welcome back loyal listeners the stacking slabs podcast network to season six episode three of the wmj card podcast my name is caitlin i go by at cold lunch cards and i'm joined by my cohost mark who goes by at m j s underscore sports cards and folks today it is the halloween special so i've come dressed as the greatest basketball player on the planet asia wilson in her iconic white t shirt with the pink wig and mark is obviously my coach becky hammond dressed like he has a game at seven and somehow a quarterly earnings call at nine this this matchup of a blazer hoodie is truly traumatizing so i'm excited about this we've got some spooky wnba card takes for halloween we're gonna talk about tricks and treats and it's just gonna be a fun episode overall hopefully you guys are all in the halloween spirit because i know that i am but and as always we are collector driven we're producing community focused content and occasionally we're dressed as people that make much more money than us like today as a reminder you can find us on instagram at wnba card pod but i guess before we get into this mark how are you doing and and more importantly do you see any comparisons between yourself and becky today no that's that that's that mark how are you feeling on this halloween special episode i'm excited for this episode you know this is this episode is going to be a a boost after the heartbreak of yesterday yes as a atlanta dream fan i i can see your pain i feel it we're gonna get into our reactions to the finals today we're gonna do some you know halloween themed prompts and discussion points we're gonna rip it open some packs and all sorts of stuff but before we get into that i do have to ask you some questions about your fashion choices do you think that you or becky are wearing the blazie blazer hoodie combo better it's gotta be becky i don't know if i would rock the hoodie blazer like her i feel like my range of motion is heavily impacted i do not know how i could walk up and down a sideline with this on right now i think you have to get a blazer that accounts for the hoodie which i did not do but yeah i think there's this revolutionary concept that becky should explore of the built in hoodie into the blazer that fashion monstrosity could be a really good choice for her but i just thought that this was the perfect costume for our halloween episode but can i kinda get your statement official statement on your thought on the hoodie blazer's place in women's basketball history i think it's obviously made itself popularized but what are your thoughts as you're not supporting it today so we have inserts like drip sublime tunnel vision and not a single hoodie blazer i call foul that is pretty pretty bad that is an oversight you're talking about like just like dropping the ball panini like we need to get on this this is not that difficult and i guess my final question before we get into today's actual episode is mark our listeners can listeners expect that you're gonna be in character or have the same level of intensity as becky hammond throughout today's episode or are you gonna beat mark i don't know we'll take things one possession at a time one quarter at a time and jackie young is my favorite oh oh okay i see how it is i see how it is well yes welcome to the halloween episode folks we're gonna start it off with our tip-off question of what's been on your mind lately as we're kinda doing this i'm curious to hear your thoughts on the playoffs as well but what's been on your mind in the collecting world mark yeah this has actually been a week where i've had to make some really hard decisions for the pc and and those are tough weeks sometimes exciting but sometimes really excruciating in some ways a few things that i was really excited to have a chance to get have come available in the last couple weeks and and that's caused me to overextend my budget a little bit and it's also happening at a time where i'm in the thralls of being excited of having your team in the finals and doing some finals related impulse buying and so there's gonna need to be a little bit of a sell off to take care of some of these expenses and it's tough selling's not my favorite thing but it it's a really necessary part of the hobby for me and for me a lot of this week has been weighing the annoyance of selling and negotiating over selling cards on my own and or running the risk of getting destroyed on an auction or or something like that so that's been what's on my mind this week what about you well first of all i just have to say we've all been there and we all get through it i feel like it's an emotional roller coaster when you have some sort of just like impending purchase or like something pops up and you're just like wow decisions need to be made and it becomes such a long series of choices that it kinda like takes over our collecting world and you just get into this in between stage and i've been there before so i hope that it gets better for you mark i hope that the selling goes well i know some of the cards that you had uplooked that you were parting ways with are really nice cards so it'll be difficult yeah we have some fun things coming in and i'm trying to keep my eyes on that and keep like remember why i'm doing that but now comes a little bit of the dirty work to to to make sure that happens within budget hell yeah well good luck mark keep us updated as those things continue to move forward what's been on my my mind this week has been joy i feel like last week's episode where we talked about cheap cards and the role that they play in our card ecosystem it really was a catalyst for some internal thinking around my collection and so i was listening to somebody his name is teeapot i'm sure people that are in like the content space and listen to a lot of card content know teeapot but he was talking about this concept of a collector progression model where basically it's like a collector life cycle one that a collector often goes through and it starts with nostalgia it moves to what's new then it goes to what's good then we move to consolidation where we move away from those questions then maybe we look back in time towards vintage or a previous time and then we do another consolidation and i find myself right now returning to kind of that first or second stage of discovery of i'm kind of getting confused about where my attention should be these days and i think that i'm just following the joy and the joy for me lately has been in cheaper cards or cards that aren't necessarily making headlines or cards that just have good photos or remind me of something or even the joy of doing a trade with a friend i did a trade this week where i just texted friend of the pod griff at rocky's cardboard and i said hey i have this card and i just wanna do a friendly trade this is the value are you interested and then he sent me a bunch of pictures we got a trade done and it just felt like a real hobby interaction with none of the like strings attached of like negotiation or like consignment or doing all of those steps it was just let's have a little fun and trade some cards so i've kind of been reverting back to the discovery phase and the joy phase that many would say is kinda like where you start and obviously i'm not in the start of my journey of collecting but i feel like right now i just keep bouncing back to it if that makes sense that's super cool can i ask you a little bit about the mechanics of like trading with a friend through text yeah yeah yeah so basically i had a card and it was a bigger card and i was like okay rocky always has really really good inventory i'm sure he has some things that maybe he's into nicely or things that have been sitting on his desk for too long and just basically gave him you know if beggars can be choosers i'd like women's basketball i'd like these players so on and so forth and when you have a good dealer like a good vendor they're gonna have their values it's not like you're gonna have to like pry how much the card is worth out of them do you know what i mean and so it was basically just like four images of cards laid out on a desk with prices on them and i just added them up until they hit the value of the card that i got or the card that i was trading and we shipped them out and they arrived on the same day and that was the trade it wasn't there wasn't any like complications it was it's very smooth that's awesome and like i guess that that does speak to the advantage of of of making a deal with someone that's a dealer someone that you know moves a lot of cards pretty frequently right like if you can kind of get have a baseline understanding of the values it it it smooths things out a a a great deal that's super cool yeah i was stoked just to share the cards that i got in case anybody's wondering i'll hold them up but i'll also say them i got the lauren jackson flir ultra rookie card in my opinion one of the most iconic photos and cards in women's basketball cards with like the jcpenney looking photo shoot holding it up with the leather jacket like just very two thousand one very wide two thousand such an awesome card i need to get that card or that jacket at at some point in my life yes mark yes you can wear a hoodie under that that'll look good and then i also got a kmac tie dye select just a classic just a nice links card this one i was excited about this is bowman yu chrome rekia jackson orange refractor auto out of twenty five color match soon rekia yeah for real buying low on rekia right now just really into what she brings to the table for a team and just everything about her i've loved her since tennessee so i was excited about that and then i picked up this one mark i thought you would like this one i know it's not the right uniform but we've got an angel reese prism white ice out of thirty five the true ricky and i was super excited about this i think the color match with the sky uniform angel just pulling up it's just a a nice looking card that's a great looking card i like that the the what is it white ice is that white ice yeah i don't know i kinda like that it's like very wintery to me it it works and then this is my final one i got a juju watkins greatness awaits gold auto out of fifty and i just think juju you can't go wrong with juju right now i'm i can't wait to see her back soon fantastic yeah i can't wait to start watching her and seeing how how she does with jazzy davidson and the the rest of the usc crew yeah i think the big ten is gonna be really competitive and with usc bringing back juju it's just gonna be so fun so anyways yeah that's kinda what's been on my mind is having fun buying cards that i like of players that i like it's almost like the formula is not that difficult in collecting it doesn't have to be that difficult all the time it can just be buy something cool or do a trade with a friend or something like that so yeah that's what's been my on my mind mark i do have to bring up a touchy subject right now though which is the finals what since since we last recorded we only had covered game one so since then what has happened with your atlanta dream well it has been quite a roller coaster right i think we we recorded right after game one game two and game three were fantastic we were we've felt like i was on top of the world really like the dream looked really strong they were they were dictating the terms of the game angel reese was dictating the terms of the game you know things looked really great for the dream and then we had game four we're recording here on sunday and so game four was yesterday and game four looked like game one all over again you know the the the valkyries really dictated terms the the whole game and they i i think it was the kind of game that they very much wanted to play and you know i think the story of this final so far has been you know punch counterpunch and punch right like and and we are seeing these teams really adjusting to each other and trying to see what gaps they might find right like the valkyries had a new starting lineup yes yesterday with kyla charles and and tip hayes two players that have been really important with their energy kyla on defense and tip hayes on offense and i think that that led to a pretty strong start for the valkyries that gave them the lead that that they wouldn't give up and for me as as a dream fan i i'm i gotta admit i'm really worried do you know what i mean mark really i'm super worried because we have a rotation that has gone seven deep for like the last several weeks you know and you watch these postgame videos and ryan howard ryan howard is wearing an ice pack that looks as big as my head on her shoulder leash is talking about how she's playing with eight fingers you know and and duana bonner is thirty nine years old you know like this is you know we're like we are you know they have been holding things together it's not over but i'm i'm concerned with with the with the issue of depth okay i think the valkyries are are are shortening their rotation now too but they they're on fresher legs they have two games at home and right now they have the momentum but you know what it's a best of three and we are still alive absolutely i'm just gonna enjoy the ride i'm scared but i'm gonna enjoy the ride it's been a roller coaster it's not been great for my heart but you know we we we keep we keep going and you know i'm whatever happens i'm just so thrilled for this team i i i i'm so proud of this team i'm so i've i've enjoyed this run so much but i am i'm hoping i'm hoping that i'm hoping that they got two more wins in them yeah i think they do mark i'm surprised by this kind of like i i felt good watching i know they dropped game four but i thought atlanta put belt to ass in game three that was like very that put instilled a lot of confidence in me as a viewer to just like dominate and tear down and just remove the life from the valkyries i saw that happen i mean when i saw angel reese go to the sideline and tells kia stokes she gotta get her ass in the game because they can't guard her i said wow i don't know i don't know about that i don't know how you're gonna you know respond to that and they did in game four but i just think atlanta when they're on they're on they're on and it's it's incredibly hard to beat that being said obviously this is the finals it's gonna be competitive i see this going the full seven to your analogy about punching counterpunch it feels like a heavyweight battle that's gonna go all rounds like that is exactly what it feels like to me but i've had such a fun time watching not only angel flourish but some of these players that we've covered throughout the podcast and throughout the season on the valkyries who didn't get the respect they deserve on other teams and i just i don't know i've had a really great time watching this series game two i thought you know in valhalla had incredible energy obviously then moved to atlanta where there seemed to be somehow even better energy like it was just a different flavor and i enjoyed the atmosphere that i could feel through the screen and it felt like i could feel the both the physical and the like the emotional heartbeat of the team run through angel reese and you can hear the announcers talk about it you can hear carl somesco talk about it you can talk the the other team can feel it they're like well when angel's on like you know everybody else gets with the freaking program so yeah game game three made me feel really good about the dream game four it made me a little nervous but i wasn't as nervous as you mark yeah maybe you know this might be just just me trying to to claim a little bit of the underdog the underdog the underdog edge yeah for for the last three games but you know i i do think i do think they're you know the that the valkyries need to make a make these games like game one and game four to win but they're capable of doing that and and they're capable of hitting big shots and and they've shown it right like and it doesn't matter what the point differential is at the end of the series it just matters who wins four games right so we'll we'll we'll see how we'll see how it goes i am i'm already nervous about monday evening i'm i'm also sweating about like what's gonna happen with game six we still don't know where where and when game six is going to happen in atlanta if they're gonna be able to get state farm arena or if it's gonna be back at gateway i think actually gateway is a is is is a really fun place to play but i i i do agree it did seem that there was a lot more energy and at state farm arena when you can get seventeen thousand people in the building so that's gonna be you know these are like a lot of things still up in the air that just make me nervous and yeah you know i'm just a nervous guy i think i get it mark i get it i i just think like i'm curious to hear from your perspective what you think kinda like the key to success is for your dream what do they have to do for you to feel confident in these next couple games well it's going to be angel i think i think they've they've they've settled that that that is it right like we can't have an eight point nine rebound six turnover game and that she is going to be the heart of the offense you know and if if and in addition to that we're going to need someone to come up with like a a really good shooting game ryan and alicia have still not had a good shooting game i'm afraid like you know they both might be a little banged up but you know everybody's banged up at this time in the season and you know hopefully hopefully one of them can go off a little bit but i i i think ultimately it's going to come down to angel what do you think is going to be well let me just say this i saw a stat that said something about how this was the first time that angel recently played in a game more than thirty minutes and she was limited to single stat single digit stats for rebounds and points which to me says that angel is the key to success so i completely agree but my other point is the turnover battle as we all know if you're listening to this podcast you're obviously watching the finals and i think the finals have been a defensive anchored finals it's been lower scoring natalie is telling the reporters to get with the program and understand that it's a defensive minded team and if they hang their hat on the defensive end of the court and it's true every team that has won the turnover battle thus far as of now at the time of recording has won the game so i think that that is the key to success and for the valkyries that means kia stokes continuing to step up as the defensive player of the series i i rewrote down that kia's became the first player in finals history record three plus blocks in four straight games and the most blocks in a final series that's major that's like major major defense happening on the player that you need to stop i just think it's gonna be a battle between those two and then like you said somebody else on either of the teams whether it be gabby or veronica burton or ryan or alicia need to step up to support the anchor the the big on the team it's been an interesting finals it feels unlike what we've seen in past years and i'm really enjoying it i am rooting for the dream so i hope they can put it together but it's just been fun to watch anything else on the finals mark that you wanna get off your chest before we move on no no just nervousness we're we're nervousness i can feel it like raising i know it's like i have this nervous energy built up i'm afraid to like you know and i'm afraid to i'm afraid to say anything that'll be bulletin board material or you know i gotta you know i gotta keep things i gotta keep things on the on the on the level right it's like yeah i i i don't know i know i'm getting like major like aaron rodgers relax vibes right now like everybody needs to relax it's gonna be fine everything will be okay and we'll move forward i think like as a dream fan you just put your trust in their best player in the team put your trust in the team and you'll we'll see what happens it's just been such a fun one but anyways we're gonna do some halloween themed segments folks i i said it was the halloween special mostly as an excuse to wear this pink wig because when i look at myself i this doesn't feel like caitlin to me this is like something different happening right now so that's been mostly excuse but the other excuse is that mark and i came up with a series of kind of just like fun discussion prompts about women's basketball cards and women's basketball in general to talk about halloween but before we do that i do wanna do our sponsored segment by great lakes trading cards i ripped open a couple packs mark while you were talking about your finals and i do have to show them off you did well i pulled myself oh the resemblance it's like uncanny that needs to be the clip that's that needs to be the clip of the episode hold that up there you go like this needs to be we pulled a asia wilson netmarbles diamond parallel which we talked about actually last week this parallel how nice it looks they need to get a pink wig asia in here one hundred percent i also pulled a maureen johannes crunch time oh she's bigger and then we got a couple a couple parallels we got or we got a maddie westfield green laser out of two ninety nine and mark do you know how to say her name i'm terrible at pronunciations jana jana nipkins there we go i'll rip open one other pack see if we hit anything and as always these will be given away on the instagram at wnba card pod we have given away everything that we've pulled and then the base cards are going out to kids for halloween but all the hits go to you guys and i don't know hopefully you guys enjoy them so we're gonna go through this last pack here see if we hit anything another one of gianna oh nice and then we got a kate martin out of two ninety nine fan favorite that that can go in somebody's pc i feel like yeah the people love kate martin and then we'll finish it off here there we go ryan howard net net marvels not bad that's a sign that's a sign mondays is going the dream's way don't listen to the corgi we're that's funny so folks if you wanna follow us at wnba card pod those will be given away all you have to do is like comment or reshare the reel that we put together you should be resharing that wheel with this wig anyways that i bought to do for this podcast so do that and you'll be entered into this week's giveaway but mark why don't we get into our spooky segments let's do it let's kick it off with what we're call we got some fun names for these two i did put some effort into this so the first one is called the spooky card showcase so mark and i went through the catalog of our brand and tried to pick out three of our favorite like halloween looking or halloween inspired wnba cards based on design colors any other elements and so i'll pull up a visual and this will be on the instagram too if you guys aren't on patreon but mark why don't you kick us off with one of them that you picked so my spooky card number one is the twenty twenty five don russ dwanna bonner base card and and for those of us who can't see it and on the screen it has dwanna bonner featured in a indiana fever jersey and as many of us know that run did not last long it did not go well it was it was perhaps spooky for everyone involved and now duana is enjoying herself at at the atlanta dream but this is actually when i thought about cards that i were were scary or spooky in any sort of way this is actually the first card that came to mind really see this explanation is interesting to me because i thought this was put on here because like this is like halloween like house like haunted house to me like walk into the room and it's the wand of honor it's like all white and she's just standing there so i think it it works both ways it's giving kind of slenderman with the way that's they're photoshopped duana bonner into this car yeah okay what was the other one that you picked my second one is the twenty twenty on the right right below the duanebano there is the twenty twenty one prism christie tolliver base card and for those of you that know twenty one twenty one prism that is not christie tolliver on on the base card it is actually i i think it's an australian player named sydney weiss that is featured on the base card so one of those error cards that every now and then you'll see at on on ebay listed error s p question mark question mark one of one and like listed for an absurd amount of money and you know i i i just always think it's a bummer when you know there like there are errors like this and you know someone's card someone's card has a different name on it or a different picture on it and how does that even happen like literally this doesn't look anything like christie tolliver i don't even understand how that would go through production yep and yet here we are with here we are with with the wnba twenty five parallel of it beautiful alright round us off with your third and final and then i can go through mine alright this one would scare me the most imagine getting a hold of a box of two thousand two ultra ripping open a pack and getting what is the two thousand two flir ultra sue bird redemption card right rather than the rookie card and that redemption of course is long expired and unfortunately you can't get the base rookie card from the packs and instead you would have this redemption card although i think they do go for a pretty penny i would just be like i would just be horrified to pull this out of a pack i this is like when you go to trick or treat as a kid and they're giving out like granola bars or something like that that would be like the equivalent i feel like here expired redemptions are the granola bars of trick or treating you heard it here first alright we're trademarking and copywriting that so we have established that okay i like these three mark you took a little bit of a different angle than me i went mostly based on like aesthetics and colors and like halloween halloweeny looking cards so my first one was the twenty twenty six don ross veronica burton my house orange when you combine the orange with the valkyries purple and then the screaming veronica burton saying my house i thought haunted house like this is like boo holla right here so that's why i went with that one i i also think it's a good looking card i think this card only went for like twenty bucks and i was like wow it's a good deal it did you say boohalla is that boohalla yeah oh okay alright there is a person in the bay that has their house transformed into boohalla so you guys should look that up it's like haunted house theme but valkyries so this would be my contribution to that house my second one was twenty twenty five donra sonya citron net marble orange out of twenty five to me this one have you ever seen ray bradbury's book something wicked this way comes the cover of that this looks exactly like that which is like a halloween y feeling book and it just looks like a like a candy bar to me or like packaging for like halloween candy and then she's kind of like in a comic book it's just i don't know to me this one screamed halloween this has such an autumnal halloween y look to it it it's perfect okay good i'm glad i was like looking for so many i i spent way too long doing this and my final one was twenty twenty four origins angel reese black one of one auto and i found myself gravitating towards the origins cards when i was thinking about halloween because they kinda have like the fog machine background the colors are reminiscent of say purple orange green the things that kinda like remind me of halloween and then you add in angel reese and i'm terrified so these were my pick i think together mark this is a pretty spooky six pack i'm scared yeah yeah which is kind of giving me some inspiration for how to collect in the future binder wise i feel like having a seasonal page like okay this is a halloween page or this is a wintery page or this is you know a summary page that could be a fun way that i've never even thought about collecting before that would be super cool i have to say with the angel reese i thought what was scary was the autograph you know her bowman autographs from i think it was twenty twenty three or twenty twenty four they looked great she had a great signature and it's gotten it's it's gotten a lot shorter like it it gives me alicia gray autograph vibes what do you think when an athlete does that do you kind of like do you like it because then the autos the versions of autos are time dated right so you can be like oh this is from the rookie year this is like from earlier they signed it and then it it changed over time and they got more popular so an autograph from earlier with the longer kind of script is worth more or do you get upset that they're kind of like abandoning it i do find it really interesting to track the the change of autographs over an athlete's career and i am particularly interested in the autographs of athletes from early on in their career like elena della don for example like her early autographs looked really nice in the nba giannis's autographs went from like these really these really beautiful intricate signatures to basically just like a a lowercase g and you know it it kinda bums me out a little bit but like sometimes you get like people changing their autographs like lebron has changed his autograph and people might have a preference for the rookie one or the current one it's a nice way to chart like the development of a career what's unfortunate is is it does seem like there's for some athletes there's less and less effort put on those like as as time goes by but you know people get more famous and there's more demands on their time you know i to some extent i get it yeah i get it i think the solution for me the ideal solution as a collector would be to just make them sign less and then they can do their full autographs forever and they're also more rare on this topic i'm thinking about my favorite signatures in the w for me the one that sticks out is neca i think neca has like the best current auto that's available are there any that are popping out to you mark neca's is great but even hers has changed over the years right like and that was great fee used to have a really nice autograph beautiful yeah i don't like now they there seems to be some hold up with a lot of her redemptions for autographs i don't know exactly what is going on there i really like asia wilson's earlier autographs but those have gotten a little bit shorter as well yeah yeah it'll be interesting i'm always curious maybe we can do that another time as guests like the the autograph i think that's always fun to see but yeah this angel reese one was not picked because of the auto but now that you say it i think it gets plus one in the of the haunted spooky category so this was kind of a fun exercise why don't we move to our next one though which is called the collector's haunted house this one i am most scared about mark this one is something that you kinda pitched so why don't you explain to the audience what we're doing for this one so what we're gonna do here is we are going to dress up as a fan of another team in the wnba and we were we're going to kind of plot out how we are going to approach collecting and building a pc of that team do you wanna start us off yeah i'll start us off and let me just say this was like some sort of punishment sent by somebody to do this and i did take it all the way because it's like spooky and haunted so i went with the team that i hate the most with the new york liberty and i tried to remove my bias against the liberty and i thought about this question seriously so that the liberty fans could feel recognized in this kind of like freaky friday episode that we're doing so if i was a liberty fan and i was collecting liberty cards i think the way that i would do it would be different than the way that i collect links cards because the liberty seem to have this long history in cards it's longer and so i would collect the base non insert just like the base standard cards from all the quote unquote flagship products since their first season in the w till today so i think that would start with like pinnacle move to ultra into rittenhouse and then i'd do once we got into the panini era i think i'd do donruss and then prism moving forward from there because i think i see those as being the quote unquote flagship i think it would be just a cool way to showcase the evolution of the team over the years you'd get to represent all the players without having to drop like a ton of money obviously there's some bigger rookie cards in there throughout but it's not necessarily gonna like ruin your wallet but on the more like creative side away from set building which i think is a fun way to team collect i would do like a couple either one packs four packs six packs twelve packs whatever your like unit of measurement is and i would do it of kind of the anchors of the team the team the players that defined the entire franchise so the ones that came to mind for me for the liberty was rebecca lobo i think that would be cool to get her teresa witherspoon becky hammond yourself i mean mark excuse me becky hammond maybe tina charles in there and then obviously i'd put stewie and sabrina and i would only target cards that were in the liberty uniform and try to get high grade rookie cards for them if possible if the if the pack that i was creating was big enough to fit it but the concept of me buying liberty cards like this was very scary so thank you mark for the the scary inspiration here i love this idea of like a a base set run from nineteen ninety seven to the present because because because of the team right because it's the liberty it's it's really a narration of the history of the wnba the history of wnba cards that would look like that would be such a cool binder right like what thirty to thirty five pages of like of different sets and stuff like that and you could kind of talk through each season that's that would be so cool i i agree i think like i shy away from team collecting like or set collecting in my personal collection right now and when i think about bringing it back to what's been on my mind this week when i when i think about set building or like going back to simple joys i think that that's a way to do it is to fill up your ebay cart or find your local dealer or somebody online that has you know tons of base sitting around which people do make a lot and then sit on my floor sort them all out read the backs like go through the whole process and so yeah this was this was a fun way of thinking about collecting i do have to shout out phoenix four cards who's a a brewer fan and he had been texting me during the world series and he was like yeah my my dad's visiting and we're going through my nineteen eighty two to present brewers binder of just every single player that's ever played for the team and i was like oh my god like that's a beautiful way to connect also with like non card fans like this to me having a liberty binder showing the story of the franchise throughout the years would be something you could whip out when you're hosting a watch party or you're watching with friends that don't necessarily collect cards that's yeah that is super true first of all great shout out to great insert of a shout out to the brewers but that would be super cool right like this would be a binder that you know would be like an an affordable binder that you could you could give to anyone at that party and you know even the even the the uncle that is going to like mishandle all of the cards and probably crease the corners of some who cares right like they're they're base cards from their base cards from twenty twenty three prism but we're gonna be okay and they can kinda flip through and you might hear stories of of different people watching games at different times or remembering someone that went to school with one of these players or things like that just a really good really really fun thing to have during like a watch party during like a playoff run i love it yeah thanks mark i'm curious to see what team you picked and then how you kind of approached your collecting strategy of the non atlanta dream yeah so if it if i was picking another team i would be going all in on the young intern it would be i would be picking the washington mystics they are such a fun team they've got a really great history as well a little a little bit at times of a a complicated history but they have a championship that you can kind of look back on but for this generation i would specifically be targeting players like kiki iriyafen and shakira austin and you know i love sonya and georgia and a lot of the other players but a lot of the other players seem to have really strong collector bases already where shakira and kiki like when i look at their cards and like their card sales and i i i see them going for pretty affordable prices still maybe i'd also seek out one of the younger bench rookies right they have a a couple of former players from ucla even an assistant coach at ucla and mikaela onyenweiry angela dugalich and lauren betts would be possibilities but also someone like cassandra prosper i don't know how many cards she has but they have so many young players with a lot of potential and it wouldn't be like an expensive prospecting type of deal it would be like following a very young team and seeing how that young team develops and like the dream right there are some interesting color match parallels right you could go with you could go with the red you could go with cherry blossom right like i do that yeah do do that whole dc thing i think you had mentioned to me a couple weeks back and or a couple of other rare parallels that are not just gold or gold vinyl right so there's like a lot of creative ways i think to approach collecting a team like the mystics yeah i i think it feels like the mystics have a wide net right now or like a a large tent of fans it feels like they're just like anywhere where there's a fan that doesn't feel like they have a quote unquote home in the wnba i feel like they're all trickling to the mystics because they're just so easy to root for and yeah i've seen a lot of people that are picking up cards of players that you mentioned and i think this would be a great way to kind of like approach collecting a team without making things too complicated too rigid it's just about you know young and turn without getting into the hype of prospecting it it would be a fun exercise yeah okay this next segment i'm excited for mark we're calling this one trick or treat and we're gonna go kinda like not rapid fire but quickly through some of the takes that we have and say if they're a trick meaning we're getting bamboozled or a treat if this is something that you're you're into as a card collector so why don't i say one first and then you tell me if you think it's a trick or a treat are you go for it okay my first one is player worn jerseys that's a trick a trick why why some people like player worn jerseys why are you saying trick oh you mean like you mean not not like not not associated but like yeah player worn it's like it's complicated okay that's better that's better than not associated okay find a treat really okay okay i listened i i listened poorly no it's okay mark i i think for me player worn is still a trick i still i think they're still tricking me i i can't get behind you putting on like a dick's uniform that came off the rack for five minutes and you've like you know the photo of the guy that had like two hundred jerseys on at once like that's how i imagine that player wore that's fair that's fair you know i would still much prefer game use but i don't know i mean i guess we i guess we've had like a few instances of that but yeah it's so rare in ultramodern wnba cards i feel like we used to have it in flir and rittenhouse maybe not rittenhouse but at least flir and then now i think the only option for gamewarn is either like a tops now that's ordered directly from like a collegiate like a net or like a a pair of shorts or something or there are sneaker spotlights of i think players like angel reese and enrique ogdenwale where those pieces of the sneaker are worn but it's still not a patch do you know what it's still not a patch yeah the sneaker swatches are like the only ones and they are i think it's a cassette of five players from either the dallas wings or the chicago sky because i think they got the shoes from one specific game and that's all that they have right like the the angel reese one the they look fantastic they look great yeah also like that's about all that that that that's all we get yeah rittenhouse did have some clear ultra did have some you know and this is a place where you know some of the some of the unlicensed or even college college products can be really interesting because you can get game worn stuff from from leaf from some college from some college players as well as bowman university nice yeah the oh yeah not bowman university maybe bowman university but like mcdonald's right like the mcdonald's all american game yeah you can get some of their patches yeah you can okay that's a good shout okay that was the first one we kind of took that a trick and a treat i suppose depending on how you look at it what do you think about buying a card without looking at comps is that a trick or a treat to me for me to buy a card without looking at comps it would have to be a treat it might it would have to be something that i either know so well that i don't need to see the comp or i don't care about the comp or it's just like the this is it's not a like it's not an immediate financial decision so i would say treat okay i'm gonna say treat too and i'm gonna add another layer which is i love buying from friends where i trust them and i know i don't have to and it just feels so respectful like that's such a such a treat to me when i can like do a deal with somebody and be like yeah i'm not gonna haggle with you let's just do the deal and sometimes there's a place for haggling i love to negotiate but sometimes it just feels good to not check comps not let the that get to me and just buy a card because i wanna buy it so i'm gonna go with treat i love it do you have one for me mark a trick or a treat i don't think i did this game right i think i like i i think i have only picked things that i think are tricks okay let's hear it so i got one two hundred card prism base set but not a single card of isabelle borley's i got another one the get to know you redemptions which look really cool but are redemptions and now there's some confusion over whether they're numbered or not when they're getting redeemed like you know you took this thing that was looked really cool and you kinda messed it up and so you know i think i'm just salty like only tricks only tricks okay well i've got a couple more for you what do you think about selling cards that were previously in your forever pc at at one point you thought you would have them till you died and then you one day sell them is that a trick or a treat selling cards in the forever pc ultimately i think it's probably a treat yes i agree because if you're doing it you're doing it for a really good reason you know the player doesn't mean what they meant to you anymore or it's opening up something that you never thought was really going to be possible so it's a hard thing but i i think it's ultimately a treat i find it to be one of the biggest treats in the hobby to be able to look at myself and say i have grown as a collector and i'm willing to admit that i have moved past something that i previously really loved and that i think that i can find somebody else that's gonna love it more than me i find that to be such a great treat so i'm gonna go treat as well alright my last one for you is trick or treat the following common hobby phrases that you hear quote i need this quote this comp scares me or quote got room trick or treat all of them are tricks okay you don't like it are tricks like they those are all those those all mean the same thing to me which is like what's your lowest so i can offer even lower than what you just said i completely agree with you mark one time i i will say i've definitely said this before i feel like you get to a show and suddenly there's this like group speak that happens where you just are like oh my god everybody's saying the same thing over and over how much or got room on this one and i feel like i need to like put soap in my mouth sometimes like it feels like disgusting to say that so i'm gonna go trick as well okay well mark despite not quite getting the prompt i think you did very well on the trick or treat so that's very kind of you to grade me on a curve but i yes i am i i'm clearly not doing a good job of like of understanding what i'm supposed to be doing for these props no i think you killed that i liked your two tricks so we're good let's move to hobby nightmares this one i was nervous about because i feel like it was gonna bring up some bad memories for me but i'm curious for you what trends products personal collecting habits or broader market kind of behaviors are spooky or scaring you right now in the hobby yeah i you know i i i'm gonna be a little bit serious like for yeah well i'm in my serious outfit so so you should with my serious hoodie blazer you know the thing that like actually literally scares me is unregulated gambling being marketed towards kids and people that are vulnerable to addiction hey donna you know that's that strikes fear into me for those people that are vulnerable to these things and for for the hobby as a whole i don't think i don't think that that kind of profit grab leads to a sustainable hobby so that's something that scares me a great deal other things that scare me as well is like this kind of this kind of trend and we see it in a lot of places towards like i don't know what to call it maybe maybe it's something like hustle culture right like where you know people are kind of hustling to you know pick up a bunch of slabs for repacks or pick up like things like that without a foundational love for cards right like or this kind of discourse of hustle and grind that actually gets used to take advantage of child labor and like you know which i think is deeply deeply scary and ultimately all of this is like what scares me the most about the hobby is growth that goes grows too fast or that outpaces like anything that is organic or authentic in the growth of a hobby or a league or or things like that yeah i endorse your message fully i agree with you i think when i thought about my worst hobby nightmare it is the amplification of unregulated gambling and just kind of like penetrating the hobby in every single way it feels like it's coming from all angles it feels like almost inescapable right now which is why not to keep going back to it but i do think it's something that's very true i've kind of reverted in my collecting journey to the original discovery without all that noise there's no noise in the base cards there's no noise in the value box there's no noise in those kind of like sacred places and i think that the hobby is an escape for me it's not if i wanna go gambling i'll go gambling i love to gamble and i will go gambling but it's not gonna be you know in my hobby and so i completely agree with you that this kind of change in the complexion of our hobby has happened so quickly that it feels like i'm just like grasping for my hobby right now i feel it i feel it and it's there and i found it in wnba cards i found it in talking to people like you and having this podcast and people talking about the podcast or talking to me about wnba cards in general but i found that there are these kind of spaces that you can run towards and they will have you there and it won't be a nightmare it will be like very good but i completely agree with you and on a serious note i i have been noticing the same i think we've all felt it like physically felt it so i think that's a a really good call out did you have any other nightmares otherwise i can give a couple more those are all my nightmares for for now okay i had a couple others which is i love card shows card shows are like my favorite thing to go to i find talking to people about cards to be one of the most therapeutic exercises that i can go through as an individual but i hate when i go to a card show and somebody pulls up to a table next to me and they start denigrating the card that they're attempting to buy or degrading it or saying oh you know i well no you should buy the card because you like it and you should tell the dealer that you like it and then they're gonna be more inclined to sell it to you not oh you know it's not that great it's not the it's not the true red it's not the true black it's not the true gold well then don't buy it you know i hate when people don't put the respect on the cards themselves which kinda goes to your comment about having like that foundational love for our hobby so that's been my number one nightmare that keeps me up and then my other one that like really irks me is people that take it just too seriously like when they're like you know like shitting on other people for how they collect or making these broad claims about certain segments of the hobby like women's basketball cards and like making these sweeping generalizations it's like it's not that serious it's just a hobby let people enjoy it so those are like my big kind of nightmares right now and then i'm having another nightmare right now which is my wig is starting to like wig right my wig is starting to fall off so do it that's fine steam rising from your head talking about you know talking about people nagging cards and and engaging in universalisms about the hobby yeah and it's often the same person right that if it's doing both of these things and the steam is rising from your head and it's it's it's moving the wig off so yeah the wig is just like had enough it's like i'm gonna get out of this environment okay okay so that was fine i it wasn't to get negative it was just to talk about kinda like you know nightmare it's it's halloween things get spooky and scary let's get to the next one mark this one that i'm excited about we're calling this one this the wnba seance if you could bring back a forgotten player or just a player that maybe has escaped the hobby attention you know cycle a retired product and a kinda like pass card design which ones are you bringing back from the dead and why alright so my player is shamequa holtzclaw the product is two thousand eight rittenhouse finals patches and the design is any of the ultra platinum medallions okay shamika holdsclaw the the player is like i i i just have these memories of her as when i was a teenager watching her at tennessee and just being so in awe of someone that is so tall and strong and powerful and can do so much on the court and i would love to see hers like her taking her skill set to the w in this time period right like they people talked about her as you know the next the the next great w player and unfortunately physical and mental health issues right like you know proved to be obstacles for her career but like that that is someone i i would love to see in today's game the rittenhouse finals patches with that that feature the phoenix mercury game worn finals jerseys right like that's that's what it's all about i would love to see something like that again and just the cleanness of that platinum background for the platinum medallions i think that that's such a classic design i i i would love to see more conversation about like designs like that i love that you know mark one year maybe it was last year or the year before even the year before a holdsclaw one zero one ultra masterpiece yeah came up to my table and i was like who are you like holding this card i was like where did this come from and i looked at it and i think i said to the guy that was selling it i was like they just don't make them like this anymore and i felt like such a like old head you know talking like that but i was like oh that's a nice one so i like all your picks that you made so those are good picks mark what do you got well mine is a little predictable on the player i'm going with my goat as you know as asia wilson i am declaring this right now which is maya moore being the goat i just think like we just don't talk about her enough there's just not enough conversations happening about maya moore it's not that she's forgotten but it just the level of winning that happened that's not talking about being talked about i would make every conversation about my more if i could in in the wnba space and then from a product standpoint i went inspired by my newest pickup the two thousand one flir ultra kind of like jcpenney looking background bring this back this is a classic i don't need like the the fancy kathy engelbert style draft night photos like i want the classic kind of like like funny almost christmas card looking you know background so i'd go with with this for a product it's also my birth year so i feel a sort of like connection to this this particular year so that's what i picked for that and then from design i think i'd go the twenty nineteen dhanuras optic hollow the shine that comes from that yeah i know we redid dhanuras but like we completely dropped the ball with such an opportunity lost there yeah yeah like i look at the first of all the draft class from two thousand nineteen is one of my favorites i mean you got fee in there obviously enrique jackie ong like just kinda stacked and then you add the it just felt like a different chime on those cards so i would bring that back that would probably be the design i bring back those are all fantastic choices i i say everybody this weekend goes to a jcpenney or i don't know if jcpenney still exist maybe a macy's and get like a book yourself a photo session hold up a jersey you know yeah yeah we should have brett expense us do asia wilson becky hammond jc penney photo shoot for the pot we should every episode will have like one mention of it another line item to expense something it's so funny okay i think we have a couple more segments mark if you wanna if you wanna let's do it okay the next one i'm really excited about i feel like i see these posts all the time where it's like pick your favorite attributes from players to make the best possible player so in that spirit i came up with build your own wnba kind of frankenstein so we're incorporating both player attributes but also card attributes so we've got a bunch of different kind of skills and mark and i are each gonna pick a player to plug in for each of those and then we're gonna pick a card design to finish it off to build our frankenstein mark i am curious how you interpreted this and who you chose for each of your attributes so for clutch or for clutch mentality i went with enrique i don't know if there's anyone i mean anyone currently playing in the wnba that i would trust more with like a last second shot yeah i i i mean even as i say that i can think of a couple of names but like enrique is just she just seems to make these shots all of the time i mean she's taking a lot of them but she makes a lot of them too and so you know i yeah yeah the i i'm going with enrique okay i like that should i go through all of mine or should no no i think we should kinda like we should ping pong it i think okay so that we can find i okay so i kinda went all time so enrique was top of mind for me here i think that's a good pick but i went with mai amor because we need to have more conversations about mai amor and her and her winning mentality so i went with mai go that makes that makes a lot of sense the next one is passing and i went with the point god give me chelsea gray like there are passes that she makes on a regular basis that that that remind me like the only other comparison i think of is like to the nba and i think of jokic right like these like ridiculous passes that no one else can make yeah i i think that's a clear answer right there i didn't wanna go with the point guard just because that would be biased as you know as asia wilson that would be a little weird if i just picked all my teammates so i went with caitlin clark sorry i know she has a high turnover percentage i know that she does but she can pass the ball she has the most assists or whatever the status that people like to say i just think i need caitlin clark in my frankenstein and this is where i would pick her attribute would be in passing yeah i i i i have no problem with that choice she's a she's a great passer for shooting if i was going to like go into a lab and engineer a jump shot it would be ac fudd's jump shot it's perfect i i know this is like maybe a little controversial but i think her jump shot it has is is perfect form i think you and steph curry both have said that so i don't think it's like that far of a stretch i i like this pick i think the reason i didn't pick azzi was just because she's so new you know what i mean like she's just so young but i went with dt for shooting i just feel like with i don't know if there is another person on the planet that has shot as many shots as diana taurasi genuinely like in their lifetime like both on the court and off the court she might have shot the most shots ever so i'm i i i that must be true i don't know i mean that that yeah it's true alright hurting so for defense i am doing recency bias and picking the greatest per minute defender in the history of the wnba and that is kia stokes wow nobody can score on her okay okay i respect that i think you know she deserves a spot here i'm glad she's getting her flowers i went with fi fi had to be in my frankenstein it would feel weird for my frankenstein not to have fi in it and i find as a link stand when fi is guarding somebody such as myself like asia wilson i have found to feel completely safe and protected i feel no sense of nervousness i feel no sense that your person is going to beat my person i have full faith in nafissa collier's defense and i hope that she can return to full form here soon but that's why i'm picking for defense the next one is handles this one was a tough one for me i went back and forth with a couple of candidates and like the the last two i had were paige and olivia miles i ultimately went with olivia miles you know i don't think you can go wrong with with any of the top three four five choices here but i you know just with what she did in her rookie year i i i am just so impressed with her handles fair enough i had a lot of links representation here so i did go with paige yeah i feel like just went with the person that's from minnesota instead of exactly exactly exactly so i'm going with paige for handles what did you pick for athleticism athleticism i went with gabby williams i i think gabby williams is one of the most athletic versatile versatile people that that that you know i i think she could excel in almost any sport right i i like i i think she's like she's was she like a high jumper or like a a track star of some kind i don't know maybe i'm making that up but that's also like one of those things that i could maybe just it's true you heard it on the wnba card podcast it's yeah okay that's a good pick for me for athleticism i did go with myself asia wilson i just think like the pure physicality that i perform on the court it just feels like it's a different league than everybody else and so i did go with asia wilson that's you know that is a great choice and i i like appreciate you talking about yourself with such confidence well it's the wig it instills a certain level of confidence in oneself i will say for the alyssa thomas strength award who did you choose yes i also i also picked at so that's funny that we both picked her i don't think i don't think there's anybody that could beat her no there's there's no there's no competition this this award is named after her yes okay beautiful i'm glad we agree the last one is build and what do you have to say for yourself so i don't i wasn't quite sure what this meant and i was looking at my list and i had realized i had not picked asia wilson for anything else yet and so i picked asia to me build is like like when you build a nba two k player or whatever like what you want like the size to look like you know what i mean like the size of the player i think asia wilson is obviously i said like the most physical player in the league and so i would say that that makes complete sense i threw it back a little bit to elena delle don i think if you could tell me hey you know with this frankenstein who would you put all of these attributes on to become the best wnba player ever i would pick eleven like one hundred percent just like massive brick wall that also can like move is it feels right that's great i that's a a great choice thank you mark let's finish it off with take this frankenstein that you've built and you have to give it a card what card design are you doing oh revolution galactic right away so fast that's like instantaneous that's the card what about you interesting i went with blank slate but it wouldn't be like a blank slate that we already have had produced because they look nice but it would be even cleaner it would be the most clean card you've ever seen in your life yeah i love that i love that clean look for it right like it would really kind of highlight the frankenstein attributes yeah we have that that that you have put together exactly i imagine like a big leg sleeve and then like caitlin clark's hand like photoshopped on with like maya moore's brain like i just i can see it in my head so hopefully we can bring that to life mark i suppose we've got a couple left but is there one that you wanna focus on to kinda close this out let's let's do why don't we why don't you do the cards that haunt us let let's do that one okay yes this one is scary so this prompt is basically a horror story or a worst purchase or our biggest regrets in cards or maybe a missed deal or a card that has just invaded us so mark what angle did you take on cards that haunt us cards that haunt me are like one card that i sold and one card that i passed on one card that i sold that i still think about a lot is the alicia grey origins logo woman that i sold i think a year and a half or two years ago i think it was to buy another alicia grey but i i missed that card and one card that i i passed on last year i had the opportunity to buy an asia rittenhouse rookie at the at a fraction of today's prices and i just couldn't get there and like i think that train has left the station and i'm just always going to regret it okay well i'll mail you one since i have access to them now well guess maybe you have four hundred of them lying around so i'll sign it and send that to you and you can have that for me my one that i kinda look back on and i'm like why didn't i buy that was at the national a couple years ago there was a superb rookie psa ten which follows the same kind of story that you were just talking about with asia wilson just at like a kind of smaller scale i suppose but i remember seeing it in the case in like the green it just was like a classic card that stuck it stood out in the case do you know what i mean and i feel like seeing one in person it just felt different and i was sad that i didn't pull the trigger because they've become just like gobbled up i feel like nobody's selling them anymore so i regret that one the other ones that i regret are buy like selling every sarah strong card that i've ever bought in my entire life like i feel like i've owned a lot of sarah strong cards and i'm like i'm just gonna hold it i'm gonna hold it i'm gonna hold it and then i sell it and then it just like keeps going up and that's been since she's had cards like since mcdonald's and then the final one would be the amount of caitlin clark autographs that i sold for fifty dollars or a hundred dollars or i had one it was her bowman u first auto like refractor auto and i remember i bought it for forty dollars and i remember being really excited about it because you know at this time not many people were talking about women's sports cards and i remember being excited because i sold it for a hundred dollars and i was like wow that's like a big come up you know what i mean and then the guy that bought it from me psa tend it and sold it for like fifteen hundred dollars so that one kinda leaves a sting in my mouth but also it makes me feel good that i was a a little bit ahead of the curve on that one these are you know the horror stories that that we live to tell yeah i mean it could be worse this is fine i feel like i've had way more like beautiful stories than horror stories especially in wnba cards so i will put it out there because i know that i've talked about my fee six pack before is the final one in my six pack that just continues to evade me is her galactic which is the mark parallel i have yet to find one that i wanna pull the trigger on because it's just such a tough card to find and i haven't been able to to secure one so that's been one thing man one day one day yeah alright mark do you wanna hit us with the buzzer beater and then we can let folks get back to their halloween celebrations so for our buzzer beater question today caitlin would you rather pc someone that was a defensive stalwart but couldn't score or someone that is a top level scorer that can't really play defense this is like the easiest question i've ever heard like and i think it's so funny because of our answers i want the scorer who is a complete liability on defense that is how i played high school basketball i was the player that got subbed out when we would go on defense and then i would get subbed in when we went on offense and i find that to be a particular type of player that i obviously relate to a lot and so i and i i do collect a player like this i collect marie johannes who you see her on the court point in defense and it's there's nothing happening so take me i'll i'll take that kind of player for sure what about you you're right caitlin this is the easiest question to answer and the correct answer is give me the defender all day every day give me the kia stokes cards give me defense the person that is stopping the other team from doing exactly what they wanna do unbelievable i i think it's cool that we feel differently about it though it it's a it's a funny contrast for sure alright folks well thank you for hanging out with us for this kind of like extra long episode i was just getting so excited talking about all of our spooky discussion prompts a quick couple of quick reminders before we go we're at wnba card pod on instagram and the cards that we ripped during the beginning of this episode we'll be giving away to you guys so make sure to check that out and if you wanna see us in our full getup because this will probably be the last time i wear a a wig for a long time you can find the video versions on the stacking slabs patreon mark any words of wisdom i suppose before the listeners depart sure alright let's settle things down team and if you ever get stressed just get the ball to asia period that was a