welcome back loyal listeners to the stacking slabs podcast to season four episode eight of the wnba card podcast my name is caitlin and i go by at cold lunch cards mostly on the instagram machine but you can find me on other parts of the internet as well and i am super excited to continue to bring to you guys collector driven and community focused content to wherever you're listening or watching if you're on the patreon today we appreciate you being here and i'm so excited for today's episode we are picking up where we left off last week i had a solo pod my first one we talked all about nostalgia this week where we ended last time was in twenty eighteen and we're kinda picking up around the same era i'm excited to be joined by mike who goes by at mike k sports cards on instagram and we're gonna be talking all about franchise players the power of dominance in the wnba and how that translates to the card market mike how are you doing today hey i'm doing great thanks for having me i am so so excited to have you on we were saying before i hit record that i've been following your account on instagram for a long while now and it's always just struck me as being incredibly intentional and curated and i i am very envious of it and i know that you collect a lot of different things and have maybe an interesting take on collecting why don't you introduce yourself i guess to the audience if they haven't heard from you before yeah my name is mike like you said my k sports cards on instagram i've been collecting for a few years now i grew up in detroit go tigers moved south for college i now live in south carolina which heavily influences what i collect as you can see i run a small design firm for a living my background is in design so that's what i do and yeah that's me i i love that i did not know that that's what you did but it makes sense because if folks visit your instagram your grid is very particular everything looks very shiny you can tell that you take time to photograph the cards i guess before we get into it into like the questions that we have laid out for today what's your personal collection look like are there certain players that you collect certain sports and then we can get into the wnba of it all yeah it's evolved over time i started off well let me back way back i i collected as a kid in the junk whack era big baseball basketball collector came back to the hobby as a as an adult and i started off collecting nba and then moved into nba and wnba primarily like i'm a lebron james fan i like the gold i like things that color match i like shiny things so i have pc gold gold lakers lebron cards and then wnba mostly asia asia these days but it's evolved and it might evolve again but i don't know i kinda like the lane i'm in now so it kinda feels good that's that's super awesome i'm very into the aesthetics of most of the cards that you have it's almost like it creates this like i don't know cohesive collection even across sports so you can see that come through in everything that you post but alright well that's kind of our our introduction for today i'm super excited like i said today's episode is focused all on franchise players specifically the franchise player asia wilson but why don't we start with this when did you start collecting asia wilson and what initially kind of drew you to her yeah so you know the the sort of gateway to asia was actually enrique enrique agumbawali twenty twenty one all star game there wasn't anything on tv i turned that on and enrique just went off in the fourth quarter and was just putting just just just doing these sick kyrie irving type moves and i i remember thinking at the time this is legit like this is good basketball and i went from there to candice parker this was her return to chicago and really you know caught up on that narrative and watched that through the finals that was a not a great year for or not as good a year for asia and i started kinda researching who could i collect i'm looking at prices and i'm looking at the cards and asia they had gone to the finals a year before got swept that year she was second team all star was not you know in peak form so she wasn't like a top shelf you know top five player at that time but i was reading about her reading some things that her her her parents said about her and so i think that she could be one of the best players i didn't think that she would be who she is now but that definitely put her on my radar and then being from south carolina you know we don't have a a professional sports team and i was like hey that's actually like a really cool connection something that moves it beyond like rooting somebody who plays in another city or something but someone who's sort of a local celebrity so that's that's super cool i i always find parallels between people and it's i don't know if it's just the card hobby but you know how there's little pockets where it feels like there's more collectors in certain parts of the country than others i feel like that similar thing of not having professional sports team but having a strong collector base south carolina i meet a lot of people iowa i meet a lot of people it's like that kind of pipeline creates a a particular type of fandom that you don't have in other places so that's super interesting i guess i wanna hear more about your approach to how you collect asia wilson and maybe if it looks different compared to some of those other folks that you collect like lebron and what i'm trying to get at here is you know a lot of collectors make different rules for themselves or different goals or guardrails that they put up so they don't buy everything under the sun and become unfocused i guess how do you approach approach asia and is it different than the other players that you collect yeah you know i draw it is different it is different it's you know for one thing the price point of wnba is much different from other sports and i can afford to more or less afford to buy some of the best cards not all the best cards but you know buy some of the the really special cards that i couldn't you know i i could never afford the equivalent of of the lebron james or know something like that plus i you know a lot of people they want to consolidate into like the you know five cards and i like owning cards i've kinda found that's that's my pc case right there and all my cards fit into that and i found that a hundred to a hundred and fifty cards is is enjoyable for me you know so i i i like going after the best asia cards and i draw a lot of inspiration from the lebron collector bob and track and i don't know if he still collects but he has one of the best collections you should check it out on instagram but he's so thorough and so intentional so that's where i think you see a lot of that coming from is kind of being influenced by collectors like him who were very specific in what they wanted and now it's aged very well of course but it's also about there's a lot of stuff you could buy especially now in w b it hasn't always been that way but now there's more and more product so it's trying to maintain that intentionality and i don't always do it i buy stuff and then you get it and you're like oh maybe i could sell that and buy something else that still happens but being really specific about the exact cards that i wanna go after yeah kind of that methodical approach where you it's almost i always think about this analogy when i think about my cards that i just love i have them on my radar and i kinda feel like i don't know a lion chasing an antelope and i'm like i will get it it's just i have to be patient and i have to know what i want and i kinda feel like that's a similar approach that you've taken to asia because when i see the cards none of them are like b tier asia cards i feel like most of your asia cards like you said are the best of the best and that takes a lot of patience and a lot of discipline so that's super cool i wanna ask you about you know i i teed off the or teed up this episode by saying we're talking about franchise players and the two names that have come through in this episode so far is asia wilson and lebron james i heard enrique and c p three too as well but we'll talk we'll talk about lebron and asia what does it mean to you as a collector to collect a franchise level player versus that of like a prospect or a young hyped rookie and how does that translate into your collecting philosophy yeah i mean usually it's it's a little bit of a different mentality and i'm not saying one is right and one is wrong but usually prospecting is more of the intention of picking the right prospect and being able to cash out fairly quickly so it's this sort of going from card to card to card to card whereas i think you know my mentality people who collect bets are kinda like i'm okay to accumulate cards and hold them and maybe sell at some point but i'm not thinking about picking the right you know lebron's legacy is established asia was a little more of a prospect when i started collecting and thankfully she's become sort of established so i think it's just a different mindset and i mean i have prospected more in the past and i was terrible at it you know and that's the biggest the the biggest education in the hobby is losing money yeah no kidding and that's a a lesson i learned that way i you know was not good at it and it was just that taught me the lesson hey buy established players buy cards that you my mindset is buy cards you don't ever want to sell because those are the cards people are actually begging to buy off of you ironically the cards that you see you know mostly prospects that are very liquid and they're coming and going they're in the story sales and all that mhmm those are the cards generally that people aren't like hey i just wanna buy this and hold this forever and never do it up that's an interesting dynamic okay let's let's talk about this i was excited to ask you about this question which was do you remember the moment when you realized that asia might become kind of one of these defining players of the league and was that the same time that you decided hey i like asia i'm gonna collect her but like was that the moment that you decided you were gonna go all in and be like a very serious asia wilson collector yeah you know it's interesting i when i started collecting asia in twenty one you know twenty one there was only one product like you couldn't go all in there wasn't anything to buy really you know i would buy the nicest cards but her gold prism was four hundred dollars and then what else are you where are you going from there you know and right but i would say it was twenty twenty three when they won their second championship right they started they'd already won one they started off on fire candice parker had joined them they were dominating the league candice parker gets injured jackie young gets injured chelsea gray gets injured everyone is getting injured you get into the playoffs they drag in the playoffs and that's when asia like goes to another level and she put the team on her back and won that championship for them and it was like some some jordan kobe stuff going on as far as that mentality and that's when i was like oh she she might be next level so i would say and at the same time we got more and more product so i sort of built conviction as we went along and that has kind of influenced kind of my commitment to continue to try to buy her best cards what good timing honestly like thank god i almost feel like that's a good way as much as you know i'm sure in twenty twenty one you wish there would have been a more like a a bigger proliferation of products available it almost forces you to take a step back and that's got that's a powerful powerful dynamic that doesn't get explored too much in cards because we just always want everything right now so that's that's really interesting i guess that brings me to my final question of this segment which is do you wanna share any of your favorite asia cards in your pc right now yeah i got a few okay i got a few i'll go through them quickly please yeah so this is you know there's not asia has only had as far as i know i don't know about one in one if she has one three logo woman and this is the first one out of origins none of them are game worn unfortunately i also think it's probably the best looking one so i love owning that gorgeous revolution was a one on one and i got her galactic they say print run maybe ten maybe five i don't know hard to tell i think a lot of that product is unopened here's her gold vinyl one zero one championship year great post unfortunate amount of her cards are her shooting free throws so getting her action photo is nice that's funny those are some like actual bangers that you just showed like i have thoughts on all of them but like those are my my one thoughts the logo woman is insane i love the red as well because it brings you back to like the red with the aces the galactics the short print of those i feel like people don't realize i guess if you look up in card ladder or any tracking database and you just look up wmba galactic it is like there's nothing there's nothing there those are so hard to find so that's an incredible card and then on the the one of one my comment is that i always love when the ball or a a piece of the player is overlaid on top of the border so it almost looks like she's popping off the card like it just makes the card look sick so that that's an awesome three to share so thank you yeah those are probably my favorites thank you yeah those are awesome but why don't we move into kind of the next segment which is all about context so we talked about who you are what you collect why you collect asia but what do you think these are kinda like broader questions what do you think makes building a collection around like a dominant player so appealing to folks in the hobby compared to other ways that people collect whether that be like we said around rookies and prospects that could be around maybe instead of a dominant player you're collecting a franchise or a set what's what's appealing about that yeah i think you know for me it's the it's the south carolina collection or connection i think it's saying i i'm on board with this player regardless of who they play for i'm on board with this player regardless of whether their career is on is going up or in decline as happens with vets inevitably and i think there's something a little more concrete about that it feels like i can put more weight around that it's less fluid and i like that and i think that to have i think the other thing is is just especially once you if you've decided to collect a player who's like a goat or a goat level player it's saying okay i'm i'm okay to put the money into this that it's gonna take and i'm okay to kind of hold hold that hold those cards and enjoy them yeah well you made the right decision at least as of now right like i i think about that i'm like you say you you you basically had her as a prospect in your mind like that's like hitting the jackpot so you you did a great job with picking them i guess yeah i got i got a little lucky but also like you know if you look at i would say stewie too you know like what are you looking for in a potential goat they both check all the boxes across their whole careers if you were gonna design a goat they would fit the the the archetype so that's a you just like segued me perfectly into the next question that i had which was like it stewie entered the league in twenty sixteen asia entered the league in twenty twenty one or sorry in twenty eighteen and i recognize that you said you started really watching in twenty twenty one but my question is when players like stewie or asia entered the league what what do you think made them feel different or makes them feel different today than some of these other superstars the ones that i wrote down were like candace parker diana trossi sue bird maya moore these are all massive names like on and they any of those names could be put into the mount rushmore of women's basketball players but stewie and asia stick out right now what do you think differentiates them yeah i would say we always have some recency bias right too real too real asia you know is the best player in adobe right now so definitely and has the shoe and all the promotion and all that she she's also been dominant i think at a level that we've not seen in a long time but before that stewie was dominant too i mean she you know i and i i didn't watch her play in college but i was looking at her her college she won a title all four years she was player of the year three of those years within two or within three years of entering the w she won a title and was finals mvp i mean she has checked all the boxes and you look at asia's accomplishments too the it's like a scroll you have to like read it out and open it up it's just never ending they were both the best player at their level since they were like fourteen yeah it's crazy and they've won every you know they both won every award yeah since two thousand and eighteen the two of them that we've had one of their teams in the finals six out of eight years they've played each other twice so it really is kind of their time period of of domination and i don't you know i think there's a lot more competition in the league but but i think there's a little more a little more to come from from definitely from asia but i think from stewie too i completely agree i wanna ask you because of your south carolina influence what you think about like stewie and asia's dominance translating from the college game into the wnba do you think that those expectations were exceeded do you think that like the the idea i'm trying to get at the core idea of dominance it's like you have to have a sustained level of it it has to be we have to have like a longevity factor to be considered a franchise player considered dominance how do you think though their dominance in the in the college level translated to the w i mean i think stewie definitely translated and you know she's coming out of of yukon which is just a juggernaut yeah and and you know a lot of w fans follow their players right from college into the into the w she goes from that to seattle which was also a great franchise and then goes to winning a championship within a few years and becomes the best player i mean the the biggest challenge stewie has had is she had is has had several injuries which slows kinda you know that's part of building the narrative is always being available always being consistent and that's been the hardest part about her career it's amazing that she's accomplished what she's has i mean like in the twenty two thousand nineteen she tears her achilles misses the whole year twenty twenty comes back the bubble year wins another championship is mvp again you know casual she could have won two championships straight if she doesn't get injured yeah you know so i think that asia did not have the benefit of coming out of a big franchise i mean she was really kind of one of the you know her and and dawn staley kind of pivoting that franchise into being sort of a now a really consistent top level program and then went to the aces which is you know had not had past success and was building something new so she didn't have that i feel like she had to kinda break new ground that way that's a interesting way to kinda compare the two i never thought of that and it's it's interesting to to think about it that way yeah i saw i saw an interview recently from kim mulkey the head coach of lsu just giving her flowers to dawn staley in the way that she's really amplified that program and i think dawn staley does give a lot of credit to and should give a lot of credit to asia wilson for the success of that program and really turning it into a powerhouse and yeah it seems like wherever asia or stewie goes winning follows so yeah maybe that's maybe that's where we'll end with that i guess my my final question on this segment about context and like you know the franchise player is in what ways do you think players like stewie in asia started to represent like teams brands or eras of the league and so we mentioned before that you know asia has a shoe that asia's in vegas that asia's got the south carolina thing stewie's got unrivaled stewie's got the live stew york you know like in what ways do you think they start to represent either those franchises different brands or eras of the league yeah i mean i feel like the the league has always you know for a long time struggled with its own marketing and that limited the impact of the players as the league has kind of gotten their act together and seen growth now you start to see the players get more opportunities and now maybe it's even kinda flip flopped may and i feel like now you have players transcend the league clark and and asia and i'm sure you know probably page and and and more players to come build their own brands and they don't necessarily need the lead to champion them and put them out there so i think that's a a probably something that's changed just the last three four years yeah asia had an interesting journey that way because you know she was the best player in the league for a while without a shoe without anything and i actually think it it was kind of like a rubber band effect where she wasn't getting the endorsement opportunities wasn't getting the stuff and what did she do she focused on her camps she wrote a book she did things that were culturally relevant and that just spring loaded her you know the endorsement deals and all of this stuff and now you see her with the best selling shoe and just being you know transcending the sport and actually having cultural relevance this is yeah i would say we can officially say that asia wilson is and will be an icon of the sport and beyond and a lot of that has to do with both her on the court performance but like you said also her her off the court dominance it's it's really inspiring to see and it's it's so cool i guess i it's a good transition to the collecting aspect again i i love to talk about the w i like to talk about the players but i like talking about the cards the most and so i guess let's get into the cards and manufacturers and just the landscape here to be able to capture dominance is a tall task for a card manufacturer to be able to capture players like stewie in asia my first question is i guess what products from this period that we're talking about do you think best capture stewie and asia's rookie moments or dominance in some fashion yeah i mean i i think you always gotta start with prism it's just it's the flagship product it's the one that that that you're gonna go to and i think you know their their prism prism based cards are always gonna be you know important i i like cards that express emotion mhmm and that's the thing with having a lot of shooting free throws and stuff that's why i love i'm i'm actually it's the release this year has been really weird i love the new prism because of the photography to me the photography is next level and it's about time that we got some some great photos something more dynamic and captures the action and and the gameplay you know so i think there's a lot of really great inserts i like asia wilson out of origins i just got i i just got it i don't remember the name of it but any of them like the get hyped sort of ones i think they're really great anything that captures the energy and kinda passion of the players was it the euphoria insert by chance euphoria that was it thank you that's a beautiful card that is like gorgeous yeah yeah i think any of these i you know that's why i think i'm really drawn you know to that that one i shared the gold vinyl prism one zero one you know jumping up and grabbing your free throw you know any of these that are really dynamic i think capture the player as well on stewie i'm less versed in her her whole cannon i do think that is one of the things that is attractive you know the rookie autographs have really taken off and i think there's something special especially the you know people seem really drawn to the the jersey ones where you've got the player and you've got the on card auto and all that yeah they're special nice yeah do you collect any of those rittenhouse asia stuff or do you stick to the the shiny stuff i missed the boat i i had her rookie card and i sold it because i said i think i can buy this back and i might be i still might be right i i think that both of their cards five it's hard to i think it's hard to value a base card with a print run of five hundred like we just don't have other things like that yeah it's such a weird scenario and you think about asia collectors there's not hundreds and thousands of them and i think that i can still buy that the the rookie autos i totally missed out on i don't own it i do have a i have a nice stewie rookie auto but i missed out on all those agents and i should have bought them all yeah we all should have what were we doing i always ask that i'm like what the hell were we doing because they were sitting there too like they they were just wait they're like please somebody buy me i promise i'm worth it and none of us did so here we are and there's still a lot of really nice written house autos out there that are really affordable and we'll probably be kicking ourselves ten years from now literally for sure okay here's a question i'm like dying to hear your thoughts on which is that this is the question do you think that stewie and asia appearing kind of at the tail end of rittenhouse's reign instead of at the entrance of panini helped or hurt their collecting base if you wanna take it a step further do you think it helped or hurt the market and do you think those two things are different i think it i won't say it helped or hurt but i think that they did not get the because there was no rarity that there is now you know with one on ones and gold tens and all this stuff you didn't get that giant prospecting bubble that you see happen usually with new players so it it changed kinda what that looks like now you know stewie stewie's rookie card and you know and then her her golds her twenty twenty gold and all that those have been pretty expensive so but not you know compare that to like the where people are paying six figures seven figures for these cards you know there's just no comparison so i don't think they got that kind of parabolic new player kind of move what they're getting i like to compare like the collectors the the collecting asia to be to collecting jokic on the nba side right it's someone who's just slowly building their resume and prices are following i wish i i like wish i could give more context but like when i think about that like because i'm just not educated on the nba but when i think about jokic i think undervalued dominance which is the same thing that i think about aisha wilson so that parallel makes complete sense to me yeah stewie you know her cards have been high and they're coming down as as you know again it's recency bias you're seeing her cards come down and it makes me say wow i think i think stewie maybe i need a pc stewie too i don't know i'm a part of stewie cards yeah i think stewie's cards would've been like this is also my minnesota bias but like she didn't win the finals mvp when she won with the liberty and i'm not saying that that that winning that award is necessary to your prices doing going up or to like justify prices but i do think like her kind of not having that and having that appearance not be as like john quill won it and nobody really remembers that john quill won it i think that that did hurt her recent kind of market even though she still she still unfortunately did win the championship yeah i mean she's thirty one had some injuries and she's not the put the team on your back and win like like we saw asia do yeah recent season in the playoffs it's you know everything's going to crap we need a bucket stewie's the super team maker you know like she's the one that is the anchor for these super teams whether it was in seattle or new york she's the one that elevates them to that step that's my take on stewie at least i know yeah yeah okay okay let's let's get into the next topic which is i framed it kind of as like dominance and like the collector mindset and my question for you is what do you think dominance looks like in the hobby how would you define it i think in dominance from a card perspective or from like player from a card i mean dominance i think is trying to find the best of the best it's saying i'm gonna turn over all the stones i'm going to you know save my save my budget for the part i really want you know and let me add this i would say it is is cultivating our understanding of what cards matter that's an unfair advantage that experienced collectors have and i think the more you do this the more you start to understand what's gonna be special down the road and i'm not saying that i'm the authority on that but that's something that i've grown to appreciate from people who have been doing this a lot longer than myself they said yet that yeah yeah that kinda ties into my next question that i had which was how do you think collectors treat a player who consistently wins mvps championships and awards versus kind of the unproven and if i may i it sounds like it's mostly time that like creates that but like how would you answer that question how how do you think play or how how collectors treat players who have that sustained dominance is there a different way that people look at them in the hobby well i think that you know collectors hold cards that make them feel a certain way and you know that's part of the nostalgia and i think that when you see a player you know win a championship in a certain way do have certain accomplishments that makes people more prone to want to hold on to that yeah it makes those cards stickier a player who hasn't accomplished anything even a really good player who hasn't accomplished anything doesn't have any big memories doesn't have a great i think that's less sticky yeah you know and certainly prospects you know are the probably the least sticky because people are coming at more of the mindset of how do i turn this into something bigger something better or i want more i definitely think it's easier to feel empowered to invest especially like a significant amount of money if that foundation of greatness or that foundation of winning is already there it makes you feel safer it makes you feel more i don't know just like empowered to make those decisions compared to say a riskier quote unquote riskier play with like a prospect and such okay my next question for you is that when a player becomes like the clear the clear centerpiece or cornerstone of a franchise how do you think that that shapes the market around their cards yeah i think it it helps it helps you know especially if they're you know they're the they're the top level on the team i think it gets a little trickier when someone has to share the spotlight i mean you see that with stewie in new york you see that on other teams and that's for good or bad and you know asia has not had like a peer she has very good players on her team i'm not discounting that but that definitely helps i think it also has to translate to winning though and that's the thing you can't be the best player on a bad team i think that if you're the best player on the best team in in a big market that's ideal right yeah you can't even necessarily it's even difficult being the best player on a good team in a small market but and then that's where you know personal preference and and your own location and what you want too like it isn't necessarily about lining everything up yeah to provide the best return as an investment you're saying okay what do i what what goes beyond that yeah that formula is interesting i always think about like you know it always comes up whenever you talk about mvp conversations whether it be in the wnba the nba other professional leagues but that formula of best player best team and then big market it it just always feels like it comes back to those three variables and in terms of when we're talking about this podcast when we're talking about the wnba asia and stewie have all three of those i would say at any given time so how do you think that asia and stewie compare to other athletes whether that be in the wnba or elsewhere in terms of collecting and greatness yeah i think that i mean they are obviously in the w they should be regarded as you know the among the best players i mean they're they're top five stewitt is still a top five player in the wnba i would say you know that would that should make them very attractive to collectors i think that you know collectors coming from other parts of the hobby from the nba and all that you know they come in and you know there's just there's a lot of skepticism and i get it they i have people who get in my dms and they're like why do you buy these cards why do you why do you put money into this why don't you buy other things and i just i always just say i enjoy watching it and i enjoy collecting it i enjoy it and and and i just say hey watch a game and if you enjoy it then maybe you'll collect it i don't know like i'm you know i don't know what to tell you i don't know i can't explain why asia one zero one sells for like a fraction of what a lebron one zero one sells for you know i mean obviously the market is much smaller to me i would rather you know have the asia cards i think they're a much better value and and i like it so yeah that's that's powerful way of thinking about it when you put it into perspective it really does seem like asia stewie and players like them are still i don't know under it still feels under the radar which feels so wrong and like i don't know how many times i feel like i've said like asia wilson her market is still young it's still new it's still fresh but her greatness is not you know so i think that that that ratio of you know value i suppose is is super high with asia wilson compared to her counterparts whether that be her male counterparts or other players in the league she just seems to be levels above anybody else at the moment yeah yep alright so our our kind of like last segment before we get into the canon contribution check segment is all about significance of an era and like influence on the current present day so i guess my question to you that i'll i'll start off with is why is the quote i'm calling it like the stuart wilson era why is that such an important chapter in the history of wnba cards yeah i think it i mean everything everything builds on what came before it and you know we're going through cpa negotiations and all this influx of of new talent that's all built on the shoulder of you know of this previous you know i would say the current the you know i mean aces won last year so you know this this this current group of talent has done all the lifting you know the last eight ten years to get the w and you know it's funny you know people will say oh clark is hurt wnba is gonna go down it's like they were trending up before you know this has had a lot of momentum before these this group of prospects came along and that was because of stewie that was because of asia that was because of a lot of other really gifted players in the league who show up who play hard who didn't make the millions of dollars who were incredibly skilled and gifted and competitive so i think that's everything and i think that that's gonna be interesting as this new generation enters the league a little different style of play it's you know you've got a lot more shooting a lot more it's it's a it's a little more it's less focused on on size and you know i think the lead's gonna have to evolve i think stewie in in asia might need to evolve to continue dominance in this kind of new era mhmm and i'm excited to see what happens that is a a good way of framing it it'll be interesting to see how kind of they mesh like you're saying the the newness the the different types of of the game is it's interesting to see how it's evolved and i'm excited to see because asia asia well she could stop i think and still be considered you know the best but she's got a lot of years left in the tank still like it's not even close to being done in my opinion yeah yeah i think that the goat the part of the part of the for one thing i don't love goat conversations because i think it's so hard to compare players across eras and but i think the important thing is to be able to stick the landing and have a long career and hopefully asia can do that she's been you know very injury free her career so far and hopefully keep that going one hundred percent okay a question that i wanna ask you is more on like the the influence and like kind of a hindsight so i know that asia and stewart obviously still i would consider them at the top at the top still currently like today as we speak but what do you think collectors what kind of lessons can collectors learn from how stewie and asia's cards have kind of matured and evolved over time both the availability the rarity but also the performance of them like from a financial aspect what do you think collectors can learn from that yeah i mean i think you you gotta learn what cards matter and i think that that is also going to put you you know into competition with other players for those cards which is going to make make them more expensive but i think that you know really going after cards that are are gonna be important if you can buy the best player the best cards are the best players and that and that doesn't necessarily mean you know getting the one zero one it might mean hey i want the the mojo you know i'm looking for a twenty twenty two mojo to twenty five which either player probably goes for fifty bucks right yeah it'd be a good card it's an important set the best players of the time that's a nice that's a nice one to look at same thing if there's a lot of case hits there's a lot of things that have really short print runs mhmm you look at first year of colorblast i think is gonna be important and there's been a lot of nice case hits and things over the years that i think are kinda really under the radar especially players especially the vets you know people will gravitate towards the prospects in those but i think the vets are really special too yeah i agree it's almost like i know that stewie and asia had the rittenhouse as like their early cards but these more the the cards that panini have put out of these great franchise players i still think like you're saying they do have a lot of attributes they're very attractive to collectors both from a just like fandom perspective like capturing their essence and like you talk about like the get hyped inserts or the euphoria inserts but also from a rarity perspective like just in this world that we live in of continued overproduction of cards when you know that you can put your money into a grade and you know that not everybody can have that card that is a good way to approach collecting them you just cannot go wrong at least in my opinion you can't go wrong by taking that that first step okay my my last question in this segment for you is how do you think our like us collectors are gonna look back on this era the stuart wilson era of collecting in say five to ten years or if you even wanna like expand the horizon to fifty years or however long you wanna go how do you think we're gonna look back on it you know i'm already looking back a few years back and saying why didn't i buy you know why didn't i buy the rookie autos why didn't i buy or why did i sell i i had a i was doing the mosaic run which these cards are numbered to three and i said i'm gonna i'm not gonna do that and i sold a couple of those and i'm never gonna be able to get them back right i think we're gonna look back on these cards i think we're gonna look back on like what we could have had first thing that i think is tough about it's it's it's wonderful and also drives you insane being a w collector is the best cards get bought and you never see them again and i think i could look back and say why didn't i buy this thing and now you know i'm never gonna get another chance you know yeah if i get another chance it'll be the price will be much different for sure you know so i think that people will look back and say man i should have backed the truck up and and bought some special things when i had the chance right i should have sailed yeah well you don't have to tell me twice this this episode's already making me wanna go on ebay and buy up a of asian stuff so i i completely understand the appeal alright why don't we transition into you know this is this is always say that this is my favorite segment i like all the segments but like we are building a cannon on this season of the wnba card podcast where every time we have a guest on we ask them kindly to pick out four cards that they think represent what we've been talking about on the episode so you know in the past we focused on a certain era a certain time range of years we've talked about certain players like we had a an episode mostly about sue bird and diana terasi and now we have this episode which is about mostly stewie in asia but also the the time period that they've existed in did you have a chance to pick out mount rushmore of four cards to represent this episode i i have thoughts on what they could be okay let's do it i'm i'm curious to see what you got yeah i mean i think he got to and i'll just i'll just apply the same thing to both players i think you got the rookie auto in action i think that it's a great moment in time it has a great personal touch i think those are special i wish i had the asia but oh well i would say you have to look at their twenty twenty prism you know that's a really important set first prism it's it's iconic it's highly sought after i think that's really important are you going for gold for the twenty twenty prism or are you just going generally with the set i'm going generally but gold if you can if you can okay i would say you know if you're looking to get into that you know look at the prices and i would say after the gold the price probably dips off pretty quickly you could go for a nice color match you know there's a lot of nice options there at the higher level serial numbers i would say and maybe this is recency recency bias but last year they both had their first year black finite out of prism for both of them it was it might have been the highest selling stewie card so far yet and for me photo there's a good photo on that black prism too yeah i i remember that so for asia i think that's her second highest sale behind we haven't touched on this but her highest sale is the platinum edition of rittenhouse number to twenty five which is a very special card yeah and then third i'll say or or so for fourth i'll say first year color blast i think those are awesome cards twenty twenty wnba prism was not highly printed same with twenty twenty one both those sets were were much less produced so pulling case hits from twenty twenty one i think are are pretty scarce i like this i like this combo that you have this list it it it combines both like respect for like the the pillars like the twenty twenty prism set in general just like doesn't have to be the most expensive card from the set but that set is iconic and then combining that with the rarity aspect and i will say like most of these cards that you've mentioned here are also extremely desirable at least from what i've seen when they're in a high grade like we we talk about that a lot in the past you know six episodes that we've had people on is that some of the things that they talk about in the canon are quality control and like the the grade of the cards and all of these still follow that despite the fact that now we're moving into a more ultra modern era when hopefully there's better quality control they still have that same i don't know significance when they come with a good grade and specifically what made me think of that is the color blast because they just when you get them i feel like they're never in good shape like i remember i graded a a sue bird from one of those early sets and it got a seven and i was like oh and i looked it up and it was like a pop two with like one higher and you're like oh that's not the worst thing in the world like it's not great but yeah my philosophy is you know begin with true scarcity and then if you need to artificial scarcity which is grading layered on top but begin for scarcity yeah that's a really good framework nobody's ever never put it that way so that's that's really valuable alright so that kinda concludes our our canning contribution segment mike i really enjoyed those four cards i'm excited to to look them up i feel you know invigorated talking about them this is two of my favorite players to talk about but yeah i guess before we round out today's conversation do you have any advice for listeners that maybe are looking to collect either in the way that you collect or they're just excited about these players do you have any advice for them that you'd like to leave them with yeah i think just if you're new to collecting you know dip your toe in the water and and learn from other see what other people collect try to figure out what what's their angle what are they valuing i think especially before you go spend a bunch of money and then you know like i tell everyone you know watch the games see who you connect with there's so many great peeps players personalities stories going on and you don't know you know you might have some connection with some team or some player that you didn't realize and that's the lane you wanna get in so you know and if you're buying the cards but you're not a fan of the sport you're not gonna hold the cards with much conviction right you're just going to find something else right you'll be like oh i'm gonna go clipped you know f one or something you know and that's fine that's part of the journey of this is figuring out kind of yourself and what you like and what you're drawn to but yeah take take take your time that's powerful it's it's funny i i always try to ask that question near the ends of episodes and everybody always has their own flavor on it but what it really boils down to is cheesy and as much as you hear it in the hobby it's to collect what you love and you're gonna be good and i think that that's that's a good way kinda like to to end off today's episode collect what you love and hopefully they turn out to be the greatest player of all time like asia wilson right you'll be set to go no but mike thank you so much for your insights your collection i it's very inspiring when you hold up the cards for our patreon viewers i mean you guys are in for a treat to see those and if you haven't checked out mike's instagram mike k sports cards on instagram you have to give him a follow it's incredible i've been following your journey and i can't wait to see what you pick up in the future thanks so much for joining us everyone and we'll see you next time with another collector guest episode thanks so much guys