welcome back loyal listeners of the stacking slabs podcast network to season six episode two of the wnba card podcast i'm your host caitlin i go by at cold lunch cards mostly on the instagram machine but you can find me elsewhere on the internet as well and i'm joined by my cohost mark he goes by at m j s underscore sports cards on instagram and we're excited to continue to team up to deliver more collector driven and community focused content to wherever you're listening to us today whether you're on apple podcasts spotify or early on the patreon we're happy to have you guys joining here and just a quick reminder before we get into things you can find us at wmbacardpod on instagram i was doing some graphic design stuff on there folks and this is like really really really subpar graphic design but i worked really hard on it so if you guys are interested to see what's going on check us out at wmbacardpod anyways mark we're at the time of this recording we're at after game one of the finals and so i do have to ask how are you doing i'm getting better i'm getting better i was gutted i was gutted i i i think that that was definitely a winnable game i think the the dream must be kicking themselves just a couple shots drop you know but we're doing alright we're doing alright we'll gear up for for game two the series doesn't start until someone wins on on the opposing court or or that's what people that lose game one on the road like to say it is kind of you know it is kind of nice or i think it was necessary for me to feel what it it's like to lose in the playoffs in twenty twenty six and you know it hurts i hope it doesn't happen again how are you i'm doing a little bit better as a neutral spectator of the finals but i did feel your pain for you while i was watching but i feel good i went to a card show this past weekend and felt reinvigorated kind of and just talking about cards and getting to feel cards in my hands instead of just looking at them in pictures online it made me feel really good and it got me excited for today's episode talking more about cards what we're here to talk about today so yeah i'm doing well but i was you know also a little disappointed by the finals outcome of game one i was rooting for the dream and like you said i thought it was a totally winnable game so i hope to see them kinda kick it back into gear it it'll be exciting to see a second game at valhalla but today's episode i'm really excited about mark because you kind of approached me and said like hey why don't we talk about this this or this on the podcast and one of the things that you talked about was cheap cards i think last episode and the episode before we we talked a lot about big sales and we'll go into a little bit of that today too we're not gonna ignore it it feels like a lot of the content being produced these days in our hobby world is focused entirely on big prices and it kinda ignores something that's really fundamental at least in my collecting world and i know to yours too mark which is cheap cards cards that don't necessarily cost an arm and a leg to get and so we're gonna talk all about cheap cards why we buy them why we think they're important all that kind of stuff but before we get into that we'll do a tip-off with what's been on our mind we'll go into cheap cards we're gonna do a little simulation of building a binder page which i think will be really fun interactive way for us to kinda talk about cheap cards as well we're gonna rip some more packs from great lakes we got more don ross to give away we gave some away last week we'll give away some more today and then we're gonna finish it out with a buzzer beater question that mark put together but why don't we start with our tip-off of what's been on your mind this past week mark so one of the things that i've been thinking about during this past week is i guess you could kind of call it the psychology of buying during a playoff run right and especially during a playoff run where your team is doing well and this kind of challenge of figuring out the balance between what might be like the rational logical buy and what might be the fan buy and where where an appropriate price point would be right like or what an appropriate premium would be for for the fan buy and we were talking about this a little bit offline this past week there was one particular card that that i was looking at that i was thinking about buying it was an angel reece card and it was definitely a fan buy to some extent and i was having trouble squaring the circle of the two sides of my brain between like rational buy and and fan buy and figuring out what a good price would be to pay for for this particular card and i i spent so much time rationalizing that the card slip slipped through and went to someone else other than me and so i i've been thinking a lot about what the process or what my process needs to be for trying to figure out how to approach these things if i can make snap decisions about purchases and how i would make snap decisions about purchases i don't usually buy cards in that way but there is something about the the playoff run that that excites me and that makes me want to get cards and is okay with paying a little bit of a premium but i've been thinking a lot about what my what my decision making tree or decision making process will be in the future when this comes up yeah that's a really interesting topic of which i can relate to not with my lengths obviously but with my milwaukee brewers as they go through a similar successful playoff run i found myself kinda grappling with the same idea of you know i don't wanna i don't wanna regret not making the purchase while it's happening when i'm feeling it in the heat of the moment there's something very special about that and when you buy a card during a moment of such excitement and joy and fandom that gets put into that card so even if you buy that same card a year from now and then you think oh this reminds me of that yes yes and it still doesn't have that same kind of like in ingrained feeling that get goes into a card when you buy it when a chase is or like when a when a run is happening so that kind of decision tree that you're thinking about i think personally and this is just me fandom is not rational being a fan of a sports team there's no like make this decision turn right now turn left now turn right and you'll come upon this like exact formula that you know whether or not you should buy that card i think a lot of fandom is irrational and that's why we we love it and i think if we can just somehow square that love with a responsible financial decision then we're good then we're good you know so i hear you yeah some of my favorite purchases and favorite cards to this day have been purchases that i look back on and i laugh it's like well that was silly in the moment and so i am willing to be a little bit illogical but then i like i guess that the logical part of me is like okay so how illogical can we afford to be right so but absolutely congratulations by the way on your on your brewers thanks mark go jackson cheerio yes yeah what what's been on your mind well what's been on my mind was this big i don't know what is it called psa vault on ebay sale oh my god sorry for our for our listeners matt's cat has joined on the show and he's so we have a cat guest that has joined the show that's funny but what's been on my mind is psa vault which they have like a ebay store that if you vault a card with psa then you can send it straight to auction that's my understanding there was a large number of rittenhouse or prior rookie cards in high grades that went for extraordinary numbers on tuesday night october fourteenth and i actually put together a list of the thirty four that i kind of like thought were most memorable and when i look at this list which for people that are on the patreon were showing the list i was just like wow this is this is something we do have to talk about this felt monumental i saw a lot of folks in our community on the instagram community talking about this posting about it sharing thoughts i suppose i kinda came up with a few prompts that we could go through on kind of explaining our thoughts our reactions to this sale because you know today's episode is about cheap cards but it i would be remiss to not mention you know a massive indicator of growth in the wnba card collecting community like this sale so mark did you see this were you following this and were there any cards that you were kinda looking to add from this particular sale oh i was definitely following this this was this was such a treat to to watch i was hoping that given that there were like thirty or forty of them listed all at once and and like and ending fairly close to each other that there would be some cards that were available for for lower prices for steals and and boy was i wrong there were a few like there were i would say i had put bids on four or five of them and there were like two cards in particular that i thought that i had a reasonable shot at that i i my my highest bids were blown out of the water i really wanted an alyssa thomas the two thousand fourteen i think it was rittenhouse and i was was hoping that i would have a chance at either the stewie or the maya moore i i i wasn't even i wasn't even the same in the same room i it's like i was you know they there's like there's the real bidders and then the the pretend bidders that that that they put in like a little side room and that's where i was for those that's funny yeah i on any of them i did not bid but i was watching closely and i'm also a person that doesn't put my bid in till five minutes left in the auction so like even if i was to bid on this by the time we got to the point where i would bid on something it was already too expensive the card that i was looking at was the two thousand four ultra lindsey whalen psa ten which is a pop six this is like an extremely rare card she's a minnesota golden gopher she coached here for the women's team and then obviously she's a lynx legend still on the coaching staff just all the stack of cold lunch like checklist check check check is everything for lindsay whalen so i want to get something notable of hers this card sold for one thousand five hundred and twenty five dollars during this auction and i was like this feels very high compared to past comps i looked it up the psa nine sold earlier this month for a hundred ninety five dollars which to me if i'm getting a lindsay whalen card i'll just get the psa nine for two hundred dollars i don't need it to be in perfect condition and then her platinum medallion which is out of twenty five in a psa seven condition sold in may of last year for just one thousand dollars so this is fifty percent more for the non numbered just base rookie so as much as i want to add a weyland and that this this card definitely checks some boxes i did not pull the trigger on it i think there's like such a psa ten premium that that that folks attach to these right like with especially with the ultras i i i my understanding is there was a lot of chipping on these i know like the diana taurasi rookie for example like a lot of those grade like a six or a seven so you know there there was definitely some psa ten premiums paid here but give me the platinum medallion all day every day yeah yeah and it's tough because now these cards what what's being proven here is kind of this hypothesis that once they come up for auction this might be your only shot with only six copies in a psa ten since two thousand four we're talking over twenty years ago the odds of another one popping up dwindle and dwindle every year meaning even though we're seeing demand rise like surging for these types of cards the supply is staying the same and obviously we know all know how that equation goes so to see these cards kind of set all time records a lot of them i was impressed and i was honestly surprised by some of these i wanted to talk about the nineteen ninety nine ultra tameek holds clause sold for in a psa ten over twenty five hundred dollars and i was like that's amazing and i'm happy to see that but the last psa ten sold in twenty twenty two for a hundred sixty dollars but that same supply demand equation that i was talking about this one was only a pop four since nineteen ninety nine it's just like major sales happening here so this was kind of like top of mind this week for me mark were there any other sales that either surprised you whether they went high low or kinda like any takeaways from this auction just i mean this is really incredible and i just i can't wait i hope we see someone post all of these yeah or who who won all of these i wonder you know i wonder if it's just someone coming in and just saying i wanna build an awesome wnba collection like in one evening and and and picking up all of these some things that surprised me or like the ones that i i thought were were quite notable is that you know two superstars that i think don't get enough love are were on the lower end of the spectrum of the prices here jonquel jones her two thousand sixteen rittenhouse rookie was went for four hundred eighty dollars tamika catchings her two thousand one ultra psa ten went for six hundred doll a little less than six hundred dollars this is still a lot of money but you know this is maybe like twenty percent thirty percent of like some of the written house rupees that that that we saw go for auction there and to me you know i don't know if jonquel is ever going to get the love that she deserves she's been mvp of everything and my cat is just going has decided she's going to be on this show today but like jonquel just may not get the love that she really deserves and that's you know to some extent that's too bad but also like there is a superstar or a couple of superstars out there that you can still pick up incredible cards of them for for affordable prices yeah this is really just a real a good demonstration i think of a good temperature check a pulse check of where we're at with wmba cards right now to see kind of the same thing that you were just saying of we have things setting all time highs people are beginning to understand the value and the rarity of these cards but simultaneously there's still opportunity and i think that's kind of the sweet spot that i'd like to be in as a collector is you know seeing this potential but not feeling entirely priced out i think in this list of thirty four cards we're showing some of them obviously went higher than we were expecting some went lower and i think that's an indicator of a healthy growing market so this was what was top of mind for this week i know this is kind of like anti what we're gonna be talking about today but i just wanted to kinda share with the listeners who may not have been aware kind of where we're seeing big sales in our lane of the hobby so mark i think let's transition kind of to our topic of today which is all about cheap cards i know this is something that you wanted to talk about i know we both collect cheap cards kinda wait what are your thoughts where do you wanna start what's the last cheap card that you bought for wnba and why did you buy it that's a tough one i was going in preparation for this episode i went through my binders i allow myself one singular card case and two binders that's my way to kind of contain my collection so any card that i get must be able to like fit in quantity into these three spaces and so i was flipping through my binders because that's where my you know lesser valuable cards are and i genuinely think the last cheaper card and i'm talking under thirty dollars ish the last cheapest wnba card i've i bought was a long time ago it was some image variations from bowman yu of the big three aka timmy caitlin clark angel reese and paige beckers i picked up some of those and i i think we are gonna show them in a little bit but i think that's the last time that i said you know the value here is so it's so low compared to what some people are buying cards for but i want them in my collection and i'm going to keep them and they've stayed there they have never moved out of their place in that binder and so those were probably the last ones that i that i that i bought and kept awesome what so when you are let's say you you know you just went to a show when you're walking around the show what is it about what is it about an affordable card let's say you know under twenty dollars what draws you in what's like what's your thought process what what makes you interested in the card what what makes you come to the decision to pull the trigger and buy the card yeah it's complicated because there's a lot of factors you know that we talk about in card collecting but i think the number one element when i look at especially a card that's just not that valuable but i still want it the number one thing that pushes me over the edge is usually the photography if a card has great photography i don't care if it's numbered or not i just want that card because of the picture on it and then if you couple that with a good design even if it's a base card design or for somebody like me who really likes image variations what i was just speaking about something like that where it's like subtle and very simple i i prefer a simple cheap card or over a doing too much design wise expensive card if that makes sense what about you do do you follow the same kind of thought yeah i think photography is is it matters for me a little bit for me when i'm looking at cards under twenty dollars it's purely entertainment right like what card makes me smile what card makes me chuckle what card helps me connect to a memory that i that i found that i find to be kind of important and what excites me about that price point of like under twenty dollars is that they're i'm giving no thought to profit right like this is a card that is probably gonna go into a binder that i'm gonna page through every now and then when i'm stressed at work right like and i'm gonna get a chuckle or get a laugh out out of some of the cards that i pick up there so sometimes it's photography sometimes there it's just something that looks cool sometimes it's like a a historical figure i just had a calm sea mail date and we recently watched rookie of the year a movie from the nineteen nineties where like a kid becomes like a like an important closing important reliever for the chicago cubs and so my kid asked me what was the youngest pitcher to ever who was the youngest pitcher to ever pitch in major league baseball and so we looked it up i think his name is like joe nuxhall or something like that and like i picked up a card of his for a dollar because it made us both laugh i was like oh this this guy pitched in the major leagues when he was fourteen or fifteen years old that's cool and like that's going in a binder so it's really a kind of feeling and actually a little bit of a pleasure that it is not a it is so so little of it is is profit driven right like yeah i'm not buying a card that thinking i'm gonna flip it at any point in time i'm buying a card to put in like a photo album that we're going to that we're going to page through every now and then and i think for me that's it is it can be it can be the photograph but it can be a a whole bunch of other things as well and i'm not ever sure what is going to what is going to grab my attention or or or or set off a particular connection to something i love the point that you kinda made about the removal of one factor that's always talked about in cards which is profit i think when you remove that and by buying cards that are under twenty dollars under a dollar even you remove all other folks' considerations of value because to you you know if you're spending fifty cents on a card it's like fifty cents man you can't even buy anything at the store for fifty cents right this is just like for fun right when you remove that concept of somebody else's judgment of value on your card it's so liberating as a collector because you get to say this isn't more important to me than to whoever else because i think it's worth more than fifty cents to me or twenty dollars to me i think that being able to say hey i spent ten dollars on this card and i'm getting the same enjoyment that somebody had to spend ten thousand dollars on to get a fraction of that enjoyment is really powerful and that's real and that's why i like value box digging that's why i like looking at cards that aren't even sleeved sometimes like going through boxes where you can feel the card itself because there's no protection on it because somebody said we don't think it's worth it to put it in a penny sleeve and i say i'm gonna give you a home it's it's going to be very nice you're gonna have a penny sleeve and a top loader and you're gonna go in a binder with a lot of friends i'm rescuing you that is worth it to me that is worth fifty cents that is worth twenty dollars that is worth kind of these smaller budget things that create a collection that is still worthy to you even if it's not worth a bajillion dollars in the market's eyes so i think when you talk about the removal of profit that is the biggest thing that gets me excited about buying these kind of cards and it's something that you know as we're in this state of the hobby where every day it feels like hundred thousand dollars sale two hundred thousand dollars sale three hundred thousand dollars sale just like constant headlines about somebody making money off our hobby sometimes i think to myself i don't really always need to make money i just want to have cool cards and these are the kind of cards that we're talking about here either binder cards or or cheap cards or whatever you wanna call them it just feels so pure to me i i like it and i don't think it gets enough attention yeah the thing that you said that that that really makes me smile is this kind of idea of rescuing a card and it's something that has that i have also started to learn from other hobby friends where like they will go bargain bargain box digging and they'll come up on a card and it's like it's like i actually don't want this card but i have a friend that should have this card or like or this card really shouldn't be in a box like this someone needs to appreciate it and you know it can be like you know a case where like you know this isn't this was an insert that came out in the nineteen nineties and it was one in thirty six packs like i don't care how much it's worth it shouldn't be with all of these base twenty nineteen mosaic cards right like it doesn't feel right and so i must take you out of here and find a better place for you to be and you know it's it to me when i first heard it it it sounded kind of weird but i i get it right like it's like oh okay like there's there's cards that you know because we enjoy this hobby there's cards that we should that we should treasure a little bit more we should recognize a little bit more more that card is cool because of the photograph that card is cool because nobody knows that this was a variation and if you were just flipping through ripping open packs and flipping through it you wouldn't have known that this is different than the base card or this card is cool because you know this was one of those rare inserts like a a particular year and there was like there were ten year old kids going to the card store and buying packs hoping to put together this particular insert set so who cares if it's the corliss williamson of the insert set it just you just have to you're like you have to rescue it and i and i love that it's so fun and i found myself encountering this i said i went to a local show this past weekend and i was digging through these boxes of twenty five cent cards mark like twenty five cents okay you like i said you can't buy that anywhere and the guy looks at me and he says you are the first person to touch that box today and i was like oh well of course like it says twenty five cents it says whoever player that i'm interested in they're all in a nice row they they're they're they're just begging me to come rescue them of course i'll look at them and he's like oh cool what else have you bought today and i show him a couple cards you know ranging from like hundred to two hundred bucks and he's like well thanks for looking at my twenty five cents cards and i'm like man i like twenty five cent cards i like one cent cards i like hundred dollar cards i like thousand dollar cards i like all cards and i think that cheap cards are part of the ecosystem the foundation to card collecting that as we kinda like grow up in this hobby more whether we get more disposable income or we refine our taste a little bit more and suddenly we're like oh i have to have the best of something reverting back to cheap cards or cheaper cards can be so fun and i think that that's you know a big part of card collecting is having fun and i know that sounds obvious it's like one of these cliches that everybody always says collect what you love have fun collecting cards but how often are you sitting among your cards and you think to yourself wow like maybe something needs to be different here right maybe something needs to be different here i think cheap cards gives you an avenue to kind of like stretch your collection a little bit more or stretch your collecting brain learn something new about pack odds or distribution or parallels or something like that i think the cost being a lower entrance does not automatically make a card not worth collecting and so i've found cheap cards recently to be a real escape in this hobby in twenty twenty six yeah and i like how you said you set up your collection where there is space for like two binders of cards right because there's part of me that has this impulse towards wanting to be and or and be seen as a cultivator right like someone that is a curator of a mhmm of a small of a small but like significant collection in a number of ways but i i never am able to do that because i i i'm not able to give up on like you know the binders or like a couple of boxes of fun common cards that i have and things like that but there's room to do both of that right like you just yeah like the you know we the the great thing about this is we get to make our own rules and we get to kind of change them around to to to touch different aspects of what collecting can do to bring us joy and you know like you know the this kind of you're the first person to touch these twenty five cent cards today you know like that's yeah i am i am proud like i was happy about it i was like yes i'm so glad i'm the first person i get first chance at these beautiful cards that have been longing for somebody to bring them home and they're they're like twenty five cents cards that from two thousand seven that somebody put in the sleeve in two thousand seven the corners are perfect they they're just like waiting there you know what i mean like mhmm it's like you know i i had a really fun time with that and i'm curious i kinda wanna ask you a question mark when you think about like the binder cards or the cheap cards or whatever you wanna call them that you're buying is there any like outside influence that you have during the experience of buying them whether that be you know you talk about a playoff run now are we gonna go gravitate towards some cheaper cards is there other collectors like what are kind of the external factors that are influencing specifically cheap cards compared to say hundred dollar plus cards yeah i you know i one of the things that i'm confronting about myself recently is like i am not as original and individually creative as i want to be and i am just influenced in all kinds of things right like it's just maybe what i have started to do differently is i have started to decide who i am going to allow to influence me and with like you know with more affordable cards like with you know with things like it it like with in spaces like basketball kyle for that that they that does the wax museum podcast youtube videos another friend darren you know guys like that that really know really know a lot about different sets and different cards and like i find myself learning about inserts or learning about different different sets that i never knew about from from people like them and the same thing with wnba cards right like learning from people about the older sets and even some of the you know some of the newer sets the the things that we don't pay attention to in like the newer like the don ross sets like which parallels that are non numbered are really short printed and actually really cool but nobody pays attention to them and like there are you know people like like my friend kevin who studies this like kevin cormier who studies these things really closely and i i find myself influenced by him all the time and you know so when i'm putting those sets together right like it is kind of a combination of like my own flavor but also the people that i think are really well that really do a lot of research in these things that i am that i'm happy to listen to that i don't think are trying to influence me because they're trying to make money they're trying to influence me because they're excited about different cards that they know about and they're happy to share about that share them with with the world and i think those are the kinds of people that i want influencing me in my big dollar card decisions and also my small dollar card decisions i love that and i i've found the same kind of like idea i like to say that like when i'm buying cheaper cards it gives me an excuse to eliminate all the noise there's no need to listen to anybody else but at the same time so much of collecting is connecting with people and so when you're going through that dollar bin and i'm going through those twenty five cent cards and i pull something out and i say oh you know i and i'm reading the back of the card of a twenty five cent card in front of the dealer and he's like wow you know like that's a moment that gives you an opportunity for connection i have found that people that know you know have the deepest knowledge of sets and parallels like you were saying aren't necessarily spending the most money and i think that's that is telling that is very telling it's not i'm i'm doing correlation not causation here so it's interesting but like not the biggest dollar cards don't necessarily command the most collector attention all the time and these cheap cards sometimes do and so i found myself all the names that you shouted out one hundred percent i gotta add one to the list with my friend tommy at tv sports cards he does a lot of binder collecting he has a binder card collecting youtube show where all they talk about is binder cards that's like a special kind of love for cards and when you feel that love from people like you were saying it it really multiplies in yourself i think it's very powerful and so when we talk about influence when it comes to big cards it's a little different than when it we're talking about these lower budget cards i find myself being very influenced despite trying not to be and i i look at other lanes i look at other sports and i just try to learn something and i think that cheap cards are just this this beautiful deep hole that you can kind of just like go into and you can decide when you wanna come out if at all yeah well mark i kinda wanna show off some of our cheap cards because we are here to talk about cards and so i asked you to send me a couple of your binder pages if you had them so i'm gonna pull them up quick do you mind kinda talking through them and just saying why they were worthy of entering the collection yeah so on i guess it's the left is it the left the we have a one of these four pocket binder pages and the with we have there three of i think the most iconic nineteen ninety seven pinnacle rookie cards lisa leslie cynthia cooper and cheryl swoops the the swoops image in particular is iconic one of the most memorable i think card images ever and and to kinda round it off is a is a cheryl miller rave from i think it's two thousand twelve free fleer retro i have like three or four copies of this card i think this one was given to me by my friend carter and just these like you know this binder page that that recognizes the legends i think i think is really fun on the right is not a full w binder page but it's like an example of like how i like to organize binder pages when i don't have nine super well connected or like same player same team cards i like to go like with a three by three and then the top you know the top row there is the the full set of the announcers' autographs from don ross last year i i think they came out of retail i'm not a hundred percent sure but i thought that that was just like a like one of the fun things that don ross does where like that there are just these idiosyncratic things that are inserted in the packs that there that fans are would would really enjoy and these are on card autos none of them were particularly expensive but they're pretty rare and hard to get those are beautiful also like for folks that aren't seeing what we're showing you need to look up these announcer cards because of how good the autos on them are mark like the detail in time that they put in this compared to say some athletes who just do like alright that's it this is like beautiful and the way you've laid them out i just i love it i love seeing how people construct pages how they think about you know putting them together what's worthy of going into a binder i think this is a perfect demonstration of cards that maybe don't have a ton of monetary value from the market standpoint but when you put them together like this it's almost like they increase the value of each other by being surrounded by things that also lift them up it's very interesting should we move to a couple of my binder pages mark let's see it i wanna see what you got okay so i'll start by saying i only have four pocket binders i know the classic is the nine pocket but i like the four pocket because i like my cards in top loaders so this is a top loader four pocket binder and this is two pages that i have let it be known i also don't do two cards in the same pocket so you can read the back that's paramount to me when doing a binder build but on the left i have four cards all from the bowman series the top two i have a caitlin clark bowman u now with the hand up to the ear getting the crowd hyped this is the rainbow foil variation that was inserted randomly into those bowman you now packs and then a trio of bowman university chrome caitlin clark paige beckers and angel reese image variations these are the ones i talked about a little bit before i think i got each of these for under twenty dollars at the time except for the tops that or the bowman now one these are considered quote unquote cheap cards they've obviously went up in value but when i bought them i didn't buy them to go up in value i bought them one because the caitlin clark features a university of minnesota golden gopher getting her ass beat on defense first of all like caitlin is going past her on the dribble but what i thought to myself was wow i went to the to the u i want that card and then i discovered oh the other of the big three the three that kinda brought me back to my love of women's basketball caitlin clark paige beckers and guilt reese all appear in the set and i think they were the only maybe there's another one but the only women in the co ed bowman you set to get the image variation treatment which is one of my favorite quote unquote cheap cards to buy so i had to put them in here and when i look at it i'm like wow these have staying power in my collection these are going nowhere these are you know cold lunch women's basketball cards that i'll have as long as i hope to to keep them one hundred percent that's a great page these image image variations are so cool it's a great way to kind of seek out a little bit of rarity yeah and while kind of like still kind of having that base card look to them and you know these are these are really special and what a what a cool trio to have together in a in in a page yeah those are the three for me like this is it like this is these are the the big dogs for me but on the on the other side i've got another four four card page here i've got a marine johannes gold donruss laser out of ten a maureen johannes prism cherry blossom out of twenty a maya moore timeless moments auto out of thirty five an olympia scott auto from one of the early years of wnba cards and so this one is kind of like a little less i guess built around a theme than my other page that i just talked about this is like maureen johannes is one of my favorite players and then she goes on the top and underneath are two autos i don't collect a lot of autos but in this instance these are both on card these were both gifts which i also think is something that's like a beautiful thing to put into a binder because i get to like appreciate it with all my other cards they get the same treatment and these two mean a lot to me that somebody saw them and thought of me and so i added them here and this is kind of my spread of quote unquote cheaper women's basketball cards that that live in my binder looking at this i'm just like getting excited i wanna pull them out and play with them that timeless moments card has been one that i have like i've always had in the back of my mind like i gotta add one of those someday they they just look so cool yeah i i love that set and on card that's huge like we keep talking about this like that is a big thing for me and it's yeah it's beautiful i love that one so yeah anyways i i figured since we were talking about cheap cards we could show off what kind of cheap cards we like to buy mark but do you have anything else that you want to talk about before we move into our next segment no i'm excited to move on to the next thing i am excited too so what we did folks is that we did this kinda like simulation i said to mark i said pretend like you have a hundred dollars of fake money because i'm not giving you a hundred dollars to do this mark but we can pretend we'll pretend like we had a hundred dollars each and we get to build a classic nine page or nine pocket binder page of women's basketball cards and the rules basically is that it either has to be sold in the last six months or like currently for sale for that price to indicate value to spend the hundred dollars and you must occupy all nine pockets of the page in order for it to be complete so mark i think you should go first and i can pull up the binder page that you put together do you mind kinda talking us through the approach what you thought when you heard about this kind of simulation all that yeah let's do it i i didn't know that this was pretend i don't know where i'm gonna send my where am i gonna send this invoice for a hundred dollars brett mcgrath if you are listening the invoice is coming dear at stacking slaps no this this was really fun and i i played with a lot of ideas but truth be told i kept coming back to the the set that is on display here and this is what i ended up doing was i ended up buying nine twenty twenty six don russ mascot cards and you know the the i i think for me it was figuring out which nine i was going to buy i ended up deciding i would go with the eight playoff teams to kind of help narrate the story of the season and then the ninth team would be the connecticut sun and blaze over there represented in the bottom right hand corner of the of the binder page as they they are the connecticut sun are are sent off to to the sunset and you know i i think you know this being the last season of such an iconic wnba team is also a a a great part of the story so i thought i went with this because this was just a really fun way for me to tell the story of the season i played around with i i was playing around with arrangements like would i put like one versus eight two versus seven three versus six four versus five and you know this is a kind of binder page where you could move the cards around very easily this came out just under just at about a hundred dollars for me they go for you know you can get these mascot cards if you're if you're pretty vigilant with with auctions or buy it nows for anywhere between eight to twelve dollars ellie of course tends to be the priciest of of of the of the mascots but you know we we definitely have to have ellie represented in in the group i love this so what's what's the explanation for the orientation here why is prowl at the top and then the sun at the bottom what's what's the reasoning i guess so we went with the seating right we went with one through eight and and then number the the ninth the ninth spot was for the connecticut sun so you know the lynx of course had the best regular season record and so they occupied the the the first page maybe you know at the end of the season this this would get rearranged to you know acknowledge like playoff matchups and things like that but i was telling the story of the regular season here got it got it do i'm curious here which is you can't say the dream because that's your team but like out of these mascots what's your favorite mascot card and also what's your favorite mascot represented just regardless of the card i so i am partial to ellie i i i think you know i think ellie has done a fantastic job i i like you know i the valkyries have done a great job with basically every marketing aspect of their organization and violet is super cool so violet and ellie for me are like the the top two like mascots i'd wanna hang out with let's see yeah okay mine i have to come out and say it i'm a big freddy fan i am a huge freddy fan i don't know what he's supposed to be i understand he's like supposed to be the fever but like he's so weird looking he's so funny from the moment i laid eyes on freddy i knew he was just gonna be a goofy mascot and i do enjoy like the lineage of indianapolis mascots coming up like they they have got a strong mascot presence across sports so anyways i had to give freddy some love because i love freddy and little freddy too the baby one that they bring out so yeah i think there are actually like i think a couple of the mascots actually have like two cards like i i think there may be like two freddy's and two ellys or or maybe it's a variation that we can then that we can then chase well there you go this is a good idea for a binder page mark i liked this a lot i was not expecting this from you i don't know what i was expecting but when you sent this i was like okay i kind of love this i wasn't expecting it though let's see your binder page what you got okay so this is my binder page this isn't this is the product of way too much time and overthinking put into this this segment folks when i when i tell you the amount of times that i changed cards changed the order of them it was like just redoing it over and over and over again so when i started i thought about my approach and you mentioned this with your announcer cards with that binder page about this concept of like a a three by three so that's what i wanted to do i wanted a three by three grid and i thought why not do three of my favorite players this season so at the top i have nafissa collier obviously my favorite player ever period dan in the middle i have erique ogunbowale a homer for me from wisconsin love her she's just a fun player and then finally jackie young who has become a player that i think i just have talked into existence my love of jackie young every time i talk about her i feel like i i just like her more and more so that was the first step was who's going to be represented on the page now next next step what cards are gonna be on the page and when i thought about a hundred dollars when you think about it as a pie what i wanted to do was take a little less than half the pie for one nicer card quote unquote a little bit more expensive something that's a little bit worth a little bit more than the rest of them so i went with the twenty twenty six danra sniffy secollier pinnacle arena sp which i found a sale for forty one dollars this month so i put that in there and that was my first decision i was like i need this card represented on the page where do we go from there it got really hard for me i like cohesion to the point of like it's it's nauseous it's nauseating how cohesive things are but i don't like things symmetrical right because with cards if you set yourself up building a binder page into like perfect symmetry it's just never gonna happen it's just never gonna happen so i went with my next thing was the middle row and so i went with this twenty twenty five select courtsides and i found an enrique gold that sold in october this month for fifteen dollars and fifty cents and i said well that needs to be at the center of the page enrique holding the wnba all star mvp trophy posen it's gold and then i think to myself what what can go with that what can create symmetry on the top i went with fi with her commissioner's cup she's kissing it and then on the bottom i went with jackie young with the finals trophy and she's also kissing it so you have kind of this like this cohesive look kind of anchoring the the middle of the page with a silver fee a gold enrique in the middle to break it up and then a silver jackie young so we're still we're still missing like half more than half the cards here and i think to myself what do i wanna do and to me i didn't want anything that was gonna mess with the color scheme so i looked at the colors on the cards and i said what's not gonna mess this up and it's blue black and white that's basically what we have to work with with these team colorways and jerseys so i went with the outside corners that's the fee my house and i did the diamond parallel which just for a dollar folks like this is a good looking card for a dollar and then the bottom right anchoring the bottom of the page in that nine slot i did the same parallel but of a different insert for jackie young with the netmarvels which was only ninety nine cents so we've got cards ranging from ninety nine cents to forty one dollars and at this point i'm thinking to myself i'm kind of running out of money so what what is a type of card that can be really good what my friends carmine and his friends like to say on his podcast cool to cost ratio that what's the cool to cost rate what's the highest cool to cost ratio i can get and to me one of the cards that sticks out is a white sparkle from prism i think the rarity there the look of them is very nice and the cost is so low so i picked up an enrique white sparkle for six dollars and fifty cents steal and a jackie young white sparkle for eight dollars and forty cents and kind of had those kitty corner from each other and the final card that i picked up was the origins which was really exciting in real life i don't know if this actually makes the cut because as we all know origins has a thicker stock i don't know if that thicker stock would bother me in the binder page being a little bit elevated compared to the rest of them but i picked out an enrique euphoria insert it's just beautiful so this is the page that i came up with mark i overthought this way too much especially because i didn't actually buy any of these cards but this is what i came up with did you follow my logic at all or am i just like rambling here this is amazing this is our this is our this is our homage to overthinking baseball cards this is the masking binder cards i love this this this kind of middle row this middle trophy row thing that you have going on the the sort of opposite ends of the the diamond parallels the two white sparkles i think the i think the this i can't stop looking at that arena the arena collection yes that jumper it's such a cools cool cool card you know i think you know you you did the thing right like like you you did the thing and you thought it and you thought it through and and me i just slapped together nine mascot cards like i didn't even i didn't like not even a player to be seen on any of the cards but this is like you know i think right like i i think one of the things that we both ended up doing is like how do we tell the story of our our experience of this season right like and how you have come to become a a jackie young fan how you know enrique has sort of resurfaced in your fandom then how and how fi is sort of the anchor of that i you know i think the three by three approach for that is is a wonderful way of thinking like who would be the three favorite players of this season and i'm like i find myself in the back of my mind doing it right now who are my three favorites of this season and and how would i kind of build that and you know i like how you describe your search for your search for like a a way to curate it that kind of connects and makes sense but is not like not this kind of standard symmetrical approach that that that i am so often prone to do and probably why i ended up with the nine mascot cards because like i have like it has to look a certain way for for me to to be okay with it and like i think i think this opens up a new realm of possibility for me to to build an architecture of a binder page yeah it was really fun to do this like i i sat there and even though i didn't spend the money it's kind of the same thing for gambling with me it's like i can watch somebody else gamble and i'm still having fun i'm i'm rooting for you you know it's like building this page was really cool because to me if you take one out whether it's the dollar card or the forty one dollar card it doesn't work you know like it just doesn't work the way that my brain tells me it needs to work so i had a really fun time building this and i will add another wrinkle to the overthinking mark which is that the cards all need to be the photos of the players need to be looking to the center i don't know if you noticed that yeah but like the fees have to face the middle the outside cards need to face the middle and then you'll notice the the enrique needs to be staring straight at me since it's in the middle of the page that's the amount of thought that went into this like when i was looking at when i was looking at the enrique white prism white sparkle prism she was shooting the other way on a different one so i couldn't get that one i had to get this one so that it fit the page the right way so they're all looking towards erique right yes yeah as as we all do when she plays erique ball you know she's yeah so anyways this is what i built i would encourage our listeners to like look at the binder pages that you've built already and appreciate them maybe moving them around and thinking about all these overthinking topics can help you appreciate what you already have go through a simulation like this yourself or just like look at other people's binder pages i'd love to see them maybe we'll make a a call out for binder pages this week but i had a really really fun time with that kind of like exercise well mark before we kinda get out of here today i think we need to rip some packs what do you think oh yes let's let's rip some i've got an entire box here and last week we opened two packs and hit an autograph so hopefully this weekend we can get something to give away yeah maybe a logo parallel sp i don't even know what that is so the this is one of the short print parallels in don ross we got a sydney colson face of the league folks lid lucy olsen point guard chelsea gray these are just the base cards ty harris your girl ryan howard base card alright here we go rated rookie awa fama alright good start hopefully good signal then we've got a mikaela timpson loki become the important player yeah for the fever oh this is pretty good franchise features this is that diamond parallel we were just talking about of az fud wow not bad not bad i think we can open up another pack any players stick out for you there mark that we just went through the like in that last pack that diamond parallel the the the the az one is is great the i i do wonder if they're gonna resign mikaela timpson for the for the fever if they don't she needs to go to the la sparks i think that would be a good split place for her k we got a john wells next up flage so if you're a storm fan there we go max oh we got a filler mark oh jackie young and an at let's rip one more yeah any players there you like i like the i like the i the at what was that is that a the in like insert highlights insert yeah highlights okay highlights alright one more pack we got a hamby isaiah james carla lay not in the portland fire uniform unfortunately lee arue kiki rice kiki li ru has like a a really big collector base i've been wanting to get one of her autos and they're not cheap yeah i feel like basketball collectors in asia go hardcore for people that represent you know their countries so i feel like li ru definitely has some hardcore collectors over there she seems to have a really great personality too so you know you like oh that's shiny i'm a need some education here mark i don't know if she made did she make a roster i'm not sure but if you're a seattle storm fan we almost we almost did agwifam or flage johnson no we have who is this taina mair yeah taina mair she played a duke i don't know if she made i'm trying to remember if she made a roster let's do a little yeah well while mark's looking that up this is a gold laser autograph out of ten for the seattle storm i think we would all prefer it to be pham or johnson but if you're a duke fan and you're chasing just like pro duke players this is a beautiful card like i love these lasers yeah unfortunately it does look like she was she was waived and then signed to a player development contract i don't know if she got onto the court damn well nevertheless this is kinda one of those incredible chart yeah one of those situations where the card itself is a high caliber card gold laser out of ten rated rookie when you think about the depth of class here you know you could be hitting something big with that we just didn't quite hit the mark but if you're a duke fan or a storm fan or you're a fan of her we'll be giving that away on the instagram along with all the rest of the inserts and parallels that we hit from that thank you great lakes and we'll have many more to give away over the course of season season six alright mark sorry we couldn't hit that would have been sick if that was a flage i'll be honest yeah let me just switch it around or a a la fam yeah yeah that's okay though i guess before we kinda close out today's episode mark i think you've got a buzzer beater for us sure for our buzzer beater my question for you caitlin as the wnba season starts to wind down and we're starting to see the ncaaw beginning their preseason can you name one college player that you're looking forward to watching this season i can and this was another question that i overthought mark i looked through a lot of like top twenty five preseason rankings current rosters and i'm like who do i wanna talk about here and the name that i came away with was milesia fuwili which i really love her she is a five nine senior playing at lsu under kim malky she played at south carolina for her first two years before transferring over last year where she was mostly like a spark off the bench but with a lot of really really good potential this is a highly athletic individual that can jump out of the arena honestly like when she goes up for a layup i'm always like is she gonna dunk and she's only five foot nine she's really electric she's a new generation of player i think that we're gonna see more of an archetype like this start to establish in not only college basketball but in the wnba so i'm excited to see her kind of hopefully get that starting position and you know when you play at lsu anything can happen so i'm rooting for her i think she has some mcdonald's all american cards because of course she played at south carolina and was an all american i think that's a requirement to be on that team over there but her cards are available and i've been looking about at them i've owned them before i've sold them before and i'm in the market going forward electric is absolutely the word to describe her great pick great pick for mine i went with a little bit of a deep cut someone that i have been a fan of for the last two years is addie brown who is now going to be playing at ucla she played at iowa state for the last couple of years kind of a playmaking three slash four playmaking bigger player that gets rebounds passes really well can shoot the three i think she has a really kind of diverse and interesting game to her and i'm really excited to see what coach close over at ucla does with a player with that kind of interesting skill package yeah i like her too i feel like i get a lot of propaganda from the state of iowa being in minnesota so i am aware of addie brown but i think she is a deep cut that if used correctly can be a really interesting player because of kind of her her build too like she's physical like i think when we look at the wnba as it stands today some of the things we're starting to see is just how important physicality is and height and build and all these things and i think addie brown has something like that and i i'm excited to see how she does do you know if she has cards out right now mark so she has a few of the mcdonald's the mcdonald's cards so so she has that game day paper auto that i that i've over the past picked up a few of i don't know that she's ever been in a bowman set okay maybe this year with the ucla treatment they can get her in there that might be it might be the time alright well today was fun mark i'm glad that we got to talk about cheap cards and why we love them and how they deserve more attention we got to go through kind of a binder build rip some packs did you have anything else you want to say before we kinda close it out nothing just have a great week loyal listeners and remember everyone watches women's sports period mark i love that sign off folks you can find us at wnba card pod we'll be giving away the cards that we pulled especially if you're a storm fan or a duke fan be on the lookout if not don't forget to go check out my subpar graphic design i'd really appreciate it i think it looks good here you think it looks good thanks mark