the court they both have that and that's a direct result of the fact that maya moore did it first she did it first she made it possible for players like nafissa collier to exist in this league and nafissa collier i don't want to speak for her but i think she understands that i think she gets it she credits a lot of her you know like just ethic and everything everything to maya moore like i i don't think there's a way to knock off maya moore because nafissa collier understands that maya moore made her possible and i think that's that's part of like the awesomeness of fi is that like she gets it she understands it and she understands that people came before her she's not trying to just like be like oh it's me it's never been about fie it's she's never been like oh it's all about me it's always who came before me and who i'm uplifting and i think that that you know despite being fi's number one fan and i fi's my favorite player i don't think she could ever do anything to knock my i don't think anybody could knock anything off to move maya moore off that number one shot that's some some high praise over here for maya moore i love it let's you got it man you got it you got to let's get into like the fee collecting and the links collecting of all like when we've known each other for a minute now like i would consider you maybe not as maybe not as like player focused as like i guess you had with like carter and like we talked pieces but carter was like very very focused not that he does didn't have a jackie young card in his collection or which he did like he had ancillary pieces but like very much driven from asia wilson i feel like you are more of a nafissa collier collector and you have like some links pieces how do you like how do you think about yourself as a collector of the links like is it more fee and more like pick up ancillary pieces is it all fee like how how do you break it down oh it's a tough breakdown man because what you think about as a collector in theory is very different than what happens in practice right like you're all like oh i'm gonna do this it's a topic it never happens you know like so in theory i'd consider myself a minnesota lynx collector i would like to think of myself as understanding that role players or players from eras that i wasn't like there for are still as equally important as players that are superstars today that i'm watching and trying not to have that recency bias that's the theoretical here in practice phi is the centerpiece like it is like phi is nucleate yeah the nucleus exactly that's what it is and then there's like little electrons that come around here that are supporting but the nucleus is is phi and it's always going to be phi because phi is who brought me into the lynx phi is who allowed me to become a lynx fan that embraced me that welcomed me that gave me my most like core i don't know like memories of being a lynx fan and always will be is fie it's fie and then everybody else and i'm trying to round out the everybody else section of the collection but it's so hard because when i have so much value on fee it's like i'd rather spend five hundred dollars on a fee than a hundred dollars on five different players that don't mean as much to me yeah but then at the same time the collection becomes so focused that it doesn't feel as minnesota links it feels more fee so i'd say it's more like fee forward minnesota lynx so i think that's a great breakdown and that's awesome to understand like how you think about it and we've talked a lot about this but like we're gonna eventually get to like the grail card of your collection but are you still like operating from a a six pack perspective like i'm trying to keep six fee cards and then i'll interchange them out has that changed like how how are you structuring your collection right now yeah okay so i'm gonna drop a number that might surprise you and it might surprise the listeners but i consider myself a quality over quantity person yes but i went into my spreadsheet that i talked about how i track meticulously purchases brett i've only owned ten nafissa collier cards ten ever that's it i like i like i like that i like you know most people would say that you've owned hundreds or fifty or like at least over the course of three years you'd expect more ten to me is a lot i am a low quantity collector i don't like a lot of shit i don't like it i like to be able to look at every card and it means something so of those ten fee cards that i've ever purchased or one of them was given to me as a gift eight of them are still in my collection i've only ever sold two fee cards and so that's more than six which is like my goal of a six pack but i'm still operating on the six pack mentality so right now i have like four of the six that i'd consider they're like locked into the six pack and then the other ones are kinda like placeholders until i find yeah the other ones so i'm still trying to like constrain myself to that six pack number because i think it forces you to be like picky and in a world where parallels are proliferating and rarity seems to mean something different every single day being able to anchor on that six makes me just be really meticulous about what i'm picking up so yeah that's where i'm at this is kinda this is definitely nerdy but i feel like this is something you could give a good response on and it's something as you've we're talking through that it was percolating in my head where the easy thing to do i find is to just collect quantity and have this like we all have the safe searches like i would i would imagine during this conversation there was probably like five new nafisa collier cards yeah that were listed on ebay that are probably in your safe searches so like the access to these cards is at an all time high you can just like buy whatever you want basically whenever you want so like you probably like check your saved searches or in groups and see these cards like but you decide like this isn't the card for me like i know it's my favorite player but i'm not gonna buy that card right now because that's not the one like it feels like so much of the hobby not just wnba card community but just hobby in general is very like let me just buy buy buy and then we'll just like get rid of get rid of get rid of like how have you trained yourself to get to that mode where you're like this isn't it even though this is the player this isn't the card so i'm good with just moving on like how have you got to that point dude i wish i could say i'm like at that point like i'm trying so hard but discipline is so difficult in this in this hobby it's so hard to be disciplined but to me i always listen to people whether it be podcasts or people that i talk to and they're like oh i have this list of things i'm working off of and when i entered collecting i was like how the hell did you come up with a list like that seems impossible to come up with a list out of everything that exists out there it's almost like this infinite list how do you break it down and with fee i did this like six pack thing right like where i was like i'm gonna pick out six cards i really want and and they have to meet these criteria and i've just stuck to it man like i have forced myself to and so right now there's only two cards i'm looking for a fee and if it's not those two cards i'm not buying it because what i've learned is when i buy cards i don't need it's almost like the next fucking day that card comes up and now i don't have the like the liquid cash to put into it and so like sometimes i like buy a dollar card because i'm like oh maybe this will tell like the the world that like it's time to put up the fee galactic and like it's time for that to come to earth but it just i just feel like patience it's easier said than done but like i just kinda created this hard and fast rule that if it's not the two cards i'm looking for i'm not buying it it's not happening that is that is it's very admirable that's a very real real purse very real perspective and appreciate i think a lot of listeners have gone through that and i wanna make sure before we talk about the grill we gotta we gotta like save some space to talk olivia miles yeah it's mandatory so as we're recording this this is gonna go out much later but the the links are twenty nine and seven on top of the wnba so you've won out of the last ten games you've won nine of them i've i've i've only gotten a chance i've watched the links when they've you know been on the national stage but we've our teams have only played at the time of recording one time very like solid solid team you've got this you know point guard which i think everybody like following the draft boards like she was always projected like top three for whenever she was gonna go out you know she's really taken the league by storm and i wish there was more conversation about it just her ability to be a superstar with fee out and then continue to find ways to distribute score score shoot threes like her level of confidence for a rookie is unmatched so want you to like talk about the current team obviously like i'm prompting you to like give me your take on olivia miles and olivia miles in minnesota but just yeah what what what are your what's your what are your expectations what are your thoughts on this team this year well my expectations have been surpassed already i think i went into this season being like pretty debbie downer i'm like my favorite player is out we got this new rookie i hope she's good it's nice that we got like a top pick and we have this potential but i really thought like we are gonna be average until he came back i did not expect this and what i mean by this is a true number one point guard who is a facilitator a leader and may i just say an mvp level player this year as a rookie like i i i see all these graphics and it's like asia asia at the top obviously because asia always has to be at the top and then it's like clark and beckers and once in a while miles will make it up there dude to lead a team like the lynx which i know people are like well they're so good they're so good they had a top pick if you look at the roster compared to last year we have like almost nobody returning from that roster we lost a lot of players including fi who's like the engine of this team like i felt like removing fi off the team is like losing the transmission on your car it's like we ain't going anywhere like we can try but like this thing is not getting out of the driveway we're just gonna be sitting here and enjoying our time and waiting until fi came back but it didn't happen because miles feels so mature for being a young player it's almost like i watch her and i'm like woah something is not adding up how did this happen because she was good we we talked about her on this podcast when she was at notre dame and when she was at tcu we were like she's good but like not not mvp though like not mvp flashy in the w no like i'm like she's got way more space way more space and the thing is as i watch olivia miles and it feels like every single game brett i'm like is anybody gonna pick her up is anybody gonna pick her up and every game nobody picks her up nobody pick she just goes right past you it's almost like they're they're like go ahead olivia why don't you just like take it down the lane and just do it i don't understand how she makes that much space it's so like silky and so smooth that by the time you're processing what she's doing it's already happened and i think that kind of like facilitator mindset that like vision those types of things that you look for in a guard she just has all of them already which i don't understand how that happened but i'm very thankful so yeah i'm loving the olivia miles era and the people in minnesota love her bro like i'm like shocked by the fact that she has like such a small card category like catalog like she doesn't have many cards and i think that once we start seeing her stuff come out more people are going to be very shocked by the numbers that her like true prism or true select cards do because this is a different level of like appreciation happening over here she's she's getting a lot of attention here yeah i i i i think it was yesterday i was i had this thought i was like i'm gonna open up the betting app and look at mvp odds obviously asia's gonna be one but how does it how does the rest shake out oh they fanduel had olivia miles at number two and clark was three right now an mvp odds so yeah it'll be interesting to see obviously maybe like there's never even with like clark there was angel reese so there's the debate but like maybe paige was very obvious but it just it feels like the most obvious rookie of the year of all time ever yeah i believe you know that's candace parker like it's it's it's like the only yeah candace would be like the only other one that i think would be this undisputed she won't be right yeah and i'm like okay guys there's precedent here you can do it you you don't have to give it to you don't have to give it to asia she has a lot like she's gonna be okay if she doesn't get this one she can have it next year but like do you mind giving it to olivia this year like please that hey i was i was watching online after carter's episode and the asia asia wilson like fan community came out with all the cards and they're we better better watch what we say or or they might be after if we say even say into existence asia might not win the mvp there might be hate mail coming to the wba yeah literally carter i'll be on the lookout for the the non addressed envelope at my house saying like you're such a fool don't talk about asia like this like i get it guys i love asia too but just please let can we just let anybody else have one just once in a while so i would imagine expectations are you know championship or bust this year right i mean you have to be and that's kinda like that every year brett it's very odd that's kinda like the links mentality is you kinda feel a little you got these high expectations and if you don't get a ring it's like you didn't meet them yeah okay well let's as we're rounding the rounding this out we gotta get to the grill car portion of this like what is the card that best represents your links fandom you gotta tell the story show the card anything you wanna dig into i think to nobody's surprise if you've been listening to the wnba card podcast through its seasons this card will not surprise you but it was the easiest most clear choice which is the twenty nineteen panini donerous wnba nafissa collier optic gold out of ten i was gonna be shocked if that wasn't the card dude this to me besides the one of one version of this card is the most like beautiful long term just perfect fee card i think all the elements here line up we're talking about a first year product the first time that donruss appears in wnba we're talking about an extremely extremely rare parallel because in other lanes if people don't know dorus and optic are two separate sets right so you buy a dorus box and it's all paper and maybe there's like a preview in there and then you have that optic set and everything is optochrome in twenty nineteen wnba dorus the optics were included in the dhanrais paper set but at an exponentially lower rate and then on top of that you add the gold parallel out of ten and it just becomes this ultra chase it's like ushering in the new era of panini after the fourteen year license run of rittenhouse you get don ross you get this amazing class with names like jackie young nafissa collier enrique ogunnawali and more and you get this card and it's just like perfect the design is beautiful the shine is something that i haven't seen replicated in other sets including the new newer releases of donruss and it's just the color i don't think this gets talked enough about the rated rookie symbol carries a lot of significance in the hobby i think that it's one of those things that we'll continue to see increase in just like importance similar to how the first bowman or the rookie card shield represents something the rated rookie is something special and you see that with the in this card it's just beautiful i i i had an entire podcast brett we did an entire episode on the story of this card what it means to me i acquired it from a good friend jason who was on this podcast and represented the wings this season he sold me this card after uncovering it in a collection from another person he graded it of course but psa authentic because it's not in great condition maybe one day i'll brave the you know be brave and let it get that number grade even if it's an ugly six but this thing is just like my favorite card probably my this is my favorite sports card that i own and have ever owned so awesome card i love the storytelling behind it and it everything that it represents i'm glad it could get some additional space on here we're rounding this out this is the closing segment of today's episode i wanna know maybe you've had a lot of these conversations is there anything that you have learned maybe about your fandom through just interacting in the dialogue you have had with other members of the community this season yes there is and i thought about this i've been reflecting a lot on this after many conversations and it's that there's a lot of noise we talked about this there's a lot of noise in the hobby there's a lot of noise in life and it's really sometimes hard to understand or to feel confident in following a path but i think this season has proved to me that if you follow your fandom path if you love a team if you love the minnesota lynx and you follow them you're gonna be fine there's not you don't have to worry about the headlines you don't have to worry about the sales you don't have to worry about any of that you don't even have to worry too much about just like the wins and losses if you really love a team if you follow that path that they lead you down and you you love it like you truly do you're gonna be fine especially in collecting i think like a lot of people pose these hypotheticals of if the market goes down tomorrow will you be okay with your collection are you okay with the decisions that you made and i think if you love a team which i love the minnesota links i love them and they love me i think it's all gonna be okay i think tomorrow if these cards these links cards drop to zero i would still be a proud owner i would still talk about it with the same amount of passion that i have today and i think that's the number one lesson that i learned and i learned that through conversations with fans that maybe they're collecting a team that hasn't had recent success right or maybe they're even collecting a team that hasn't existed before and it's brand new if you follow that passion they're gonna lead you down the right path and i think that that's just like obviously easier said than done but if you can do that everything is going to be okay it relieves a lot of pressure to take that approach and i think this season of focusing on the team collector has really shown that to me and like it you can tell when you talk to a team collector that they're they're confident they're they're happy in what they've built and they're going to be so that would be like the number one thing that i've learned about my collecting i think this is a great place to end this conversation and this season caitlin kudos to you for running these conversations and curating the thoughts and ideas of the wnba card collecting community i think it was a good little punctuation point at the end of this to get your story and your linx fandom and all things fee and all things linx so awesome work this season we will get in the lab and figure out kind of what's happening next but appreciate you leading the charge here on the podcast yeah brett thank you for being here and for anybody that's listening and has listened the entire season i appreciate you being here it's been a blast talking with collectors i hope we unlock some new characters for you and just be sure i just wanna make this very clear there is lots of room for links fans over here i welcome you eagerly if you guys wanna be a links fan you are welcomed here it is the best franchise to be a part of we had people make pitches at the end of every episode for each of these and my pitch is this we are better than them we are better than them and we will beat them so that's my pitch to you i just gotta say i'm i'm very proud of you that we went sixty minutes and we talked to all links and you didn't bring up the new york liberty one time so you're you're evolving hell no sorry edit that out of there we cannot have the new we can can the editor go in and bleep out new york liberty mentioned that is unbelievable man okay we'll we'll end it here what is the finals like what what obviously you're putting the links in there rightfully so like they're the top of the league as we record this right now but like what's the finals like what how's this looking for you what are you thinking is it bad i think it's gonna be the liberty no i think surprised based on the liberty teams i've seen in this year but it stuff always changes towards the end so you never know what you're gonna get so no i i get it you gotta slay the beast i think it would be the perfect storybook ending and i think somehow there's certain teams that just do better in the playoffs they just are better they they turn it up a notch and that team always seems to peak at the right point and they've got the players there's no denying that roster it's insane and i just think it would be so epic to have the season where olivia miles leads the first half of the season then we have the closer come in with fee and they just ruin that like it just it would be the perfect perfect ending so that's my pick from a selfish like payback perspective but also it'd be it'd be fun no doubt i certainly hope you're wrong because i would like my team to be playing yours but i i under i understand caitlin thanks so much for sharing your passion looking forward to doing this again down the road