welcome back loyal listeners the stacking slabs podcast to season five episode four of the wnba card podcast my name is caitlin i go buy cold lunch cards because i carry my cards in a lunchbox and sometimes you can find me on instagram you can find me on x you can find me on all these different places but you can find me here today with steve at s holly two thousand three and today we are super super excited to bring more collector driven and community focused content to your headphones to your radio to wherever you're listening to us today i really appreciate you guys tuning in this is our third iteration all about team collecting across the wnba league and today we're talking all about a very special franchise something near and dear to steve's heart the connecticut sun so that's the focus of today's episode before we get into it i wanna give steve the opportunity to introduce himself to those of you that might not know him if you don't know him it's time to get familiar steve why don't you introduce yourself awesome caitlin i really appreciate you having me here tonight so yeah i'm steve i go by s holly two thousand three on instagram people like to call it a sholey but i'm on instagram i've been there forever that's my primary source of connecting with the hobby yeah connecticut sun i'm i'm a basketball collector i grew up a diehard celtics fan my grandmother introduced me to the the team back in the eighties and i've been following professional basketball since then collect with my kids and that's really we can get into that a little bit so i'm a father of two kids and that's gonna be a big part of the story that i share tonight but it's really how how and why i connect to the sun is is the ability and the accessibility that you can have for families and yeah as you said it's the sunset season so this will be an interesting discussion i can quickly introduce i'm from the boston area i am in my mid forties so like most people my age collected as a kid junk wax era got out got back into the hobby around two thousand twelve when i had a very early midlife crisis and i went on amazon and bought a box at ninety two stadium club i hit a michael jordan beam team which i wish i kept but pulling that card just it just opening a pack of cards and i as a kid could never afford a hobby box right so i've opened a hobby box for the first time ever and it's been a i don't know if you call it a downhill slide or an uphill gain since then but outside of this i i work in public education i'm a mental health professional so i've been doing that for twenty years now and like i said live with my my kids just outside boston my wife and really the wnba has become my my primary source of of enjoying basketball i really really enjoy the product of the wnba more than the nba and i think that'll be a little bit of kinda why i share the different perspectives of collecting today but yeah excited for this conversation this will be fun this is gonna be awesome i i'm so excited i feel like i've been following you steve for a long time now and your collection is one that i just i find super special i think the connecticut sun are a special franchise i think they have a interesting story interesting origins all of that and i'm excited to unpack your story so why don't we kinda tip-off today's episode to explore your personal fandom identity how you got here where you're going and the opening question that i wanna pose to you is kind of take me back to the beginning of it all when did you first become a connecticut sun fan when was that kind of starting so i've always followed women's basketball right in in my first job out of college i worked with a diehard uconn huskies fan that would have been in the early two thousands and back then caitlin i don't know if you're anywhere near my age but i mean when i was in high school and college the must watch thing was espn sportscenter and so i remember little lisa leslie dunk you know highlight from o two and but i was never regularly following the wnba until the pandemic and i think the wnba did an amazing job of marking themselves when other sports are going down and so you actually had some professional sports other than like beanbags to watch you know while everything was shut down so that really got me into it and then i'm someone that needs a connection to like to really grab me in and one of my favorite celtics of all time to watch as a kid was dee brown and his daughter unfortunately just got cut by the storm but lexi brown was initially drafted by the sun back in twenty eighteen and in twenty twenty one she was on the chicago sky and that was sort of my entry point to really watching the wnba on a like a like a fan basis and like investing in a team so lexi brought me to the chicago sky for a season and as i got more invested in the wnba i was like i gotta get to a game so right place right time i took my then five year old daughter down to uncasville connecticut didn't know who i was going to see and we happen to see in twenty twenty two the sun versus the aces which would have been a a preview of the finals right so talk literally talk about the right and and that was my entry point into the connecticut sun why i became a fan of them accessibility right it's it's the the sport is more accessible than the w than the nba rather i could take my five year old daughter to the arena down there and and trust that she'd be safe going to the restroom because i'm you know i'm obviously a male i'm not gonna go to the women's room with her and she was too old to go to the men's room so it it was just something that i could start to build habits and memories of my family so i bring my kids down my mom loves the slots so she would come down and treat us to dinner because the sun do play out of a a casino so it just really became part of like a a family routine and i i work i i'm off in the summer i mean i work part time in the summer but i have the summer off so we could just hop in the car buy tickets and head on down there and so from that point on it was just the son became part of our just our dna as a family and it's it's it's it's pretty devastating that they're leaving but we'll get into that in a little bit i know i don't wanna like open that wound to oh open it up for you but i guess you kinda answered my secondary question but i do find it interesting that at one point you were following the sky kind of from a from a player perspective and then you transitioned into the sun and you talk about accessibility when you say accessibility are you talking geographical location is that what kinda drew you in because i mean there's other teams over on the east coast that you could go see why why the sun yeah geographic for sure so it's only a ninety minute drive of sort of back roads and highway to get to connecticut from boston there's really no traffic it is something that like i said there's plenty of restaurants going to a casino even though they play in the middle of nowhere but accessibility also as in it's easy to navigate the arena like if you go to the td garden and you're you're there at halftime you're fighting through crowds you're standing in line so as a father you know my wife would be at work taking my two young kids that at the time would have been let's say i took when they were six and three being able to get to your seats easily get to food to be up close to the players to have social media that like i feel comfortable with them following like watching with me highlights and stuff like that i just find it to be a more accessible and family friendly brand than say the nba or the nfl and also financially too i can take my family for under a hundred bucks right and it's free parking and it's just eat right and i can get food court food for my kids if i want to it's it's not a a three to four hundred dollar venture every time so yeah i mean i think you could make the argument that you could come out in the green from going to a sun game if you stop by the casino there you could come out making money instead of spending it but i diverge i diverge i guess i'm curious to hear kind of when your fandom elevated right because i think that you know obviously going to one game and seeing the aces that's something that can pull you in but when did it kinda become something so core to your sports identity i suppose and and how would you say it's kind of strengthened over time i'd say it was really the the following offseason so after twenty twenty two we went to our game and i'm sure someone you're friends with as well is carder mc basketball cards i i was messaging him a lot being like i need to know more about these these these wnba cards and like what what's this you know state of the league you know this woman asia that you talk about card had just destroyed my son in the finals i didn't even know they were good enough to get to the finals i'm just learning about the franchise and him and i went back and forth that was when they traded john quel jones requested a trade out of connecticut over to new york and him and i i remember specifically talking with him about this might mean they they blow it up maybe duana bonner goes maybe alyssa thomas isn't long maybe she signs elsewhere and he he really encouraged me to look into breonna jones and so she became sort of my favorite player to start the next season and then she blows her achilles and then alyssa thomas steps in and i would argue in twenty twenty three and i know garrett said this in his episode about the phoenix twenty twenty she was the mvp of the league in twenty twenty three in my opinion i mean she stepped into a role and took over that team and that's the type of player that can just energize a fan so as a lifelong basketball fan seeing a star i think really emerge herself as a top five player in the league and bring her team deep into the playoffs and the sun had that run it had a twenty twenty two through you know twenty twenty four run that as a newer fan was just a very dynamic you know run to watch and also i'm a big i am a big fan of panini i like a lot of what panini does the fact that panini was strengthening their brand as a collector i now have this team that i'm going to all these games to i'm i'm learning the players i'm loving the players and they're releasing cards that align with the style of collecting that i like so it just when i say right place right time as a fan it was just the right place and right time for me to come in and and really become a fan of the wnba and have a team to latch on to yeah that's super cool it sounds like kind of your your fandom and i'm and i'm kind of guessing here but it sounds like your fandom of connecticut sun ran in parallel with your connecticut sun card collecting and did at did at any point did you kinda like go wow now i'm a sun collector i'm not just a fan of this player or a fan of this league was there a kind of a turning point where you said wow i i'm a sun connecticut sun collector yeah it would have been around that same time right because i was coming out of twenty twenty two i was looking for a play and i my collecting tends to be player focused so even as like a celtics collector i'll collect a lot of al horford cards or paul pierce cards i won't collect the whole roster right but i don't find that way with the wnba so i started with breonna jones and and duwana bonner was just a fun player to watch right so i loved watching those players so i i was picking up wow i could get a breonna jones prism gold for twenty five bucks because jason tatum prism gold is gonna be two hundred and fifty right right so i was that newer wnba player that was applying like nba logistics to my collecting it's like well this is so cheap i'll just buy it all yeah but i didn't but that was like how i looked at it what ended up happening was this was the first team in my entire life that was growing while my family was growing so my daughter's favorite player was dejanae carrington right which then my little brother who wants to look up to her i wanna know know all about dejanae carrington then brianna goes down alyssa thompson so i ended up learning just collecting more of the roster as a result so it really was that twenty twenty three and then djna really kinda came out in twenty twenty four sort of took over and cemented her positional league so that being said there are players that i won't collect so i have to have a connection with the player i have sorry notre dame fans out there brett i have no use to marina mabry i don't enjoy watching her play she's just not the style of that so i don't other than a few team sets i never went after marina mabry card even when she was the best player on the team so i have to have a connection but my kids introduce more connections so got if that helps make you know answer your question yeah i i think that's totally valid about mabry too i think everybody has their own cup of tea and not every flavor is for everybody and she's she's a acquired taste that's like the nicest way i can put it but yeah i i think that's totally valid and it makes sense and i i kind of identify with that same kind of concept of like needing something to attach to in order to collect a card and so it feels good to hear that kind of said so eloquently i wanna hear from you i suppose you know as we go through this season we're talking to collectors from all different teams and one of the things that i'm trying to tease out is kind of what makes each franchise distinct other than the players other than you know the things that we see on the court what kind of what would you say makes the connecticut sun franchise distinct from the rest of the teams the the big one is the yukon connection right and so when you go to a game there's a very unique atmosphere to a connecticut sun game where there are diehards so caitlin when i say they play in the middle of nowhere they play in the middle of nowhere i mean you can't get there easily the nearest airport's hartford which i still think is like forty five minutes to an hour away you're driving through woods and all of a sudden this is emerald city of a casino so there are there's this diehard group of just local people that are probably within a one hour radius that have been going to connecticut sun games just because connecticut loves women's basketball and they've been going and they've been seizing tickets for since two thousand three when the team came in and they know each other and they've it's just it's their it's their atmosphere it's their family it's their friends then you add in the people that are fans of maybe not the wnba but uconn so then you go and you'll have you know you'll see the collegiate jerseys of and so seattle comes in and there's yukon players on seattle and all a sudden you'll see those play and so you'll have this younger group of yukon husky fans mixed with this diehard been driving through the woods an hour every every summer to just go see just go see the sun so it's it's a very unique blend of collegiate sports driving fandom but also just this like it's the only show in town people just love women's basketball in connecticut so it's it's just an atmosphere you wouldn't see elsewhere because you know you go out to la there's a million different things to be a fan of in la even though they have great women's basketball programs right so the the whole connecticut system is just a little different in that way that's that's super interesting and it's kind of you know reminding me of what i heard on last episode with the fever episode where mitch was talking about how the state culture of basketball in indiana is just different or whatever they say as like their slogan but that's basketball it feels like connecticut might have women's basketball on hold there so i would make the argument and the other thing that i find interesting about what you said is kind of this concept of like a pipeline or a farm system comparable to like a minor league team where it's like in the mlb of minor league teams then you follow the players up and i know that obviously if you go to yukon you're not guaranteed a spot on the connecticut sun but that kind of like built in fandom that comes in i don't see that anywhere else i don't see that in any other franchise at least not today and so i find that super interesting i i was wondering if maybe you could touch on the tribal aspect of the connecticut sun if you could shed any light on that because if you do have knowledge of that that's something that i find isn't talked about too much and and has had wild implications when we talk about franchise relocation and sunset season so maybe if you could speak to the the tribal element yeah so just a quick background so in new england we have several tribes that have plots of land that are not owned by the state they're owned by the tribe and many of those tribes have built casinos so they have independent ownership over the plots of land they build casinos and when the nba was getting away from the sister league program and dissolving teams like i don't know houston comets let's say they didn't want a team anymore the tribe stepped in and became the first independent owners in league history they bought the orlando miracle and they brought them up to connecticut and i honestly think they've been great stewards for the league have they out has have we outgrown uncasville connecticut with the wnba absolutely but did they do right by the wnba for over two decades absolutely it's kind of it's very powerful being in the arena because they do a great job recognizing the tribal history and doing it in a very respectful way but they have trying to think i don't wanna stutter with my words too much but they really have used the wnba as a way to just enhance the wealth of their casino really so it's given them another thing to bring people in it's a multiuse arena so they have concerts and comedy shows there but yeah they've been they're very respectful owners i yeah i get the sense that they they don't get involved with basketball operations much so i think the front office and the president are allowed to do what they they wanna do which i think is why they've been able to build some pretty sustainable success over the two decades so they really just bought the team as an investment they brought them up and they said what do you all need to be successful up here and they for two decades owned a team that just was pretty much a well oiled machine i mean they they had some lean years but they made it to four finals appearances in two in less than two decades so you know they they were doing something right and i've never heard a complaint about ownership other than the facilities just aren't what you know professional women deserve you know in this day and age is really the most recent challenge for sure i thanks for like kind of bringing that color to light i find it so interesting like i when the when the news broke that the sun were kind of relocating or whatever they're calling it just ending i suppose it's it was really a shame to hear just because of that tribal aspect like that alone if you take away the fandom obviously there's lots of diehards etcetera etcetera just that leaving the sport and leaving professional sports in general i think is such a loss for the wnba and so i just was curious to see what your thoughts were i i guess on on that but we'll get into more of the sunset season i wanna close out like this segment about personal fandom and identity by asking you a question i've asked each of our guests which is if you had to take on the hard challenge of describing the connecticut sun kind of franchise and fans in three words or less could you do it and if you did could you share it yeah so i'm gonna cheat a little bit i'm gonna use my my bad boston accent and i'm gonna use the word coulda and my my three words is what coulda been and what coulda been is i told you i was gonna cheat but in boston could have really is just one word it's coulda and for two two purposes one i don't love the direction that the wnba is going in with going back to more under the umbrella of the nba i i think there's a spot for independent ownership and having embraced that and maybe tried to foster that growth in the league i think could be very sustainable for the growth so what could have been if we push more towards continuing with independent ownership and then what could have been a dynasty for finals appearances and they just whether it be waylon's injury back in the early two thousands or running into asia wilson they could just never get over the hump but they really you know unfortunately they're more of the buffalo bills than the you know the aces right now but yeah that that's my cheat of a three word and when i heard that on i i have listened to most recent episode but i listened to garrett's episode i was like well i gotta get ready for that one that's a tough one like the direction you took it in instead of three kind of like adjectives or describing words to pick out kind of a a phrase i i really like that and i think it totally encapsulates kind of i don't know the you can say the entirety of the sun existence now you can say that so yeah that's a that's a really good categorization before we kind of zoom into your personal collection strategy i wanna zoom out for a second i kinda wanna give you the opportunity to talk about maybe what women's sports means to you more broadly take out the connecticut sun and just replace it with women's sports a lot of what this season is about is about cultivating community around quote unquote a niche space of the wnba and of women's sports i guess do you have any thoughts or would you like to share any thoughts about what women's sports means to you personally yeah i have a lot so i'll try and be succinct with this it it one so i've used the term accessibility i think women's sports at the amateur professional level they just do a better job of marketing themselves they're more available you get to know their personalities better i think what just use wnba as an example what they do with their own fashion their brand their music and how they market themselves because they've had to right they don't they're not coming in as a rookie making six million they have to they've learned how to make other sources of income and i think it was actually lexi brown in her podcast pointed that out as that's why it's such a marketable they're marketable individuals because they've had to learn how to do that so i think accessibility of getting to know the athletes is such a beautiful part of sports and it's not just about the competition i also think if you open your eyes to women's sports you're gonna if you're a sports fan you're gonna find more sport that you enjoy watching so if you're a soccer fan godspeed if you wanna try and follow the men's the us men's program or you could follow the women's program which is a much more dominant brand of soccer and they actually win and they qualify for tournaments so like let's go women i i've said it before i think the wnba and and the women's brand of basketball is a much better i as much as i watch every celtics game i'm pretty frustrated because i find the nba relatively boring compared to the wnba and then the most important thing is my kids are gonna grow up both my son and daughter are gonna grow up knowing for dad always has a basketball game on they don't know there's a difference between the women and the men they think they're on equal footing that it's a fit level platform i've started my daughter's become more interested in why doesn't deshanae carrington make as much as jayson tatum so we've been having those dis the talk with the discrepancies and the respect but as far as like the value that we put into women athletes and therefore women my kids don't know the difference men and women are on the same platform that is essential to me as a parent to make sure that they see everybody in our society as equals and so i use sport as a as a purpose for that and we've gone to more wnba games than we have celtics games and they're just as exciting and it's just as wonderful for them so that's the that's really my current drive behind you know promoting women's sports as a person no it's beautiful i i i hope people take that to heart because that's just like it means a lot to me to hear that you know like little me he hearing that would be completely different person i think than than what i was so that that's pretty cool and i think hopefully more people are embracing that kind of mentality as we move forward speaking of moving forward let's move to our next segment is all about your pc you know what we're here to talk about today is cards we kinda started with the connecticut sun but i guess i wanna talk about your approach to collecting those players and collecting the team do you kinda have a philosophy that you subscribe to and is it different than say in other categories that you collect yeah it's much different and when we think about it caitlin when we think about coming as a lifelong collector coming into the w space the last you know five six years what is different about this space is the release schedule and the products that are out there are much different yes prism is prism but you might only have one sometimes only one now we're up to like four or five products to choose from so whereas in other categories maybe select isn't a go to brand hey in the w select's pretty cool and some good stuff to offer and now we finally have on card autos i previously would have never been a sticker auto person but that's all you had in the wnba so how do you navigate what auto sets you want so it's it's a much different and i feel like every year because panini's been adjusting their approach every year my approach has had to adjust as as a result right so you come in if it's just prism alright everybody go get your prism gold maybe the mojo and whatever personally what i tend to do is i'll find one or two sets that i really like and within those like a parallel so i like i like the mojos out of twenty five sometimes i like the white sparkles and i'll do a team set right so i did the black velocity team set for the twenty twenty i can't even remember the release schedules at this point twenty twenty four prism i did the black velocity sun team set nice and then for the players i love i'll grab a couple of premium cards so i've got a couple of alyssa thomas you know prism golds i've got you know heroptigold so i'll get the premium cards the players that i think are you know quote unquote my team's goats or the players that i love watching the most yeah but i i generally just try to get like a team set to recognize my fandom for that season i love these players i love watching them let me put a few binder pages together of relatively low cost team sets yeah it's just like pure unadaltered collecting especially in the wnba i think like in the wnba card collecting space the financial burden of doing team sets is just so much more attainable than other segments and that doesn't make it worth less like to put together it's still meaningful and i think it's it's a really powerful way that if people haven't collected from a team perspective before it can be really like it can feel like a connective tissue between you and your team like it's it's really powerful so to hear you kinda talk about it is interesting and i suppose do you have any kinda like hard fast steadfast rules of like this will not enter my collection i heard you mention you know she who shall not be named before but like is it generally just like players that you don't quite connect with that's kinda the only rule that you have or are there any other guardrails you set up to kinda operate in your headspace of collecting no no and with and with the because i've been i mean big picture i've been rotating more of my collection to w stuff and so that means i've been selling off some nba stuff and nba stuff sells for more than w stuff so i i've had some more funds available over the last few years and like you said for the most part the w nba stuff is not nearly as as spendy what i won't do is i won't grab random parallels so i have to it has to be a parallel that i like i'm not gonna like the premium box set stuff i don't really like you know i don't like all the shimmers or the the ice stuff you know but that being said if it's jersey numbered alright maybe if it's jersey numbered i'll grab it so i'm pretty open i love binders so i like building binder pages of players and teams it's just really fun for me so if i have a spot open on a binder page i'll probably find something on comp c that i can fill it with i'm i'm not as ridiculous collector yeah that makes sense i think it's so interesting and i find that whenever i talk to people maybe you agree maybe you disagree whenever i talk to people that are kinda like what i would classify as hardcore binder collectors meaning like a majority of their collection would be suitable in a binder or like they like doing it in a binder is that they focus on building a big picture like everything contributes to another piece and what i mean by that is it's like okay let's say you have the orange team color set right that's a piece and then you have the mojo team set or whatever it may be it's almost like each card you fill in contributes to one area of that picture and then when you put it all together it creates like a nice pretty collection and i find with binder collectors that's kind of a a trend with them compared to say other collectors where they're like well i'm just gonna pick up the most valuable the most valuable cards it's not gonna have any cohesion across parallel insert year etcetera it's kind of like a smattering with binder collectors it feels much more i don't know like deliberate and like organized where you have all these venn diagrams that are kinda overlapping each other so that's interesting that makes sense i guess i wanna leave this segment and kind of give you an opportunity to talk about advice because you know i think you've now been collecting for a long time and now you've been collecting the sun up until their their exit into the w of the wnba do you have any advice for somebody that's kind of going through or you know at some point there will be more franchises that dissolve or leave your city do you have any advice for kinda navigating this last season or like the the ultimate end like what advice would you give to somebody that maybe might be going through the same situation as you are in the future i guess it depends on how it happens so i am a little jaded that the sun are disappearing right so if the sun had been like moved to say hartford to connecticut or even green bay wisconsin and they were gonna become say the green bay cheese heads but they were gonna basically continue the lineage right like the team is relocating the part of them going to houston and sort of dissolving the sun and miracle history and becoming the the comets again that is leaves a very sour taste to my mouth not to mention i think the tribe is very much disrespect and all this we won't get into it so i personally i don't think my fandom in collecting is gonna carry over and so what that's done this year is i love an isomorrow i'm gonna pick up a nice morrow card at some point but i'm not diving into the team collecting as much this year because i'm like these players first of all there's massive turnover in the in the roster recently right so all of the players that i grew to love got out of town before things got ugly here they all requested trades went off nobody's nobody's left except for poor olivia nelson and dona who is just trying to fight for minutes and and do it fashionably so this year is different for me i think what had there if there were still some vets i mean you you fall in love with the players as a wnba collector right and so that's that's where i've gone with it my collection is now focused more on brianna jones and now i'm like and i love i love the wnba so much that i watch a ton of out of market games so i'm like really loving what the dream of doing this year yeah so i follow the players that i love starting with when they got out of town last year and i've been collecting them picking them up on their new team so i have some mercury cards i have some so you know i have a couple of jean quell you know i learned to forgive her and i have a couple of her liberty cards even though i'm agree with you on a lot of the liberty stuff but her plays are pretty likable still so i've really gone more to the player collecting now this and now the the sun are you know sunsetting and dissolving is is been the approach that i've taken but yeah still enjoying it yeah yeah and you have to i mean they're still your team while they exist right and so like you're gonna have to deal with it but i just i can't imagine like genuinely it sounds like dramatic but like i can't imagine my teams leaving me like that like i would be pissed so like the way that you're handling it seems like the proper more like a mature way to handle it instead of like burning a jersey or cutting your cards in half per se so i think that's good advice to follow if people find themselves in this place speaking of being overly emotional the next segment is all about like the emotional side of collecting and i kinda wanna get your thoughts as somebody who's you know i i published a a i guess podcast episode a solo one all about nostalgia and i talked about how nostalgia doesn't necessarily have to be something that's you know something that you personally experience you don't have to be like right in the moment to claim nostalgia for something that happened or you know you don't have to have nostalgia for things that are there's no time timetable on nostalgia you can be nostalgic for something a hundred years ago you can be some nostalgic for something that happened yesterday so i suppose i kinda wanna get your take on how much nostalgia plays into your personal collection if at all normally it does right but so this is all and i think kinda hitting on the players that i'm now collecting or the players that i grew an affinity for while they were in connecticut and really learned to respect and have those memories of going to those games and that's the part that's gonna be devastating for me is not going to those games with my kids and yes i'll still track down in new york and see i'll have to go to liberty games i guess but like getting getting to new york city from boston is not nearly as easy as connecticut so i won't be as engaged with the league in person the nostalgia piece that i've really loved is i i've loved learning about the history of the wnba and i do have a lot of respect for what the tribe did with the wnba and fully wnba so i've gone back before i got jaded with all this stuff i went back and started to learn more about the history of the miracle and the history of the transition and the history of players like nakisha sales who was a star at yukon and then went on was playing for the miracle and came up and became the sun's first all star and and and buying some of those cards and learning that history of the team and the transition and what the tribe did for ownership and i that's that was a pretty big focus of some of my just sort of sun enjoyment over the last few years and kinda trying to just relive that through cards and youtube clips and and reading articles and and that's sort sort of the nostalgia piece and i didn't live through it i wasn't going to those games as a twenty four year old but i felt like i could bring myself back to that and really understand why the franchise is where it is today because of that history and and that love of the game that's cool i think like when we talk about cards being like tangible i don't know like tangible objects that you can hold i think it really makes nostalgia something real and i think you know what i'm trying to get at here is like that theme of like you don't have to personally experience it to have nostalgia for it and cards are a really good vehicle for making it just feel real it feels like it you you can experience it in your own way so that that's a neat angle to kinda approach nostalgia i wanna ask you are there any like particular cards that you've accumulated that maybe bring you back to a certain moment or a certain memory that you have lots of people maybe collect cards that i don't know just they feel like time machines sometimes at least to me maybe i'm being dramatic but like i i feel like sometimes i can look at a card and i'm at and i can like feel the five senses of when i was at a game do have any cards like that so the big the sappy one for me is the dj carrington cards because my daughter you know right now she's nine so we started collecting together when she was four or five and she got to a point where a shiny card was like the greatest thing in the world to her so like i went to a show and and another friend of your podcast kevin cormier had i don't even know what some orange ice or something in there for three bucks and i bought it was like the greatest day for her to be at a show with dad and buying that so those cards hit a very specific moment for me the other ones are any of the cards that i can identify the moment when they happen so even if i wasn't at the game like there's a a get hyped insert from prism and one of them is a is is at from the finals in twenty twenty two against the aces and it's showing her just i mean in all of alyssa thomas rage she's screaming and so those cards where i can go back to especially when i was first becoming a fan and really following the team are some of my most enjoyable ones other than that to be honest with you i'm kind of an impulsive buyer so like i'll be watching a game and loving what's going on and be like let me see if something's on ebay right now or let me go through story sales so i do miss a little of that with the wnba but that i that one specific alyssa thomas one hits home for me and like i said the d g and a cards that's cool that's really cool to hear those stories i guess my last question on kind of the emotional side is around you know winning versus losing seasons you've kind of talked about the roller coaster ride that the connecticut sun have been on over the past i don't know five years say where you were at like peak expectations i suppose and and making it to the finals and like having kind of you know really really strong basketball product on the floor fast forward to today and i'm not trying to shit on the sun but like all of your players left like you said like all players that are like franchise level players have gone through the sun and went on to become like fan favorites elsewhere how do you kinda navigate i suppose the the winning seasons the highs versus collecting when you're saying like these rebuilding years where maybe the players just they're not winning as much so you don't feel as i don't know empowered to collect them what what is that feeling like yeah i mean you hit on the the highs right and and when a team's winning there's more media coverage so you you're seeing the team more and that's getting ingrained and then because we're being conditioned to love these plays even more we we buy more cards and then a team's winning it's like you're so jacked up and like i said i will impulsively buy a card a hundred percent watching a playoff game i'm gonna go on to ebay at some point right the down years let's just in a in a hypothetical world let's say the sun are staying in new england right so i'm still gonna be they're still gonna be my team they have a very interesting core right leila lacan anis amaro sanaya rivers edwards to a lesser degree for some reason panini doesn't wanna make leila lacan cards so she wouldn't count but i would be finding the players that i really enjoy and like i said connect with i i said it before i love watching morrow play the she's gotta work on her offensive game but her energy her feel for rebounding she just hustles and she just more often than not makes the right play i would be slowly picking up one or two of her cards knowing that she could get traded at any moment then i'd probably sell those cards but i'd be looking at who i think the next core would be and do i wanna own some of those cards and and i probably still will i'm gonna wanna remember this season i'm gonna i'm going to a bunch of games just so i can enjoy the moment some of them go by myself some of with family so i'm gonna wanna recognize that so i'll pick up cards to recognize this last sort of sunset season but by the way i hate that term the sunset season it's so it's not a positive thing let's not make no it's depressing it's really depressing it's so romantic but that's that's what i would be doing and i'm not a big prospector so i don't usually i'd like a proven bet but i would be going after the players or looking at cards for future purchase that i think are gonna be some of the foundational players of the next wave of of a team got it so just look ahead to more positive years during that year so you can still enjoy you're still enjoying the game right you know you can still enjoy it so the cards connect to even if they're losing if you feel like your team's building something you know right now the the sun aren't right and i would say but like if you look at a team like the seattle storm who have at least some young players that look like they could be those franchise type players you can start in the new you can start to see a foundation and those are the type of players i'd be following in there for the cards that i'd be interested in makes sense alright i'm gonna pivot us to my favorite segment that we've had so far this season which is all about the personal grill i've asked each guest beforehand to send me a picture of a card that kinda best represents their fandom and their collecting experience i suppose so i'm gonna pull up what steve sent me and while i'm getting it pulled up why don't you kinda just share with the audience what card you picked once it comes up and why so the card that caitlin's gonna pull up here is a twenty twenty two from twenty twenty two revolution it's a john paul jones it's the kaleido auto so one out of one and revolution is my favorite panini product that they've done in the wnba era i absolutely love it why i chose this card is for a couple of reasons a the only one on ones in all of revolution that year were the autos and there's only twenty five cards in the set so that means there's only twenty five one on ones in the entire product release the other part is that i took on a task that i never thought i would do and i am chasing the master team set so for the entire sun run from revolution so there's a hundred and seventeen cards between every base card has ten parallels every insert has four parallels plus the auto has a total of five she's the only auto so there's a hundred and seventeen cards i have a hundred and fourteen of them when i started this chase i never thought like the one what's the chance you'll find the one zero one auto especially when it is it's just such a rare card it's kind of a chase set i was getting ready to take my son to t ball which like four year old t ball is so painful so i needed like something to pick me up happened to click on ebay because he had fought forgot his glove upstairs and this card popped up for a hundred bucks bin i've never smashed a bin so so fast in my life low rated seller it was the wording was weird i'm not even really sure they knew exactly what it was they were selling and it took like three days to ship i remember checking my email nonstop so once i got that card that's the only one on one so the other short prints like out of tens and the galactics i knew i had a chance to really complete this like master set and i it's probably been one of funnest things i've been doing it's i'm still searching for cards there's three that i can't find but i've absolutely loved them and so energized by the couple years that this has taken into to find that one zero one and just to like random like impulsively check ebay and there it is didn't have to bid didn't have to fight for it there was no like messaging people on the side it was just right there i bought it got it great deal so i i love this card and i love the set alright this is a beautiful card i've i've seen maybe one of these these parallels in person and they really just like grab your attention a way that other parallels do not maybe could you speak to like the aesthetics of it and kinda why it speaks to you outside of it kind of creating being the culmination of a set build maybe the the independent card itself what do you like about the design of it yeah so if people are familiar with revolution and if you're familiar with the the nba side of it it's a very similar set but their short print parallels their galactics and these kaleidos they have both the designs or foil to them but also what i'm gonna call a technology to the background that when the card is in hand it really looks like it's moving so there's like a motion to it there's a a depth of color to it it's almost like the player pops out of the front of it despite being sticker auto they did create a spot for the sticker to go so it fits seamlessly it's not just slapped on the front of a card and it's just the picture of jean paul she's about to take a free throw she looks so serious so locked in it's probably from her mvp season the photo there it's a it's the blue alternative jersey with the the i'm gonna mispronounce it i don't wanna do disrespect to it but it's the mohican tribe word for sun is what they use for their alternative jersey and i just really like that aspect of it too the blue looks great with the background it's just everything about this set and and like you said these specific parallels they just really pop so this is just i think a aesthetically very pleasing card i agree and to just like nerd out with you for a second for folks that like aren't seeing it i just wanna describe like the way that junkle's holding the basketball as well it's like perfectly framing the wnba logo on the ball perfectly reading wilson it's just like it's just like framed very nicely which i think is kind of a another feather in the cap that this this card has so i really love this pick and i love how it kind of contributes to the bigger story of your collection and kind of building towards something on top of being you know a sick card like a standalone card so thanks for sharing that i i really like that one when i saw that you know i have my griefs with john quell but other than that i respect her very much and this was an awesome card so that's sweet alright moving on from the grail card which is like so hard to move on from because i feel like i could just like evaluate and nerd out on cards for so long i kinda wanna pivot us to community we talked about that about how this is kind of a pillar of what i'm trying to do with this podcast talk about the community of wma cards talk about the community of wma fandom in general but i guess what kind of does it feel like to be a connecticut sun collector like what's that community feel like from your experience i wouldn't say this i i have not found a huge community of collectors be honest but to be honest and this is a longer story but the new england area isn't a great basketball card community in general that's not to say it doesn't exist there's obviously great history but the basketball card community isn't as deep as it would be for like baseball or hockey cards up here so you've already got sort of a smaller collective to pull from and then you've got the wnba which would've been then even more of a niche product within that and i would i feel like and maybe i'm wrong and maybe that the sun are not a very light franchise throughout the rest of the wnba and honestly i if i was not a sun fan i could see why people like alyssa thomas and dewanna bonner would really get under your skin and frustrate you or maybe not be someone you'd wanna you know collect or chase so i don't think it's a great connecticut sun community that being said there's a shop down in connecticut that i've had i met the owner well before i even knew he owned a shop because we were talking about alyssa thomas cards and going to sun games and sun cards kevin cormier who i know you've had on before and i've already transferred lives in my area he's a good friend of mine we you know chat about the simon cards all the time but i would say the benefit i get out of community is the larger wnba community in general whether i mean it's just if you're a wnba collector and you're gonna share that publicly you're gonna find other like minded people that generally are very good people that want to nerd out about cards wanna talk about the league will in the best way possible be like i hate your team because they took down my sky in the playoffs but what a great card that is let's talk about it so i love the larger community i think it's more accepting and inclusive than some other communities in the in the hobby but i wouldn't say the connecticut sun aspect of it i haven't found to be all that like tight knit or or even all that vast well hopefully for all of our connecticut sun listeners you guys can all make yourself known and grieve together and kind of commiserate in your final season it's a little late but hopefully this can bring some of that to light i kinda wanna shift to players era and team history i think you like very succinctly addressed my community questions and talked more about just like individuals and and kind of just individual aspects of collecting you've you've mentioned a few names but i guess if you had to pick a couple players that define your sun collection which players would those be and like what's the reason behind them you you talked about some of them but maybe maybe clarify it for me if you don't mind yeah so if i were to pick players that define my collection as sun the the first player that comes to mind is dejuana bonner because she was sort of the first star that and her play style is very dynamic she's one of the best scores in league history and she was as someone she came to the team about when i was coming to the nba into the wnba fandom here you had this champion and by the time they want you know she want her second champion she was a a primary scorer for the mercury so you had this sort of pedigree coming to town and i just really loved watching her play her style stand stood out among the other players so she was the first one that i sort of started collecting as an individual player outside of team stuff and then i've mentioned you know brianna jones sort of became the the first player that i learned about the card side of it and let me see if i wanna start not investing but sort of making a pc of this player because i think she's gonna be the next iteration of stars that stays with the team that was wrong well she stayed for a while but and then because that's the one my daughter and i collect and then alyssa thomas because i i don't think you can watch alyssa thomas play basketball all day in and day out and not learn to respect her and just are at her you know everything she has to offer the both as a competitor as a leader on the bench i just i just love everything about her so so much respect for her that she's probably the one that i've put the most time and effort into she's the the one that i've just i went after her rittenhouse rookie and you know those don't those aren't cheap for for me like that's a higher end card for me yeah i've got several you know golds i've gone after some of her her autos recently from from impeccable so should be sort of the one that gets the most focus over the years if that makes sense gotcha i'm gonna ask you probably an even harder question now which is i've been asking folks kind of if they could create their mount rushmore of their franchise and this is kind of like a bigger question for you because there's no future of like this changing right like the ones we carve this stone of mount rushmore of the sun that's what it is like this is the last season so if you had to create your mount rushmore which four players are you putting up there and why so and i'll say you might challenge this because i think i'm gonna leave off a player that you would okay put on there but okay i'm gonna start with nakisha sales just because she was the first all star in team history and she sorta is the bridge between the miracle and the sun in my opinion and like i said she has the connecticut background with yukon even though she was only here for a few years i'm gonna go with tina charles because of what she's accomplished in the league but also during her three to four seasons in connecticut she was an mvp of rookie of the year and then she came back for well let's just say her sunset season she finished up her career here one of just the true all time greats in in league history then i'm gonna go with the other mvp that we've had in town john paul jones i just there isn't an accolade that she hasn't accomplished in the game of basketball from winning individual accolades team winning and then my final mount rushmore would be alyssa thomas i just think she's the most complete player that the sun have had and you know for she was you know i believe twenty sixteen was drafted stayed until leaving for the mercury so through twenty twenty four and i just think she's the most consistent star and the longest tenured like true star that the team had i'm not gonna argue i i think i know which one you're referring to maybe somebody from my state but i think that that's a a very respectable and like i don't know core to the sun identity i think a lot of what people talk about when they think about montrushmore is winning and those people are all winners like to their to their core so i'm not even gonna push back i i i agree one of the things that we've kind of i've claimed that we've coined i don't know if somebody else did before but like i've claimed that we've coined this term of disrespect index which is an idea that you know somebody's on the court play does not translate to their market prices in the card collecting world and i've been asking people if you could pick one player from your franchise that maybe scores the highest on that index who would it be and why and if it's at how do you feel that she's probably on multiple teams' lists of disrespect it it's tempting to go at it's tempting to go john quell just i think people love john quell but i don't think her price i mean i saw i i didn't bid on an a prism gold recently because i assumed it was gonna go too high and it sold for thirty bucks it was a true gold so and and like i said there isn't an accolade that john quell has i mean look up her wikipedia just look at all of her awards i mean she's hit them all i'm gonna go with someone that maybe will not go down as someone that people think sun first when they think of her i'm gonna go to juana bonner i think she is i don't think she's as light as a just i don't think people like gravitate towards her i also don't think they recognize how consistently impactful she's been in the wnba for many many years whether it be playing as a you you know young player and growing through those great mercury teams and truly look at look at the stats from that second championship she was a key piece she's one of the greatest scorers in league history she rebounds she defends i mean you know and i kinda like that she didn't do well in the fever i'm just gonna say it alright like great the fever fans you know but i think i think tawana bonner would be even though like she you know had her five years and she's gonna go down as you know a mercury grade she would be the one that i think is the most the highest in the disrespect factor for me okay i can respect it i mean a t d dewanabaughan are like might just group them together on the disrespect index it makes it makes too much sense so i think i think i'd i think the connecticut sun my my thought is and maybe you disagree i think out of all the franchises the connecticut sun would have the highest team average of disrespect index scores i i'd i'd have to think about it but they're up there for sure yeah absolutely fair thing okay i'd like to pick your brain you know you've been following them for a while now you've done your research i suppose do have any like particular moments whether it be championship runs maybe just a game that you went to with your family or something like that something that kinda like stands out to you first it's on the forefront of your mind in terms of i don't know moment of sun fandom yeah for me personally and this is goes back to the what could have been a cheesy thing that came up with early was the first game they played in the boston garden so that was i should know twenty twenty four it was against the la sparks they did a whole boston la thing and just seeing the way the city showed up for that being in the a packed garden for you know wnba team the sparks still weren't good back then but the sun wears so it was a very good game djinnet carrington balled out the tickets are cheap enough that my daughter and i got to sit like center court ten rows back at the garden which you just can't do for a celtics at bruins game so that that was probably like my peak fandom moment as far as other moments that stand out was that that twenty twenty three season when the watch it what happened with breonna jones going down with the achilles that was probably i think that was dejuana bonner's best season offensively in the sun she was just so dominant and then the rise of at through that season and watching her take over and be the leader of a team that's what every fans want those moments and so that entire season was was really powerful for me but the number one one is that that game the garden do you think this is not one of the questions that i prepped for you but i'm curious kind of like your ideal situation of what would have happened if they didn't relocate or restart as the houston comets would you have preferred for them to stay where they are as the connecticut sun franchise or move to boston and like kinda like rebrand but keep the history i think they've outgrown and this is gonna this is a very sensitive subject among sun fans but i think they've outgrown connecticut they can't they couldn't stay where they were the tribe is in debt casinos aren't what they used to be money wise so the tribe had to sell ideally they would have been allowed to sell the team at open market and get the highest bids for it instead of just being pushed to houston because that's what the wnba wanted and they sold for under market value thanks prive for doing so good for us now we're gonna take fifty million dollars out of your pocket so that's number one is that would have gone to open bids i would have loved for them to be able to stay in hartford i'm not very familiar with hartford connecticut but i've been there enough to know that i think they've the wnb has even outgrown hartford a relocation to boston would have been i think the best case scenario as far as continuing to grow the brand rebrand keep the history so miracle sun and then whatever boston would have been it'd be in a full nba arena they the person bidding from boston would have been an independent owner it wasn't gonna be the boston's celtics ownership group so he was already committing to building team facilities that would have been owned by the team and run by the team and they probably would have played out of the garden in summer i think that seems like it would have been a great move for the wnba to come to a major market that has a history of both collegiate sports in the area it would have been the centerpiece of new england for women's basketball along with the huskies makes a lot of sense to me i don't know but so but i would have been fine if they just went to open market and whoever was the highest bidder brought i just don't like the being sold under market value to rebrand as the commons just to bring the commons back and give them to the houston rockets ownership group that just doesn't sound right to me you can sign me up on your i'll cosign on what you just said i agree completely and it does make me think that like now there's kind of a gap in the new england area right like there's obviously the liberty over there but now we've created another gap that eventually with the growth that we're experiencing in the league is likely going to be needed to be filled at some point do you think that there's a possibility of a franchise i suppose being created in the greater boston or new england area in the future yeah i mean there's there's a there's a fan base here for for sure and there's i mean it's a economically pretty sustainable areas pro sports teams do well here so i don't see any reason why there wouldn't be other than i i do wonder if the wnba is growing a little bit faster than they're ready for and maybe needs to slow down on the expansion stuff and let these teams sort of settle in and and see because there's limited revenue if you're gonna keep it to under fifty game seasons and you're fighting for arena space so i think all things set aside boston be a great sport it's a great spot i think it'll happen eventually i don't anticipate it happening in the next five years so i think it's it's a ways out do you think you'll be if they i'm throwing so many hypotheticals at you but like if there was a team that came to boston would they automatically gain your fandom probably but okay again what's happening is i'm so invested in the w a i'm invested in the wnba now as a league so i don't know if they would because what teams i follow with players who have i aligned with during the gap my now nine year old daughter might be in high school or college at the time so am i gonna be as interested in going to so many games and bringing as a fan because that family connection with the wnba is so essential for me that i i might have my alliance with other teams or just be like i'm gonna be a neutral site fan of just watching neutral site games for the next couple of years right yeah exactly you had you're you know a w fan so we'll see i mean they they had some momentum in new england and they're they're giving away both heritage and recent momentum and and we'll see if that's they can recover from that i think they will but i don't know for me personally yeah yeah that's fair i i'll tell you one person that isn't recovering from this and that's kathy and i'm all for that so we'll see how that how that goes for i have one last question kinda on this segment which is an another kind of like mount rushmore asked question so i asked you about kind of who's the mount rushmore of players for the connecticut sun but i ask you to complete the same exercise it doesn't have to be four it can be less than four but the same exercise for cards i always find it interesting when people name players in their mount rushmore of greats quote unquote and then the market doesn't translate one for one if you had to give me a couple cards that represent kind of the best of the best of the sun what would they be yeah so this one was a little tougher for me because i don't know you know the sun the greatness of the sun were happening primarily through the rittenhouse era and then into the early panini era i did go with i cheated a little bit i wanted the miracle cards i went up with sales platinum medallion rookie just because i think that ninety eight flare altar set is just such a beautiful set and those medallions i'm i lost out on one and sold i mean her i don't even know how many current wnba fans would pick up on her name instantly and her platinum medallion sold to i think over two hundred dollars and a pretty low grade on ebay the other day so i i that's set just in like i said sales is such a a a bridge between the the orlando and connecticut heritage i then you have to have a rittenhouse card i went with john quel jones' rookie over alyssa thomas' i think it's an aesthetically much more pleasing card it's got the white board alyssa thomas has sort of the her year is the one with it's got like sort of the big blue border on the side and the the off center picture yep not as aesthetically pleasing so i wanted john cole jones more so because i felt like i needed to have a rittenhouse card but there's debate there about which one which rookie out of the rittenhouse era and then i went with twenty twenty is such a key year i'm gonna go with the alyssa thomas twenty twenty prism gold i think that set is just so iconic she has a great image on it it's a great picture it's much better than so like dwana bonner is not nearly the icon that alyssa thomas is and hers is a like a press like a photo photo day picture or something it's not an in game photo so i only came up with those three it was this like i said it was tough because there isn't i don't know how many people could think of like the sun card right there's no like diana taurasi rookie card that is like the that version of the sun card so be interested to hear what kind of feedback or if you have any thoughts on that one but i i i struggled with that that task to be honest with you yeah i always try to think like when i ask a question to somebody call always ask myself to see if i would just i'm just curious on people's opinions mine is very biased because when i close my eyes and i think about connecticut sign cards i think about the wayland rookie card like the rittenhouse wayland card there's something about it that's that's what i see that logo is what i see but i would say like the a t twenty twenty would be i'd like really think that that one would certainly make the cut of top three in terms of just like iconic imagery iconic set like the engine like the player everything about it but i i like the ones that you picked i i think it's interesting that you felt compelled to spread out over the eras compared to some people really like crowd in and they're like maybe only the past five years are the most iconic sets because they're worth a lot more money i like that you spread it out so i i like it i like the choice okay we're gonna wrap up today's episode and talk about our final segment that we have planned just around kind of like hobby and market perspective i think we all know that the sun are leaving but i wanna ask you maybe right now today as you sit here and talk as we talk do you feel like being a sun collector you feel at the top of the food chain do you feel at the bottom of the food chain do you feel somewhere in the middle i guess like and has it always felt that way has it moved yeah it's this one i found very interesting because right now i'd say this i would say there's a little more momentum from other fans because i think they like some of the rookies and young players like i get a lot of chatter about people loving anissa morrow right now and i feel like people are chasing her cards and i've seen several posts or in group chats not a sun fan but i'm a morrow fan so i went and bought this card and and last year rivers was having sort of that push rivers was sort of the darling of of the team and she's she's been a little inconsistent this year so i don't think she's getting the prospector approach i've always kinda felt like i'm at the bottom of the food chain you know people there's a time where alyssa thomas has you know been quote unquote hyped or people have been chasing her cards want her cards i don't think there's been a lot of other players or you know reasons to collect the sun even though they've been on the court as dominant as they have been they were even when they were dominant no one it wasn't like they were the favorite to win a championship they were one of the top two to four teams that were true contenders right so i've never felt like i'm the top of food chain which is fine because again i can buy alyssa thomas prism gold for fifty bucks right and and you can't do that for kelsey mitchell or sophie cunningham so i'm not not worried about it but i i do ironically feel a little bit more okay people are chasing some of these younger players now and maybe they see what could be houston's a much bigger market so maybe there is a a prospector approach to it and they're just picking them up but yeah bottom of the food chain for sure but comfortably there but happy to be there okay that's good i i do find that kind of angle of this prospecting approach i think that my theory is that is what is what is happening is that people are saying you know there might not be as big of a market or as big of a fan base from pure numbers where the at the connecticut sun right now but these players are all gonna get shifted they're all gonna get moved around like they're gonna go to houston but then things are gonna change as as happens with young franchises and i think that people are kind of making a bet of there's gonna be more eyes on these players they're going to have maybe a different system or just a different environment and i think that that might be pushing kind of some of the dynamics that we're seeing recently with the sun compared to say before they announced the change to the comets i don't know just food for thought for folks i guess my last question before we close out is we've all experienced this elevation of women's sports card collecting i think it's you know ignorant to say that prices haven't gone up that attention hasn't soared both in the card collecting space but also in the league in general i suppose how has that increase in prices notably or anything else increase in attention coverage etcetera how's that kinda impacted sun collecting do you think it's had the same sort of i suppose and i could keep saying impact but the same sort of impact as say our last collector was a fifa fan do you think it has the same impact on connecticut sun fans or is it or is it a little bit less it's it's it's much less but i will say what i like i said with recency bias seeing what some of the rookies are selling for now and but also the sun haven't had in the last several years key rookies to chase from sets right so they they traded away their draft picks so when they were like finals contenders they didn't have key rookies and it took a player like dejanay carrington in her second third year to come out for people to go back but actually her rookie card is from her second season right so they didn't have those key rookies so morrow and rivers are the first key rookies in since i've been collecting sun cards so i don't know if it's that people are the market's just higher and so seeing an anisa morrow card sell for two hundred when i can't remember the last time i saw a sun card at all sell for two hundred outside of an alyssa thomas rookie is jarring to me but i don't know if that's just the prospecting nature of high focus rookies right now across the league right that part has been jarring to me i will say and i won't go too deep into this my favorite player in the league is veronica byrne she's from boston her family is very entrenched they played for the patriots what they've so i love veronica byrne i bought her gold rookie for like twenty bucks several years ago her galactic rookie for fourteen bucks watching what has happened in golden state those fans are wild and i i joke with my my w they're paying asia wilson money for veronica burton is what i like to say so i definitely get a taste of what's happening in other markets and seeing the push for people that i think some people buying veronica burton twenty twenty four cards thinking they're rookie cards because it's their first year on the valkyrie or twenty twenty five cards rather but so i'm seeing a little bit of what's happening in other markets just by following the cards on my watch list but i'm not seeing that at the sun like you can still buy alyssa thomas and duana bonner but they're not people don't want their sun cards anymore so i bet their mercury their nice mercury stuff is selling for more and we just have the rookies right now yeah it's just an interesting situation that we found ourselves in or you found yourself in as a sun fan so thanks for sharing kind of that that market perspective as we round out today's episode i've been asking each guest at the end to kind of make a pitch as to why they should be a fan of the franchise that we've been talking about all day but you know before we got on the mic i was like i have this question in here but you're kinda pitching for a couple more games or you're gonna be pitching for the comments here so i'm i'm curious how you're gonna respond to this but the the prompt is if there's somebody listening that's into the wnba they're fans of a wnba the league they're they're wearing a wnba branded hat but not necessarily a team merch to a game what's your pitch for the connecticut sun if any my first pitch of if people listen to this on audio and on video you guys all have to go back and watch caitlin's face while she was asking that question because the spark was pretty impressive i i think i don't really have much of a pitch because and this is gonna sound sad i'm going to games to see the other players myself right i'm going to games to enjoy the environment i'm going to games because i'm gonna miss it i'm going to games because i wanna see brie jones one more time easily the sun i would say definitely they're go they have had i forget the stat they basically had a different starting lineup every game so if you wanna see a team that is trying to find its identity and figure out which players are gonna be long term wnba players and which ones might be the fringe ones that get expansion drafted that part of it's very interesting it is a team that yes we have brittany griner so enjoy her because man she's dynamic and watching her she makes life easier for guards is the way kevin said it's like she's her wingspan is so large that it's just a dynamic watch but i really would go in and looking if you wanted to watch some sun games a your other team's probably gonna win but b looking at a team that truly has no foundation no identity trying to figure out what that identity is gonna be when they go to when they go to houston because they have players that are under contract that are inexpensive that have a ton of upside and they're just trying to parse out who's staying who's going i also think they're probably tanking because i think it's juju to houston mode they they've had some moves at the end of games where i'm like that is not basketball right there so if you also wanna go a little conspiracy theory and see what tanking looks like i i get a kick out of it okay where all of a sudden they change the way they play for the last three minutes and just kick the ball across the court but yeah so tanking interesting and then also sort of young player development and trying to find a i assume they wanna go to houston once across the wnba and we talked about a team's identity right golden state has an identity i think they're trying to figure out what their identity is gonna be and that part of it is is interesting alright great so if you're wearing a tin hat out there and you're having an identity crisis the connecticut sun are for you i think that's gonna be the most unique pitch of this season so i really like that well thank you for joining us steve on the wnba card podcast if people don't know how to find you just one more time where can they find you on the internet all these sun fans if they're looking for a community yeah so you can find me my instagram handle is s howley so sholey two thousand three and i that's what i use across all platforms so i i keep it consistent i'm on with that if i go on the blog forums anything like that it's always the same handle and then completely unstructured so not like what caitlin does me and a couple of buddies do a small podcast called hoops hobby hangouts you can find us there it's it's literally supposed to be like we're like just hanging out at a shop so we come up with a a topic each week we do not have questions in advance people can hop on live and we just sort of chat i i try to bring some of the wnba perspective to it but we just talk about collecting basketball cards for an hour a week and we do it live on on youtube so definitely feel free to check that out as well absolutely if you guys are there check it out and don't forget to check out at w m y a card pod on instagram steve thank you so much for joining once again and audience we'll see you on the next episode