welcome back loyal listeners the stacking slabs podcast to season five episode two of the wnba card podcast my name is caitlin i go by at cold lunch cards mostly on the instagram machine but you can find me on some other corners of the internet as well and today marks a very important pivotal moment to the wnba card podcast as we welcome our first kind of guest collector in this new series that we're doing all focused on team collecting last week we had spencer mccaffrey on from great lakes trading co trade great lakes trading cards co out of saint paul minnesota where we had a live expo or card show focused entirely on women's sports cards and we interviewed him about what that's like what it's like building and owning a card shop and more importantly what it's like to cultivate a community surrounded by women's sports cards and centering women's sports cards which brings me to today season five is going to build off of that kind of idea of community and bring on more collectors last season season four was focused on era by era so as if you guys listened we started in like the nineteen twenties thirties forties and worked our way up all the way to the incoming and upcoming draft classes of the wmba we had a different collector on to explain those kinds of eras we're taking that concept and kind of flipping it on its head and so now what we're gonna do is instead of arrows we're gonna do teams and i thought a great place to start is with the phoenix mercury so this episode is all about the best place phoenix mercury because they're one of the founding teams of the wnba they're iconic they have some of the most iconic players known to the to the sport i would say basketball in general and i'm so excited to welcome on gavin who goes by at card underscore collector gavin welcome to the podcast thank you for having me i'm excited to be here and talk w cards talk about the goat use the hat and yeah yeah talk about the best team in the wnba i love it and for our patreon viewers you can see that gavin's sporting this incredible goat hat and a d t throwback jersey just just an awesome look here especially as you're kind of adorned by this shrine of wnba memorabilia behind you as well just so excited to get into your team collecting philosophy your love for the phoenix mercury and talk about women's sports cards in general but before we kinda get into that i want to invite you to kind of pitch yourself to the audience if if people don't know who you are which you should i think you were one of our featured collectors in the past seasons but if they don't know who card collector is why don't you introduce yourself well my name is gavin i live in phoenix arizona i've been hardcore collecting wnb cards since really we got back into it about late twenty twenty two early twenty twenty three before it went too crazy my wife and i own a couple of franchises here i've got two sons who are eleven and nine and we are mercury season ticket holders and so yeah that's that's about the interesting part of me so yeah i love it i'm so jealous i feel like i've seen you on tv multiple times with your season tickets yeah we're lucky enough to sit right next to the away bench so it's been hence where a lot of these came from we've pretty lucky to get a lot of these signed games so yeah that's so awesome and and we're gonna get into one of the things that i think is so special about the phoenix mercury is the environment of the stadium that they play in that that arena the x factor is a real thing it's really cool to see kind of just the power of the fan base and it's one of the reasons that i wanted to start with the phoenix mercury obviously i'm biased i'm not a mercury fan we've got beef from last year perfect nobody's perfect but i do appreciate and respect this team and this franchise a lot it has a lot of rich history and a lot of strong collectors here so just to kinda give the people an idea of where this episode and following episodes are gonna go is that we're gonna have different segments similar to similar to last season and the first one is gonna be around personal fandom and identity so why don't we start there gavin can you kinda tell us our your origin story as a phoenix mercury fan when and where did it happen well i've kind of always wanted to support you know women's sports wnba in particular for a lot of like you know the the cultural reasons that surround it you know a safe space for you know inclusive space for for you know lgbtq and women and and women of color everything like that so when i moved to phoenix in two thousand and ten and about a year later i met my now wife and she played basketball growing up and things like that so she really you know between the two of us really you know that that really solidified it we started going to games locally and stuff like that we had our kids in twenty seventeen and twenty fifteen so it was hard to make it to a lot of games then of course you try and take them they can't last very long we hesitated to buy season tickets and finally once they got old enough in twenty twenty four i think was the first year we actually had season tickets which of course was you know caitlin clark's first year so you know we got on the bandwagon late there price wise but but yeah so that's kind of i guess that's where it started and where it got us to now mhmm that's awesome why i think about this meme i think i posted a while ago and it's like hey kids sit down you're gonna watch at highlights and it's like a picture of a kid that's like five that's what i imagine your family's like like alright kids sit down take notes let's go watch at and see what's up with basketball so that's super fun yeah it's really go ahead so go ahead i was just it's really another great thing about it too is like i mentioned you know there's not the cultural aspect of it it's great to bring my kids there especially my sons and you know it's cool to see them growing up looking up to these women being inspired by them and things like that you know so so yeah that's all the things are really important factors to me regarding the w in particular yeah for sure and i think you can say that a lot about a lot of wnba teams so i wanna kinda dig into why the mercury and it it might be as simple as i'm in phoenix so this is like the geographical location but does it go any deeper than that why not cheer for la or like one of the other teams on the west coast gross i'm gonna do that no i mean yeah geographic location you know that's i mean growing up i grew up in new mexico so you know there wasn't a lot so you tend to the phoenix teams denver teams those areas that kind of you know you reach out to whatever's out there and then of course at the time i was following it not quite as closely you followed players and the biggest names in the game diana terrazzi and then later in twenty thirteen brittney griner and you know so that made it easier as well and especially once i moved here in two thousand ten it was just a you know a natural you go to the games you get involved you see the fan base you talked about the x factor you feel the energy at the stadium and yeah kinda sucks you in you kinda got lucky i think a little bit you didn't go to some poverty franchise i think when people talk about the mercury they talk about like just really good facilities good ownership you have like the association with the more recently yeah right yeah more recently and so i think that it's a really a good landing spot for a fan i kinda wanna get into your identity as a phoenix mercury fan i think we all know that there are levels to fandom okay like there are some people who are casuals and don't understand you know how much it means to people like us or i'm assuming people like us if you rate for me on a scale of one to ten with one being casual and ten being super fan kind of your fandom and your collecting habits around the fandom well i'd say they're pretty closely tied i'll admit having getting into collecting has you know increased my fandom a whole lot more because there's things historically you learn about of a team that was there before you watched them before you follow it really closely and now when you tie the cards into that you know it gives you a piece of that you know you feel like you feel like you've got like memento from that time especially with the older stuff with the game one patches and everything you know and so it really makes you wanna learn more about the history itself like why is this card significant you know why is a two thousand seven patch cool what was cool about that season for diana taurasi things like that and so so i'd say on a scale of one to ten i mean you know i'm a i'm a seven or an eight i'm gonna be honest when i was younger you know sports was a sort of a more mark of my my total identity yeah of course i don't feel like it is anymore now that i have kids obviously and things like that you know you tend to separate yourself a little bit more and then also i mean especially with wnba there's so many other players i like where i know in other sports you know it's like it's your team and if your favorite player leaves and goes somewhere else they might as well be dead to you you know and and so many players in the wnba that like know i'm such a huge fan of and my family's all huge fans of so it's definitely a different sort of fandom but i can tell you there's definitely been you know a lot of ruined weeks after bad games and know after last year's finals things like that you know when you get your hopes up so yeah yeah you know i'd say seven or an eight you know i like that i feel like the w fandom can be very warm and welcoming and kind of like neutral during the regular season and then all that shit goes out the window window in the playoffs things get real cutthroat real quick i'm like oh i love the mercury they're like so fun to watch i love at i love watching this team and then we play out in the playoffs i'm like this is the worst team i've ever seen in my life can't stand them you know and it goes both ways and and that's something unique i feel like about the wba it's just that heightened sense of fandom that comes in during the playoffs okay i wanna kinda talk to you a little bit about your timeline you mentioned that you kinda got back into collecting a little bit later and then you even got season tickets more recently when do you think you realized that you were becoming a mercury team collector as opposed to just a general sports card collector that happened to pick up some mercury cards along the way well originally you know one of my kids had gotten into cards so that kind of brought me and my wife back into it she collected a whole lot more when she's younger i actually used to collect comic books i collected a few sports cards and things like that but it wasn't really a huge thing for me so we started exploring it and we were into the w at the time so i was like oh these are i mean so much more accessible so much cheaper at the time you know as we all remember and so we started digging into them and having fun with it with the kids and opening the cards in them we kinda had like a we had a binder at first it's so cute to think back we had one binder and it was basically like there was like a page for each of our favorite players in the league and of course like every one of the players that were currently on the mercury so of course that's grown to dozens of binders and boxes and everything now as as tends to happen but but yeah so from the beginning you know those were the cards we gravitated to i remember in one of the first boxes of twenty twenty three prism my oldest son opened he got a diana terrazzi gold auto so that was really cool you know it doesn't matter anything you know it's one of ten so it was the first on print you know and and so yeah you know it's just that that's so it's kind of always been there as i've gotten more into collecting more recently and and over the years and everything i've become more focused i don't tend to keep those other players as much unless they're really really big cards you know it used to be a time when asia wilson to two ninety nine it'd be something i'd keep in a binder and now those aren't things i hold to now are things i hold on to much more related to danx rossi alyssa thomas specifically more recently and then other mercury players of course but those two are kind of the biggest i'd say awesome that's a good that's a good pick i'll say that like out of if you said to me oh yeah i collect dt and at i'd be like that's pretty good like that's pretty good taste from a card perspective you get to dabble in the earlier years with dt and kind of the foundations of wmbi card collecting and then you get into the ultra modern with at just a a good duo there okay i wanna kinda get into i don't know i wanna get into your ideas or thoughts around what makes the mercury different than other teams and one of the questions that i wanna ask guests when they come on so you'll hear me repeat this question to gavin to whoever comes on next week and as we go through diff the different teams is i want you to try your very best it's a hard question but to describe the identity of the phoenix mercury the franchise itself in three words or less can you do that that was this one took some digging i won't lie lot of words come to mind of course but i think the biggest ones one of the big ones to me is foundational of course you know they were one of the original franchises they're always relevant very rarely are they like really bad and not talked about in terms of you know how much wnba has talked about they're resilient they've been through the bad times they didn't fold like a lot of teams unfortunately did and then one that really really comes to mind for me is there's a swagger i feel like it's you guys going back to the very beginning shira miller first coach started first coach in gm she started it she coined the phrase x factor for the fans saying you know you guys are the x factor you're the difference the team's always pride itself on having you know the best home court advantage in the wnba and with the players you look at that we've had i mean obviously there's been a lot of great players lot teams but you feel like players like dana taurasi and and brittany griner and michelle tims before her before them and and now even looking like your alyssa thomas' and your clea koppers there's there's players that are known for having that sort of swagger and of course there's players across the league like that but it seems like those players sort of tend to blend in with that you know and it becomes more amplified i guess swagger that's the thing for me i feel like the team has a swagger to it but maybe not all the teams have completely agree like when you said that last one like the first two yes like foundational yes they're one of the founding teams resilient yes up and down and they've bounced back every time i think they're always bouncing somehow like always resilient getting back up but swagger that resonates like i think about like when i was doing a little bit of research for this episode about the phoenix mercury about how you know when they started they had kind of the slower run offense that was like very consistent with with what was happening in the wnba in the late nineties and then when they drafted d t in o four they completely changed the style of their offense to be a running done offense which was something that you know hadn't really been explored before because there wasn't a player like d t before like with that kind of poppiness and that swagger that i found it i think swagger is the perfect word to describe not only the franchise today but the franchise's entire identity and the the fan base itself it's like you kinda carry yourself knowing that you've got a goat you know like that takes some swagger to know that and to be aware of it so excellent three words there gavin i like those well thank you yeah alright so before we shift into the next segment which is all around kind of your personal collection and strategy and how you look at cards i just wanna cap off our the idea of personal fandom and identity by asking you about kind of just women's sports fandom more generally if we remove the phoenix mercury from this equation obviously they're a big part of it but if you if you have a couple words to say about what kind of women's sports fandom means to you and how it's kind of impacted your collecting i kinda touched on it earlier but especially you know just it is the it is that cultural space around it you know it is it is that inclusion i feel like that's really really important i feel like it's obviously lacking a lot today more so today than recently but and so preserving that protecting that i think is always a good thing and somewhere you can kind of almost feel like a space where it's like the world is this is what we want the world to be like when you're in wnba game is that we want people to treat each other and so when i could be there and support that and and i can show my sons that and raise them in that environment and let them understand that because you know there's so much of the you know sexism everything out there especially in this hobby unfortunately you know and my kids sometimes will watch breaks on youtube and they'll hear these guys say these things and i want them to know like that's not who that is why is that guy saying that you know that comes not from a place of basketball you know it comes from you know it comes from a more sinister place and and so yeah those are the things i think about specifically you know women's sports in general that make it so important and of course just you know giving these women the opportunity to show who they are and be who they are for sure i i love that i i have a hard time i feel like on the podcast expressing those thoughts in terms of just making them so coherent because it's such a big topic and i think you did a great job kind of like boiling it down into to what matters so thanks for sharing that gavin of course of course try not to get too off topic about cards but no but it's true it feels good to put your put your money into cards of people that you respect and you look up to and that you think are like embodied embodying the values values that you share i think it's something that's underrated okay let's move into your collection philosophy and strategy i guess how would you describe your your collection and the way that you go about it of phoenix mercury cards best easiest like way to describe it i say is maybe inconsistent maybe a little you know it's broad at times unfocused it can be okay it's gotten more so like i said more recently started focusing more on a few different rainbows more on sets i've got like a finally put together a d t binder and so i have her entire career all of her base cards all throughout her career and a bunch of other ones along the way i'm trying to put together all the championship teams she was on a lot of the big patches the case hits things like that of course and obviously with alyssa thomas i have some of some of her stuff from before this season but now that she's stuffed with her in a mercury uniform of course i've dove in hard on that i'm four cards away from the don russ rainbow if anybody out there count me with a cubic the two retail one of ones which i believe are black shimmer and black hollow and then the artist proof to twenty five if you guys are out there and you find them let me know yeah absolutely if you guys are listening and you see those that they definitely belong in your collection gavin and and when you kinda talk about the fragmented aspect you don't really have like one thing that you're you're not just collecting players you're not just collecting patches you're not just collecting one of ones you're kind of spreading it out do you have a a focus a a goal to focus on something in the future or do you kinda wanna keep it wide wide breadth here yeah you know kevin m columbia had a post one time that i thought really inspired that in me it was just like almost having like mini sets to collect along way because sometimes if you're looking for one you can get bogged down you know and so i do that a little bit as well you know i run into especially with thomas it's nice where cards are typically pretty accessible you know they're not very expensive and so each sometimes you run across one you're like oh you know got like up to five i found for cheap on ebay so maybe now i can build that rainbow you know and and things like that or you know get all the mercury purple velocities is what i'm looking for from prism this year because it's the color match and everything yeah so so yeah you know stuff like that i guess that kind of keeps me on track and then between me and my kids we love to rip packs and boxes and everything like that you know and so that keeps you busy enough just kinda selling the stuff we don't keep in everything like that you know just pumping out the page and caitlin's as far as i can so i can buy more of the promise of data trials i love that i love the concept of selling clark and page to acquire et it just feels right from for a right phoenix mercury collector and hold a few of course just to you know to have you know as long with your lebron's and your michael jordans and whatnot but you know that's funny i i i'm curious so something that we've all kind of felt and seen is like the rise of the costs associated with women's basketball cards particularly wnba cards over the past couple of years so i'm wondering do you have any like quote unquote guardrails or rules to kinda keep things out to shut off that noise you mentioned kind of kevin's little post about you know think of it as small sets and trying you know to break it down instead of biting off more than you can chew are there any like things that you completely exclude that you say these will not come in not because i don't like them but because it goes against the rules of of my collection i wouldn't say there's anything i'm gonna always say no to you know find something and it's like that cool you know i gotta have plenty of cards that are just really really cool that aren't of or mercury players or whatever so you know another but but there's certainly like i try not to get spend very much time in breaks you know i certainly have been guilty of it at times but i know that's a lot of opinions about how that's bad for the market and everything as well and then you know don't worry about hobby boxes so i guess that's those are kind of my guardrails you know it's just honestly just the just the financial constraints around it now you know it kind of keeps you keeps you in check naturally because you know you're like it's hard to like you know put down that much cash and then you know rip through it in thirty seconds and you know be left wishing you had just gone on ebay and bought a few cards you know i hear that i hear that one hundred percent i think that's a good tip for like people that are new to collecting i think breaking can be really fun in terms of like you know meeting a community talking to folks that share that same thing it can be fun especially if you're a team collector right because then you can just pick your team but i guess you know it can kind of spiral from there so that's something to be aware of but that that leads me into random's sort chasing stuff yeah thing's nice about it though is typically like the mercury are always pretty cheap you know the one thing some of the select i've been seeing i saw like diana terrazi even though like the player breaks diana terrazi price would be like strangely high and then i realized she has a dual auto with paige beckers so oh that spot goes for more now than it might have used to yeah that's i completely forget about those duals it always stresses me out when they run them and it's like a coin toss i'm like oh i feel so bad like i know right and that paige beckers buyer doesn't get that yeah that's tough okay but that kinda leads me into my my advice for a team collector that's new to team collecting would be you know to explore breaks as one avenue but i'm not i've never really i think i've entered maybe two breaks in my entire life and both of them were like run by friends i was like supporting them but do you have any advice for new team collectors for people that are looking to collect the wnba team outside of maybe just the the financial aspect of it i mean i'd say just you know education's a big thing w n b cards dot com is a great place to start it's where i started where a lot of people started watching breaks and just not participating is always fun you can like you said you can meet other people especially in the wnba space and you get to know people facebook groups things like that in terms of like direct collecting advice you know i mean it sounds cheesy everybody says it on here but you know collect what you like that's true don't let anybody else tell you what it's worth you know or what what you should and shouldn't buy you know if you're if you're buying it for investment that's one thing but if you're buying it because of the players you like then dive in you know learn about them learn about their history what big cards they have and it can be fun because same thing's happened with me as i started learning more about mercury cards i started learning things about the mercury i didn't know before just little details here and there and and and everything you know so yeah that that's my biggest advice again is you know invite buy what you like you know yeah like what you like that's one great advice i think it's funny that everybody says it and i think it's true i don't think it diminishes the fact is not diminished no matter how many times it gets said on this podcast it still holds true secondly you've provided the perfect segue to our next segment which is a new segment that we're introducing for season five called the personal grail and so i'm asking each collector that comes on here to kind of share a card that represents that fandom that represents collecting what you love and not necessarily just what's worth the most money or what's making the headlines this week so gavin i'm gonna share my screen with the card that you submitted as your personal grail and then maybe you could as i'm pulling it up kinda explain what it is and why you picked this one well this is the alyssa thomas blue platinum one of one from impeccable it's obviously the only year they made impeccable for wnba it's her in a mercury uniform and one of the cool things about it is it's not like historically a big mercury card obviously she doesn't have a ton of mercury history here but i really liked it because the story of how i got it i think does a great job of like highlighting how cool the community especially the wnba community is ben rippon is a big influencer big collector he does a lot of different kinds of sports cards but he's a big supporter of the wnba check out his podcast again it's ben rippon he was i i'd started collecting this this set same thing i think i'd gotten the to eight and so i decided i'm gonna try and get all of these know there wasn't very many of them wasn't a very big rainbow and through a friend i'd heard that this one was gonna be available on a whatnot stream and so when it came up there's few people in the room but a bunch of people knew i was collecting it a bunch of people knew i wasn't there to get it and i'm not great at whatnot so as the auction's going on instead of swiping like i'm supposed to i'm trying to type in a max bid more like you do in ebay and i missed it ben rippon won it but then several people volcano cards and abdu cards like you know what mean but they spoke up in the chat and they both said you know hey this guy's looking to collect all of these and he's he's this he just needs this one to complete the rainbow and ben just said send it to him and so i was like what you know i was blown away of course and i messaged him several times tried to say hey you know can i pay you for this i'd be happy to pay you more than what you paid and and you know anything and just know he's he's he says no just know it's about building the hobby i think he even commented on the post and said you know it's not about the money it's about building your collection helping other people build their collection you know so that to me i thought was just a really really cool story that he like saw that this car was important to someone and he's like yeah just let him have it you know and there's just really i was floored you're not having such a big card for free you know shoot yeah absolutely that's that's really demonstrating the power of community here i think this this community in particular wnba cards feels so tight knit it's like i know that you were looking for this card people know that you're looking for this card and for somebody to step up and and be like hey i know it belongs with you is is really powerful if you could just take a step back for me we talked about the community aspect of this card maybe if you could share with the audience why you like the card so much itself i know i know you said you had the out of eight or out of five and so that kinda drove the idea of a rainbow completion but this card is a standalone card as well being a one of one it's beautiful what do you like about it i've always been a big origins fan unfortunately i didn't make them again this year so that's always been my favorite set we spent way too much time and money ripping the twenty three and twenty four origins and of course when these came out you know the price is just so high it was really really hard to justify getting into any of them i never did but of course you know you're able to find singles out there which is great and alyssa thomas you know is is you know now one of my favorite players and everything and and so her cards are always pretty affordable like we talked about so this kind of is taking a place of origins for me and so this is almost like her first set with the mercury in terms of those kind of cards i like you know obviously there's dawn rest first but so and i mean just the run they went on last season you know it was unexpected a lot of people writing us off to not make the playoffs beginning of the year they just got these big three and who else and we beat you know new york and one other team can't remember on the way to them but of course then you know ended up you know not working out everything like that and i just you know liz thomas is one of those players too that have always been such a big fan and when she got traded to mercury it was huge huge huge for us you know she she plays in a way that you know a lot of players don't she's got that grit she's got that fire she she can almost will her team you know to victory and and so yeah you know to me she's still last year's mvp but you know i think there's an argument to be made i i completely i i i wouldn't say that personally but i am not going to i think it's a valid politically it wasn't asia yeah exactly exactly hard to argue with that one too though honestly she is amazing so literally literally no this is an amazing card i i think it's beautiful i i also think there's something to be said this might be reading too far into it i don't know how nerdy we wanna get with it but the mercury being a planet right like that's like the concept here and then the background kind of looking like rock or like you know similar to that origins art feel kind of explosion it's almost giving space it looks like space or like nature something like a galaxy or something kind of turning up kinda like you would see in the origins cards yeah something about that it just works the color works like platinum etching of the impeccable it's just it's a really clean card and and is this card regular thickness you remind me or is this a thicker card no no they're thicker they're thicker like the origins cards yeah i i like the premium yeah that's good yeah it's it's beautiful yeah and then i've got it here but yeah but yeah it's just i mean all these are so great but in particular this one then it's like you know the the the platinum blue being the you know specific parallel it's neat because it it's just in the etching there so it just kinda pops whereas the background is still the purple so it still matches uniform and the and the mercury colors and everything so yeah it's just i mean love it love it i love it thanks so much for submitting that that card i think it's a beautiful one i i would love to have that card of my favorite players so to see it in your collection just it feels right well keep an eye out alright so courtney it's courtney williams right courtney williams god somebody get this guy off my podcast for example spraying that rumor no i'm just kidding no okay so i wanna transition we've talked about your personal fandom we've talked about mercury and how you kind of structure your collection we've talked about one of your favorite cards now i wanna move into community culture and environment so we touched on you know the importance of community and that story with your card but i wanna dig a little bit deeper because you know we started this season with talking about the i don't know importance and i don't know legitimacy that comes with community it is important to build a community around card communities around card segments even if they're more niche you know we we're undoubtedly a smaller community than say the nfl or the mlb or the nba that's without a doubt but we are strong and mighty and i think we all love being a part of this community and part of this podcast is to drive kind of community building so i wanna hear kind of about your experience in card collecting in the community so why don't we start with this question how would you describe kind of the mercury collector community do you know other mercury collectors are you guys you guys coordinating are you guys like talking or or do you feel kinda like in a silo as a mercury collector right now definitely not in a silo there's a few i talk to who aren't local on instagram who collect like you know some other dinosaurs collectors and things like that there's a few alyssa thomas collectors luckily most of them are collecting older stuff so you know bump heads too much but then here locally just going to the games i know two others two of our best friends actually is this couple we met them because by chance i had bought some cards from her on ebay no early on a box of cards and she had some trouble with stuff getting delivered and stuff getting stolen and going missing or whatever so she's like why turns out i live in you i live in phoenix can i just come deliver it and we started talking she's like oh i'm a phoenix mercury sticking holder too blah blah blah so she came over now like we're best friends with her her and her wife are like best friends with me and my wife and so it's she's a bomb sports cards b o m sports cards everybody check her out but so yeah so yeah just good friends there we collect a lot we're always you know going back and forth about where we find stuff you know if you can find things in the stores you know you want me to pick some up for you you know and things like that and then we send each other cards on ebay and things like that and then there's also another one with volcano cards who i know from going to the games as well and she does some collecting everything and actually last year she was collecting fortunately a lot of satu sabli so that worked out you know because i was the less thomas she's more satu sabli now of course know of course val said satu went to new york but so yeah you know it's not it's not a huge community again we're not the fever you know we don't have we're not we're not the ace we don't have the the superstars and everything like that we're not the team that's talked about a lot our our players aren't the ones that are super collected either just across the board we don't have any of the big name rookies of the last few years so yeah you know it it makes it feel a little more like boutique i guess yeah and and then it does feel a little bit closer because as you meet somebody it's kinda like oh yeah you know and like again it's i like for instance if i see a cool card of a you know a a bigger name player i instantly think of like three or four or five people i'm like oh who should i send this to and try and send it to all of them and remember them but you feel like with the mercury card you it's like one or two people you know so so yeah that's that's been you know that's probably the biggest thing i'd say about that compared to like what i've seen from other fan base yeah collectors that makes that makes a lot of sense it sounds like the tent has some more room in it than is what i'm hearing from mercury yeah absolutely especially in the modern of course there's lot of people out there who love diana terrazzi you know she was one of the first collectible her and sue were probably the first two collectible players you know and so yeah there's that and everybody knows that history and everything like that but more modern you know certainly smaller yeah smaller group i kinda wanna dive into you mentioned at the top of the episode about how cheryl miller was the person who kind of coined the x factor idea this idea of phoenix being almost embedded into the fandom into the stands of the arena and i wanna hear from you because you live in phoenix you go to the games what do you think the role of the city of phoenix plays in mercury fandom i know some teams feel this really strong connection with their city or state or you know area that they're repping what is what is that like for the mercury well it's an interesting thing here in phoenix because there's so many people that have moved here from other places and they bring their family with them you know i swear we've gotta lead the country in just like sports bars that are dedicated to different teams across the country you know yeah i met my wife i was managing a pittsburgh steelers sports bar you know in phoenix arizona so and and so but when you go to the games and you start meeting fans of these teams and the really hardcore fans know there is something special to them about being from here you know and so when you meet people like that it does definitely like you know it feels more ingrained in those fans you know and then with with the w in particular because it is such a smaller fan base typically it was you know it's growing so much now but there was a special sense of like you know this is something it's a special place you know and they do a lot in terms of like you know integrating some of the latin culture and things like that into like some of the uniforms and stuff they've done damn man the suns do a pretty good job of that so yeah you know those are those are a lot of things i think really kind of you know make the mercury feel more like a a phoenix only sort of event you know that makes sense this is not on the question sheet but i love talking about jerseys and uniforms and the mercury switched up their jersey right their kits this year do you have a team on rebranding yeah do you do you like it do you do you not like it it's it's growing on me i'll admit when it first like they announced it i was really excited and i was kinda underwhelmed when i saw like just the new envelope and everything like that i do like the new rebel jerseys the black ones i like those a lot and then i do like that everything's sort of a nod to the previous yeah jerseys as well like the new purple jerseys are and the white jerseys look like the ones from like you know the two thousand ten to fifteen year i believe and then of course they brought these back this is actually not one of the new throwbacks this is an older original one that i've had but i do have several of the new throwbacks as well the new watermelon colorway so when they brought those up that was really cool i know the fans were excited there's a lot of mixed emotions about that rebranding at first i know a lot of people hated it i was not in the hate it camp but i was i was underwhelmed i guess i was hoping it'd be bigger and more exciting than it was yeah i thought the mercury i i'm going off tangent here but like i thought the mercury had a really good style going on like especially those black jerseys that said phx on the front and they kinda had the like gradient on the sides for some reason those ones always hit for me so then when i saw the announcement of the new logo i was definitely in the underwhelmed camp but when i'm watching them on the court one i think at can make any jersey look good like personally like just like her build makes it look good mhmm but like i i definitely feel like they've grown on me i i like them and i'm i'm not like upset i'm not like oh go back like bring me back like i think they look pretty good i think they look good yeah and then they did bring back the new one with the gradient of course the sunset gradient's always huge the suns did it a few years ago with the valley jerseys for the first time and it was just like such a hit that was the year they made their championship run last championship run but anyway so yeah that that that sunset speaking back to like you know uniquely phoenix things including that you know it's arizona sunsets are the best and then we all love them and over the desert everything like that you know it does some crazy things up there so yeah that's that's another thing you know definitely factors in there i like that alright let's kinda pivot switch gears here i have a question here about rivalries which is something i'm very curious about because i feel like in wnba there's some very clear rivalries but also there's not it's not like bears versus packers in in the nfl which like everybody knows they're like these kind of like distinct and i think it's because you know the wnba has only been around for thirty years so you don't have that like really long hatred and and a lot of teams have come and gone or switched or relocated so you don't have that super long legacy but could you speak on what the mercury's feelings are in terms of rivalries do you have a clear number one well i mean clear number one most obvious one comes to mind is we're kind of rival sports wise la beat la everything's beat la back when we had a hockey team it was beat the kings and you know so on and so forth the rams now and and so so yeah that's always a big big part of it there's not as much of a history there between these two teams so you know more recently anyway so it's personally i can tell you there's a few i have but you know please like obviously the aces you know is a big one everybody to everybody team and love so many of those players and love their coach and and everything like that yeah you know that was that was tough to get swept and i won't lie minnesota a little bit you know that was a hard fought series you felt like there was a lot of bad blood after it you know even though we won you still felt like you know and then cher obviously you know had her famous crash or everything like that you know it was just like you almost feel like there's a little like they've got a chip on their shoulder when they come here too you know and so it kinda makes you feel like you got the same sort of chip you know yeah i i for some reason i don't know if this is just me i i guess people can tell me if i'm going crazy or not but i put like the links in the mercury fans like we have a great respect for each other like i respect the hell out of mercury fans because you've got a lot of history you got a lot of good things going you've had some tough times you've got some of the goats that are undisputed like bg dt like undisputed and then you have somebody like at who's constantly disrespected like constantly both on the court and off court just like constantly underrated and when we play each other i feel like that same kind of i don't know feeling those themes also apply to the links like we also have those goats like maya right or like simone like these all time goats we have really good times and then we have some times that aren't so good and now we have a player like phi who's constantly underrated right like it feels like we kinda have a similar base but one of us is stuck in the cold up north and the other one is in the southwest enjoying the desert so i just wanna make a comment on on that well at least in the summertime when the league is when the that you guys have the much more preferable weather so yeah while the while the games are being played yeah alright let's let's move to this next segment the next segment is focused all about players eras and the team history of the mercury so the first question that i wanna ask you is which mercury players do you feel the most connected to and strongest towards know you've talked about dt and at so i won't make you repeat yourself over and over about why you like them but is there any other names that kinda i don't know stick out that you're like damn i feel like like i'm a fan like a true fan of these players beyond those two brittany griner is a huge one when she was here she was always so so nice to my kids and everyone and my youngest son still her favorite player every keyboard every time they came to town last year he wears atlanta brittany griner jersey this year he's got a connecticut one next year we'll get him a houston one i'm sure so and then you know obviously everything she went through you know we her book and stuff like that that was a really inspiring story and just her as a person you know i mean just just her her story in general outside of her entertainment in russia and everything like that it's like she's just such an inspiration and such an amazing player and overcome so much and so yeah i'd say she's the next one outside of those three you know that that would say i'm a huge huge fan of i feel a lot of connection with dewanup bonner obviously daisy connection helps but of course she played here originally you know and so it's so cool seeing her come home and you know she's only here a brief time but man tasha cloud she can grab a fan base she still gets a standing ovation she then she came to zero chicago you know the place went nuts for her so so yeah those are the ones some earlier ones i guess michelle tims is always cool she's kinda seems like moxie right that's that's like first one of the first global players right was was michelle tims just like yeah when i look back at cards from her era she like fits the aesthetic the most i feel like out of everybody it's so like nineties heart throb to me like when i see with her i'm like it's it she should be in like a boy band or something like that's yeah right look like i have one those like videos where she's got like her suit jacket and the sleeves are rolled up you know take on me we're clipping that we're clipping that alright do yeah she's yeah she's fantastic again similar like cheryl miller she's one of those ones that like had she set that tone for us early on that swagger you know her and obviously rachel gill or excuse me jennifer gillen being two of our first two of our first players first two players that were allocated to mercury and then bridget pettis of course is cool the work she's done and everything especially outside of that she's amazing so yeah that's a good list that's a good list okay now i'm gonna ask you to do something really hard which is to pick who you think deserves to be on the phoenix mercury mount rushmore the top four players of all time alright well this one was hard and i know there's gonna be a lot of people left off this list so i am going to squeeze in some honorable mentions setting the stage you're setting the precedent for everyone else going forward this season you can bring in honorable mentions diana terasi brittany griner michelle tims like i said first player ever and then cheryl miller mhmm and i think built that swagger that dice too especially built that identity like i said jennifer gillum bridget pettis paul westhead you'd mentioned earlier the coach that kind of really she'll start at the fast paced offense but paul really affected with the seven seconds or less thing of course penny taylor kappy pondexter huge one kappy devart does not get enough credit for how good she was and does not get enough respect you know like many players we talked about and you talked about so so yeah those would be my four though dt bg michelle tims and cheryl miller yeah we can get that that mount rushmore block started that's a good looking four i think that's a good four i i think i agree usually i like try to like rebuttal by saying what about this person i think you got it right the honorable mentions are really good and if at brings home a championship i think she could sneak in there i think she could yeah other than yeah you know she's got she's got a long way to she's only been to the team a year so i kinda really didn't consider her at this point but you know yeah hopefully yeah yeah you're like please please yeah yeah here's the reason so one of the things that you talked about in that this kind of line of questioning that i'm doing through you is about this kind of like not getting enough credit kind of being disrespected or being underappreciated and one of the terms that we talk about on the wnba card podcast something that brett and i i think it just came up one episode was something called the disrespect index which is our attempt to not mathematically calculate but maybe at some point we could create some sort of actual index but to kind of like understand these players that are really talented and perform quite impressively on the court but don't have that translate to their card market financially obviously some people you know you know i'm talking just pure numbers here of just like dollar amounts on cards i want you to pick if you can one player on the mercury who can be from any era that you would rank as kinda like the number one player in the disrespect index meaning their cards should be worth million times more than what they are i can go back through that exact same list i just gave you and basically replay those names in the same way honestly even diana trazia i mean you do see she's obviously the player commands the highest prices but i mean considering who she is you know compare prices to a michael jordan lebron james you know you can definitely make an argument there that you know she's not getting the the hobby love she deserves but the one i would say right now and going back to what we talked about with the fandom is alyssa thomas i agree i think what she's already achieved in this league she's you know every year she's top two or three for mvp just can't quite make it because she can't shoot threes so you know it's like always gonna always gonna hurt her you know one of the best defensive players you've ever seen leads the lead in triple doubles and everything like that so yeah you know she's she's the one i would say that if you look at the prices of her cards these days and it's a benefit to me so maybe i shouldn't be saying this mhmm but you know it's it's criminally low i think compared to some of her peers you know even but you know we talked about yunfi in in asia where both of their cards are still low comparatively but you know i think some of that of course is you know what you would call marketability you know she's a masculine presenting gay black woman so yeah they're always gonna take a hit you know and and and so that has a lot to do with it but i would say i think first one that jumps to mind definitely is alyssa thomas yeah i agree completely i think at was the player that brett and i used as like the biz biggest example when we first came up with this this kind of like term and i i remember that yeah yeah i just think like it doesn't make sense like you were saying her ability to constantly be in top top three if not i mean five if not top three every year like we're not just saying like the past couple of years like she is constantly performing at the highest level across league no matter what team she's on no matter who's on the team who's coaching the team she is so good and she just doesn't get the the hobby love and i don't know like you said i there's obviously like socioeconomic factors here of just like identity politics and those things which you know we could have an entire episode about that completely agree with you but also when you're ready for that one yeah i think there's also a component like you said about style of play which goes into mvp talks and also goes into card prices where at is not she's not she's not shooting a three like if you look at i think she's not dropping fifty on you ever you know no but she's dropping like she when i think about at there is no player that i get more frustrated watching my team go up against she she pesters the hell out of everybody it doesn't matter if you're a guard a big she will face up to you and it's not gonna be fun it's not gonna be fun she's she's yeah she just doesn't get the respect she deserves and i i would expect like especially if she elevates the mercury again like we see two years in a row of like a deep deep playoff push like at some point i i just don't think it makes sense for her prices to sustain this low that at some point i think like we have to show some respect to h two i mean i would i would love to agree with you but i you know we've seen historically when she was in connecticut she was doing this you know and it hasn't moved the needle and we're a bigger market of course so maybe it'll help and obviously there's much more eyeballs on the sport now and more people in the market or in the in the hobby but you know it's one of those things unfortunately i mean there's like we said there's everybody can have a list of players from every team that is this way unfortunately so yeah yeah well i agree with you i i think that's a good pick for the disrespect index okay i wanna ask you about a couple more questions on players' era team history and then we can go into our last segment but this one is what championship run or defining moment kinda sticks out to you the most is it last year or did like the i don't know flagship kind of moment happen for you earlier than that well last year was really really special will and matt especially being with my kids we watched this whole team we were there for every game we went to all the finals games luckily there weren't that many of them to go to but yeah so you know that was that was really special obviously that one's always gonna stick out to us and then again where we came from to start that season where even mercury fans didn't have super helps and everything like that so for them to turn around like that and do what they did was you know awesome yeah another one before that was another year's unlikely was it at least twenty twenty one when they played chicago and lost and yeah yeah right after the bubble season global season but but yeah that was another kind of unlikely run we didn't expect to go on it was kind of you know close to the twilight of dt's career everything like that and then we were at one of the finals games here and got to see brittney griner's duck so that one always sticks out as well me and my wife were there for brittney griner's finals dunk that was pretty cool that is epic like actually epic like i'm right those moments yeah unfortunately tia nurse got hurt in that series and was not able to guard and clea copper just carved up sophie cunningham and there's the famous standing over staring down photo you know and then so yeah you know that was before she was here obviously and she was finals mvp then so yep with chicago but yeah so that was that was a that was was a cool moment and a cool series to see even though it didn't turn out the way we wanted yeah i think like that'll be interesting when i ask this question to other teams the like dunking aspect i think that is a real thing you know like yeah i had a collector two collectors on last season from the rookies corner christian sam who are collecting like dunking wnba cards and i had never heard about that before and that kinda reminds me i just i just think when we think about moments and times outside of deep playoff pushes or championship runs you know dunks are a big deal still in the wnba they don't happen often especially a player who like kind of you know legitimized dunking in wnba was bg like she made it really like comparable you know to yeah real counterparts where people are like that's a quote unquote i don't agree with this like i think all dunks are real dunks but like that's a real dunk coming in the wnba to see that firsthand i don't think i'd ever forget that if i saw that so that's a cool moment yeah then she did it right in front of us in unrivaled which was pretty exciting but yeah so and i think it's especially kinda going that i remember listening to that episode with the roof's corner and that was a neat thing too because there's always you know the hitters it's always one of the things they bring about lowering the hoops and they can't dunk all these things so then when you see them do it you know it kind of like it's like the middle finger to the bad guys you know basically it's kinda like cool you know like here we are there this is what you needed to see you know so yeah one to say you know so yeah one hundred percent and of course i mean accounts are cool like who doesn't wanna pull up objectively cool yeah yeah one hundred okay before we pivot to our last segment which is gonna be all about like the market perspective i have one final hard hitting question for you on team history and if you don't mind if you'll indulge us this question is if you had to pick a few cards one you can pick one two three like around that amount that define the mercury history like the franchise historically through cards which cards would you pick and why i went back and forth on this a lot kind of just like picking moments because it's like the card from two thousand ten where gucci's holding both the trophies and she's mvp and everything like that and so that was one that came to mind a lot of stuff like that but i ended up going basically with three rookie cards you know cheap way out but just a combination of like how these players define their eras and how they define i think the card market overall in a way and of course just how rookie cards are you know always sort of the the most sought after grail so i'll start with michelle tims that's that that's that card i was talking about yeah yep exactly yep from the nineteen ninety seven it's the court collection so it's more like the gold foil on and everything like that there's also executive collection as well which is a little more shorter print and then next one no surprise anyone's dennis rossi rookie nice copy i do not have a medallion maybe someday gold or platinum but that one's really cool there's also another one with a with a player one patch in it so but this one of course is iconic i've got a t shirt with that card on it and everything and then the last one of course is britney grinders yeah so yeah that's again the next sort of superstar that came out of wnba that was i think you know for the time known more outside wnba than most other players were and same with darasi and everything like that so in that sense i think they obviously defined the mercury's timelines and also the card timeline for the mercury as well yeah for sure do you remember what year is that bg ricky is it eleven or is it twenty twenty thirteen thirteen okay yeah i remember that card like i remember seeing that as a kid because i was trying to time how old i was when that card came out i was twelve when that card came out and i think about that and i think like you know when we talk about i'm going off topic again here but like when we think about what this new generation of card collectors are gonna see as being like iconic versus what people who grew up in the nineties or even yeah beforehand when i think about being twelve years old and seeing in particular the bg si for kids card like one in part like opening it up at my house and like being like oh she's she's the real deal like this is a super she's in the news she's on magazine covers she's in sports illustrated for kids you know that card well it's not the sports illustrated one but her her true rookie is what you just held up that card i think deserves a spot on kind of this like permanent history of mercury collecting so great choice there i like the other two as well and i think in card collecting in general too know she again like you said she was one those characters that was like sort of bigger than the sport you know you think she she could grow the fandom a little bit she'd grow a fan base with dominance in college and everything like that you know i think kim mokie's still riding that train you know it's just like so so yeah i feel like that's you know yeah she's she's she's bigger a of people give her credit for of course you know she's she's she's a polarizing character unfortunately not for her for anything she's done but yep but yeah i think that all those things definitely you know added to her importance to cards and to the mercury of course absolutely alright let's move to her pretty good she's pretty good and she's pretty good she's like kinda good yeah i hope for the championship twenty fourteen so yeah yeah okay let's move to the final segment which is all about hobby and market perspective i'm excited about this question i drafted this one this question is all about kind of how you feel relative to other wnba teams and so how do you view the mercury's place in the current wnba hobby right does being a mercury fan right now feel like you're at the top of the food chain everybody wants to be you everybody's competing in breaks you know this is like really high highly set offer or at the bottom of the food chain you feel like people are overlooking you nobody's really competing with you that kind of thing or are somewhere in the middle where would you rank mercury i'd say overall especially now with these later sets you're not seeing as many the dt cards coming out those are the ones i feel like are always the ones that are really chased by a lot of people like especially in kaboom and the downtown and things like that so overall we're we're pretty low on the food chain our the spot is never expensive you know and one of the frustrating things about it is i'm gonna don't get a lot of breaks i bought a lot of singles and stuff when i am looking for them you do feel like there's a lot of people out there who probably open a pack and see an elisa thomas to forty nine don't think it's worth any money because they've never really looked into it it's not worth a ton of money and they might not take the time to list it they might just donate it or god forbid throw it away uh-huh so sometimes their stuff can be trickier to track down but yeah i'd say you know again they're they're not one of the more collected teams like we just talked about and you know in some ways it's good but then also like i said you know it's every caitlin clark whatever will be appear on ebay somewhere yeah so if you're trying to collect her stuff you're gonna see it you're gonna find it people are looking to move it and these marquee players especially you know not just at but even outside at and clear copper and then i don't wanna bond or anybody like that you know it's like some people never heard of them you know and then of course the rookies we have now like try asking people when monico cole mcconney you know who so but again i mean you can have you can get the whole team in a player break for like fifty dollars or something yeah yeah so it's it's not the worst i think i'd i'd say this you know to to cling to my analogy i made about food chain the bottom of the food chain needs to exist as well right that's that's an important component to how that whole thing works and i think that when we talk about the disrespect index for players i think the mercury are one of those teams right now that's under once again just being i don't know underestimated both for playoff push and also in the card hobby i just think it's one of those teams that flies under the radar and then you open it up and you're like damn this is a real this is a squad and this is like a fan base like a true fan base with dedicated collectors so while you're at the bottom of the like more towards the bottom half i would say i wouldn't personally put the mercury in the bottom three at all like that's not where i would put them i just put them at the middle to right right around the middle yeah i mean the dt collectability too always plays such a big factor you know and so that's that always sort of you know like amplifies our team a little more in terms of the you know collecting no matter what era it is you know people always like oh you know mercury oh dinosaursie cards you know so yeah it's like thinking about not to make the cheap comparison but thinking about the fever pre caitlin clark it's like that food chain they're very different in the food chain there compared to now it's like dt versus no dt it does change it up your ranking okay gives them a little legitimacy that maybe you wouldn't see other teams yeah exactly okay the next question that i wanna ask you about is kind of the growth we just talked about this you know we have new players new rookie classes social media just kinda like also the card market in general exploding we see that in card ladder data how do you think the growth of modern wnba card collecting has impacted you know mercury collecting we talked about affordability being an aspect but do you think anything else has has really impacted that at all well there's obviously so much more now there's so many more choices yep you know and so things like that you know and just just more to chase more to go after more of the players are being included you know every year you know we're still on the teams it's like there's a lot of you know players that we know that they didn't have cards of in don russ and things like that that played big parts on our team last season and so that that is definitely the thing i've seen i guess the most change you know it's just just and i think everyone's seen that across the board just there's so much more and it makes you sort of like take a step back you know it was a while i was just like get buy it now and every cool list of thomas card you saw and now all of a sudden it's like you'd say search has got dozens of hits you know like well do i need a you know pink came out of one seventy five you know it's only nine nine cents so maybe i don't know you know yeah so so yeah that'd be the biggest thing for me i'd say is it just that you know that volume has has changed and for me personally it's it's forced me to be a little more specific about what i'm looking for what my tastes are i think it's always interesting to ask team collectors about how the market affects their strategy just because it team collecting feels black and white if you're not like completely in the card collecting game it feels easy it feels like collect every card of this team right yeah but like you said with market factors with changing teams with all these different components that we talked about throughout today's episode those things get a lot more complicated so gavin thank you for sharing kind of your collection your history with the mercury i'm i'm like hoping the mercury do well for you like i i your fandom makes me want the mercury to do well which pains me to say like i said i'll i'll take that back when we get to the playoffs but for now to say now your superstar is still out and you guys look amazing and you have one of the big exciting rookies yeah we'll see we'll see but no i'm i would just we a long way to go right now we've had certainly had a rocky start but you know we'll see melissa thomas would trust so it's it's a long season and at has been there and done that so you're in safe hands gavin before we kinda round the episode out on today's episode i just wanna give you space to say anything if we didn't talk about anything any last words of wisdom for folks or if you wanna plug your socials how people can find you feel free to do that oh i'm i'm on instagram at card collector c o l e c t h e r it's not the o r so collect her and then yeah that's pretty much it i'm not like not doing business or anything like that i basically set it up so i could share cards and the other people in my life wouldn't know about my huge card nerdiness so it's nice to have an algorithm that's basically just like women's sports and cards you know and get away from the other algorithms sometimes yeah so yeah that's that's that and then yeah thank you so much for having me this has been so much fun i really appreciate it yeah for sure and before i let you go we're gonna round out every episode with one final question which is if someone is listening to the podcast and they haven't decided on a wnba fandom for whatever reason that may be maybe they're new maybe they're sick of their team you know if you're a liberty fan listening out there right now maybe this is for you no i'm just kidding i'm just always shitting in liberty but if somebody out there is looking for a reason to cheer for the phoenix mercury could you kinda give us a short elevator pitch from your perspective well you know we're historically one of the winningest franchises we've been in the playoffs about twenty two times out of thirty seasons now and we'll i could be a little bit wrong on that but but yeah so we're always a relevant franchise we've never just won this franchise it's just historically bad every year i talked about we have the best fan base the x factor is amazing they're welcoming they're excited they're passionate and the team has such swagger we've got such a long history of some of the greatest players the greatest player in the wnba and and some of the other ones as well and and you know with with connections to other people like cheryl miller and stuff like that who obviously is a huge game in basketball we never got to see play unfortunately in the w but but yeah so i'd say those are six finals appearances to go along with it three finals wins you know if you become a rookie fan you probably won't have to wait too many years to see us in the finals we'll leave it there gavin thank you so much again for joining and for our listeners i will see you next week hey thank you take care galen