welcome back loyal listeners of the stacking slabs podcast to season five episode six of the wnba card podcast my name is caitlin i go by at cold lunch cards mostly on the instagram machine but also on twitter x discord a couple other places and today i'm i'm super excited about today's team collector episode you know this one has been a long time in the making not only have i known this guest now for a while through social media and it's kind of our first time talking but this is about my least favorite team in the wnba and that would be the new york liberty and i'm excited to talk to somebody who loves the liberty loves the players on liberty and has an awesome collection of new york liberty cards so today we have the one the only griff he goes by at rockies cardboard on instagram and elsewhere he is known for running amazing stack sales a really good sabrina collection some great mellow cards and for his adorable dog of which his namesake of his collection account is named rocky's cardboard so griff welcome to the pod in honor of you i did wear my one piece of new york liberty gear gear i love that for folks who can't say it it says death taxes and one legged marine because you know you're guaranteed that in life so i guess why don't we start with you griff how are you doing how are feeling about being on the pod today well thank you for having me caitlin i've been super super excited to be on here since you asked me i like you said i i i'm griff i'm at rockies cardboard on x on instagram on discord i think i'm something else honestly but in the actual discord room i'm rockies cardboard and i i'm just so excited i i i'm even more excited because i had forgot that you hated the liberty so much but at least you show appreciation for marine johannes as it's due but thank you for having me yeah absolutely i i'm really excited to kinda get into your fandom get into your collecting style get into something that i think kinda sets you apart from a lot of the guests that we've had on so far which is that you wear multiple hats not only do you collect but you resell and i think that's kinda how we got to know each other so i think it's gonna add a nice little angle to today's conversation but before we kinda get into your personal fandom and identity as a liberty collector i wanna let in the audience a little bit behind the curtain with the fact that when i reached out to griff i asked him if he wanted to do the la sparks episode to which i was met with no but i would love to do the liberty and i kinda wanna give you the stage script to talk about why why not the sparks why why did i ask you about the sparks and what's up with the liberty right now so as much as i would have loved to oblige to do the the sparks podcast i so i'm a sparks season ticket holder i live in southern california i guess i should have said that i live in southern california last two seasons went to almost every single home game but there's a problem with the team this year and that is they traded rakia jackson and that was one multitude of moves they made in like the last year and a half that i'm just kind of over them right now i've gone to a few games love kelsey plum she actually went to a rival high school when i was attending so i i've always loved kelsey and they've got a fun team but it's also i won't get into it i think they're about where i expected them to be but the liberty are the team that really got me into wnba loved sabrina loved stewie loved john quill and them all being on that same team that's kind of when i started really following i've always kind of followed the w from a distance if you will but i actually went to a sparks game i gosh it must have been four years ago five years ago now before i had season tickets in it was against the liberty and saw maureen johannes play i'm like okay she's electric have to look more into her and and that kinda really started my fandom i used to be a what's the right word for it i guess at at the point super fan of the new york knicks about fifteen years ago when carmelo anthony played for the knicks i watched every single new york knicks game that carmelo wore in knicks jersey carmelo anthony is my favorite athlete of all time and so it just kinda felt right i used to watch all these knicks games i'm like i'll root for the liberty this will be my team i love it they look like they're gonna be good i grew up in san diego the padres have been terrible my whole life and never won anything like let me root for a good team for once oh yeah so so that's kinda how i came into it and i think what is unique especially since this is you know w but also cards related podcast i got into the collecting aspect because i kinda hit a wall with my carmelo anthony collection and i was just like let me just dive headfirst into the wnba rip boxes and i'll learn all the players just by ripping and collecting collecting the w and so i just started going crazy back in like twenty twenty two twenty twenty one twenty twenty two it was a lot of fun i i always do that with cards too it's like if i wanna learn a sport i just start collecting that sport so that's kinda how i i got into it gotcha i think it's a great intersection too for the w and cards it's it's a it's a great place to collect in i think in the hobby alright i completely agree i think a lot of what you talked about there is a story that a lot of folks can resonate whether it's hitting a wall and kinda feeling stale in the hobby so redefining or entering a new lane i think that's something really that maybe a lot of people are scared to admit that happens and that you have to deal with as a collector and to find a place like the wnba card collecting space that's so welcoming and that has a lot of room for you to kind of breathe and figure out what you like can be really powerful to your pc so you know it's pretty that's pretty cool story and i i'm i'm you know i wanna talk to you about rikia i wanna talk to you about your ideas on the spark but today's episode is about the liberty so we'll stick with that and i just wanna kinda hone in i know you can't talk about your origin story but what at what point did the the cards turn into i'm gonna be a a liberty collector not necessarily like know you got your rikia pc which has some massive pieces but like at what point did you decide you know there's this whole pool of players you can choose from why the liberty cards did they stick out was it because you were becoming a fan of the team was it a investment decision a combination and kinda just walk me through your thoughts on that yeah i think it was kind of both i also think the whole twenty twenty prism sabrina craziness and the hype of that that kind of brought a lot of people into the w collecting too whether whether that was for the w or for money making purposes back then that was a crazy time in the hobby but i thought the prism cards that year were awesome i loved collecting great players so having stewie john quill sabrina it was just like it just made sense to start collecting those cards and honestly back then i was buying every single cool wnba card i could find like i'd go to shows and i would just look for wnba cards i didn't really even care who it was it's like cool a color match of tina charles i'm picking it up like i was just buying everything and so then it got to a point where was like okay let me let me start focusing a little bit more and then eventually got it to you know liberty forward and then rakia forward that was kind of where i was going with it so yeah i'll leave it at that no i like that i like the use of forward as well i think i'm gonna adopt that that kind of language but you you kinda touched on what i was about to talk about which is this idea of players and runs and the fact that maybe you're a newer liberty fan you know liberty have been around since the inception of the league they're one of the eight original teams they've had a lot of success that hasn't necessarily resulted in rings and championships until recently but you know some big players we're talking teaspoon becky hammond tina charles you mentioned the current ones of john quill stewie sabrina do you think that you feel more connected to the new york liberty franchise and its history maybe the new york culture maybe you know that kind of aspect or do you feel tied to the players that define the franchise or do you kind of see them as synonymous i i'd say synonymous okay and the reason i would say that so i was lucky enough to go to the game the sparks versus the liberty like maybe three or four weeks ago and it was the thirtieth anniversary game of the inaugural tip-off and it was so cool and it the the neat thing was at halftime they recognized you know that that sparks team and and all they did and lisa leslie was there but they also had liberty players there right and i don't know to me the nba wouldn't do that they would just recognize the home team and they'd let the other team do their own thing back home right and so i thought that was so cool they had the liberty there and just showed the history i honestly learned a lot that game of things i didn't know a lot of it you know very intricate details you'd know if you were a season ticket holder and going to those games and i just respect that history because it it really set off what we have now and to think from where it grew in thirty years and probably in the next thirty years it's gonna be even you know crazier to think about where that's going so i i would say i really enjoy having that where i love the storied franchise right of the of the new york liberty i love the storied franchise of los angeles park and then there's people that are coming in and they're like i love the portland fire right i am gonna be the day one fan i know nothing about the wmb i'm coming in and i'm a portland fire fan i think that's so cool in in all walks of life where you come into the fandom but i i think even after sabrina leaves stewie leave i i think i'll still just continue to root for the liberty it just helps that they have a lot of players that i really enjoy to watch yeah having marine helps my new favorite players on their team which you know i won't mention yet but i'll mention later on the podcast okay so just i i think it's one of those things where in the nba i followed carmelo anthony wnba i think i'm just gonna be a liberty plus rakia jackson fan hell yeah maybe one day rakia will join the liberty and then your dreams will come true and that would be incredible i would be broke buying all of the cards right right okay well we'll pray for your wallet if that happens but yeah that's that's funny i i think like just the it's kinda like the stars aligning in new york and i think having the star power plus the the team itself is is something powerful and it draws in a lot of different kind of fans i i have a question for you about rooting for a fandom that's so dominant or at least seen as like a front runner in recent years do you ever feel like cheering for one of those you know strong dominant teams changes how people maybe perceive your fandom or your card collecting sometimes for me i feel like when i'm a fan of some team that's doing really well or i really like a player and they happen to be playing really well and that means that their cards are going up in value people kinda like doubt my fandom do you ever feel like liberty fans get that kinda slack that's how i've seen kind of liberty fans are treated is they kinda get thrown into that same bucket as yeah hoover fans do you agree do you disagree like what's your opinion i think it's unfair because they do not have the rings to back it up unless we're counting commissioner's cups which they have now two as of last week but i just don't think it's fair when they don't have the rings to back it up it's it's i get it they go after the big names especially in recent years i think vegas has had them favored to win the championship preseason two or three out of the last three years but like let's throw a little more hate towards the aces period come on i just i i don't get it because you you can go collect you know chelsea gray no one's gonna say anything but as soon as you grab you know anything with the liberty on doesn't matter who it is it could be it could be lainie hamilton and so oh front runner right i said no one championship and they shouldn't have fired their coach but they did which we can get into that later well wanna get into all of this and like i have to let the listeners know that i'm biting my tongue and i'm trying to respect your liberty fandom so much right now bro but i'm like i'm like yeah i i i definitely dish out the liberty hate so if we could pass some of it on to the aces i'm all for that as well so we're we're thinking about i just think that if if you're gonna judge someone by who they collect it should be the aces which i i really also can't talk because i collect a ton of asia wilson too but it's like i just i don't get it with delivery i get they have the big city appeal they have the big star power appeal and also i think last year it was very deserving if they would would have won the title last year i would have said yes i mean they were signing everybody i mean they they signed sawto this year so maybe i'm overthinking it maybe they really do deserve more hate okay and and episode right there and the episode right there have nothing more to talk no i'm just kidding i'm just kidding okay i will i will pause that conversation there we're gonna go forward but we'll we'll come back to a lot of what griff's touching on the next question that i have is something that i've asked each of the guests this season which is if you had to try to describe the identity of the new york liberty or your franchise in three words or less do you think you can do it and if you could what would you say when i read that question that was one that i really had to think about it's it's a tough one i think i i think three words is difficult and not to avoid your question but what i i i would say i'll i'll answer it historic okay number one historic i i think that's probably the first one that comes to mind i think other people would say front runners i would say storied okay and then i think for the last one i would say underachieved because i think if you're gonna have the history you're gonna be a storied franchise they need to win more titles and i think they're coming to be quite honest with you and i think the way i would describe their identity recently is their scouting department is unreal and they have a great relationship with a lot of the overseas teams it seems i mean that's not out there publicly but if you look at the rosters right phoenix has a great scouting department overseas i think the liberty have that and i think they're close to putting it together and i think i i think when they win another one or two championships it's gonna be like the knicks this year when they want it because it's just like the city wants more than the one they just got right so i i i think that's what i would say yeah i i like that i like the way you describe it i think there's such a maybe it's because i've just been perpetrating it in my own mind but there's such a stereotype of liberty collectors liberty fans and to hear the way that you almost felt like you gave two different framings of your second word storied versus yeah whatever like i i think that's a good way to capture it so i'll let it slide with three plus one words on the question but i i like that greg i i like that answer okay before we i go ahead well i was i was just gonna say to compare it to something else if i'm if i'm sensing how much you hate them right so i i mentioned when we were talking earlier i i've grown up a padres fan i cannot stand the dodgers okay the dodger that that's the rival but the dodgers are so good and now i i mean it's just gotten to the point where it's hard to hate them because you just expect them to win everything now that they have ohtani and all these but i don't think the liberty have got to that point yet they have the players but they haven't got to that point where they've won two out of three or you know three out of the last five i think once they get to that point then you can add you know like word dominant or dynasty or something like that yeah i think if you removed aj wilson from the equation you'd be there you know immediately like it wouldn't be even a question but yeah she's kinda proven a roadblock for everybody in this league so yeah that that would be my my one take on that i think i have written down that i think the the liberty have been to six finals before they captured their title that's a lot of six that's a lot of playoffs to not win man that's that's a lot so i'm i'm glad that they finally got there but good god at what price for me at what price but let's let's move to a question that maybe unites us a little bit more not okay before we get into the really yeah a little more uniting question a lot of this season in this podcast what i'm trying to do is just promote women's sports bottom line like i think women's sports card collecting is an underrated niche in the hobby that needs more space needs more people talking about it and so i wanna ask you kinda like looking beyond just the liberty or just beyond your rikia jackson pc your sabrina pc what is being a fan of women's sports and women's sports cards mean to you more broadly well i saw that and i thought that that was such a great question because i think as a whole the the tide is turning right women's sports is finally getting its due where it's reaching the mainstream in various places right and i mean as far as the w goes i enjoy watching the wnba a lot more than i do the nba now especially regular season but then you have so many stars across the world in women's sports take for example this week wimbledon and i don't know if you follow tennis at all but alexi aala is the first player not not just woman first player ever in filipino history to make it to the round of sixteen and it's like that is something that needs to be defined in a headlining story right it i i don't need to hear about lebron james being pitched by the 76ers okay let's let's put some real sports stories that are like that's a story that's gonna inspire people across the country right right and and and i think that's the thing that's the coolest to me is there's a whole generation of men and women that are hearing these stories that were not hearing them as much in the past right and and i just love it i think it's awesome i think there's so many great stories that we're hearing now there's so many great leagues to watch i love watching trinity rodman love watching a lot of the tennis i i watch a lot of women's tennis and the w is awesome it's in a great place and i think it's gonna keep growing and it should so i guess i i think that answers your question yeah i i i think it's really an overall thing and and to me sports as a whole is the stories it's the moments it's like i i'll check a box score all day every day of any sport yeah but and i think this kinda goes hand in hand with with cards as well this is just kind of a personal opinion but those players that have those moments that have those stories that resonate and connect with people that's who you wanna go collect that's the card that's gonna jump ten x right there's so many things with that right and and i think it's amazing that that is starting to be you know shined on women's sports more and and i think it's just gonna continue to keep growing and growing i just love it it's it's awesome more sports to watch keep putting more sports on my tv please absolutely yeah we can keep delivering that and we'll all be happy and i kinda wanna talk about you've touched on it this concept of connecting you know sports and fandom to cards and why we all collect them it's because it ties us to a moment it ties us to a person it ties us to a game time in history you know all these different things so i kinda wanna get into your collecting philosophy and approach you mentioned you know you've got kind of this liberty forward plus rakia forward philosophy but how would you kinda define your liberty collecting today that that's a great question because i've really recently been thinking about thinning out my pc a bit i've sold off a few pc pieces recently to fund other ones and i think as far as collecting philosophy in general that has changed so i started collecting in two thousand three that's why i collect carmelo anthony his rookie year should have collected lebron would have i would i'd be in a nice house right now but i think to me as a collector and what you're looking for in the hobby evolves as you evolve and how your life is maybe you're really busy in life and it's like cards are on hold but as someone who i'd call myself an addict of collecting cards i love collecting cards there's always something to have to chase and i've always been about the chase i'm trying to find the next gem i'm trying to find the next deal i'm trying to find the next cool card so to me i think my approach really changes and i have different pcs i don't know if you've had jason on yet almost not yet okay when jason gets on i'm sure he'll mention his deep pc that he has or he just like this is deep pc and it's this random tag of something and i've always loved that about jason because it's like he has these random things and i'm gonna slab everything because that's just what i need i need it slabbed so i just love hearing that from people too like what do you collect why do you collect it mhmm and personally lately i've been trying to do different runs of things so one of the things i sent you yeah was sabrina's twenty twenty prism rookie run i'm trying to get as many as i can in a psa ten that's gonna change as i get lower and lower on the number numbering but that's been a fun one and it's one where it's not something that's just easy you don't just see one of these out in the wild at a random local show or in a discord or on x so it's always fun to have something like that in the back of your mind when you're going to shows and so so that's one of my big w chases right now is is looking for those i think like the psychology behind collectors that almost demand a chase or a challenge and then feel compelled to create that challenge and to make it hard right like you said this is not something that's an easy pursuit you can't just you know search on ebay and find this any day of the week with a saved search these take real attention real monitoring to be able to find and not only that but you set it at a psa ten scale so it just i always find it interesting the types of collectors that almost feel the need to challenge themselves more and more and the way that you do that is through you know the reward of the chase and so as somebody who has zero patience and sucks at a chase like i cannot do it because i just get so frustrated this is good to hear and i'm so glad that you found something that kind of scratches that itch if you will yeah and i and i think now we're entering a area an area of collecting with the w where i think it it's honestly starting to get watered down a bit because now we're starting to see the multiple products so what i what i always liked about the w's you had prism coming out and you hope that it was a really cool image that they put on prism and you didn't get too many parallels because that's one of my big yeah pet peeves right now with a lot of the the product is so many parallels but i think it's just starting to get to a point where it's gonna water down quickly you're really gonna need to hone in and focus on what you want right is it the and one on card autographs is it hopefully we get game use patches at some point in the future that would be wonderful or is it cool images right is it the court side is it the premier is it something along those lines out of select you really wanna collect is it all zebras is it all golds right so i i think that is always something i love hearing from other people like what actually are you looking for is it something like me where it's like odds are i find one sabrina a year if i'm lucky because it's not just time and place but it's also like funds do i have the funds at the time to to pick one of those up and i i i love that i i think that is what has kept me collecting cards too and kinda how i mentioned earlier always learning something learning new sports learning new players learning new product whatever it is and then meeting people like you right caitlin and and that's the other aspect of the hobby i think is meeting fellow collectors sellers flippers whatever you wanna call them and and building those relationships and then you help each other out in various ways collecting whatever it is for sure so i i just love that about the hobby yeah i mean this place is awesome and i i love having these conversations and you kind of pivoted me right into where i wanted to move us is this concept that i i teased on at the beginning which is that you know a lot of us collect and we sell meaning that we sell to either make some money just because or to fund our own pc and i wanna touch on kind of what it's like being somebody who is building a really serious pc and takes collecting very seriously but also has kind of a hustle on the side to support it for you personally how do those kind of sides of the hobby interact with each other do you have like do you prefer one side or the other is one more fun does one take more time or effort i guess what's your opinion on the the two ends of the spectrum one side is a hundred percent more fun and it's buying cards and i love buying cards that's partially why i sell cards because i like buying cards i would say i started actually because i wanted to try and level up my pc if you will it's like okay i'm never going to afford that exquisite carmelo anthony autograph just saving money because it's it's just not gonna happen i like buying cards too much i'm gonna pick up fifty twenty dollar cards of his before i save the money to buy one right because that because that's not as fun to me so i was like well let me start selling and so i started selling and that opened up a whole new aspect i love going through dollar bins i love value boxing i love learning new sets so it it it i'd say both are a joy of mine and like i just touched on the relationship aspect i love the relation especially on x because that's mainly where i sell i'm in the middle of a stack sale right now i've met so many cool people and kind of the way that i approach it i would say the way i sell cards kind of changes around the tertiary pieces of it as time goes on and kind of adjusting to the market but i like buying cards to an extent they're collector's cards right i know i buy that i'm gonna find someone that wants it because they're a collector and it's been really cool hunting for people for certain things right because on x i'll have people that reach out hey i'm looking for x y or z can you find it for me and i'll look for them right yeah so it it's fun you know make a little money on the side which i then buy more cards with and kinda keeps my personal finances separate from my hobby finances which is nice and eventually i'd like to go full time that's the kind of the goal i'm one hundred percent self funded self made in my selling journey one day i'd like to get that to a point where i own a shop potentially so it's just fun i just i just love it it's it's a great place to be business wise relationship wise friendship wise going to card shows that's the most fun thing you can do in my opinion i mean how you can't have more fun than going to a card show especially if you go with a couple friends right so all of the above but at the end of day would say buying is more fun yeah i love buying cards there's something about it man it's gotta be like some sort of primal like yeah energy release in the brain because i completely understand what you're saying but i think selling and collecting creates a lot of tension it creates a lot of decisions it it's almost just like how many choices could you possibly make at all like it's just a a yeah series of choices and i kinda wanna dive into a choice that i personally find myself you know at a crossroads with a lot as somebody who both buy sells and collects cards which is that maybe i'll buy a card that i bought thinking oh somebody else might like this therefore i'm buying it and then they kinda sit in this what i like to call purgatory maybe you'd sell it maybe you'd keep it maybe you'd pc it maybe you think it's gonna go up it's kinda in this place that's not stuck in your case like this is a forever card i need this i've been looking for this but it's just one of those cards that doesn't necessarily leave immediately either when you hit one of those cards those purgatory cards how do you decide if it stays in the pc or if it's something you add to your stack sale when you figure out the answer to that let me know because i a hundred percent feel that i i actually have some of those right now so i have some low numbered asia wilson autographs that are psa tens and it's like when i bought them i'm like oh this is great asia wilson's the best she's the goat in my opinion i can't go wrong holding these but then at the same time it's like okay but i'm sure these are gonna go up she won mvp last year they won the championship you know whatever right and i will post them but it's also the point where it's like i hope nobody offers on this because like i kinda just wanna keep it right and and i would say my wnba stuff i'm a lot more protective of i'm trying to not be but i'm a lot more protective of it nba mlb nfl any of that kind of stuff whatever unless it's like a key key card right and i can find another one but i'd say i guess to answer your question if it's something you know you'll never see again odds are you'll never see it again or if you do it's gonna be years from now and who knows the value of it those are the ones i tend to if i do post them for sale price them higher or be ones that i'm this is in my pc and one of the other cards is saying i i don't know if this is even the right time to bring it up i know you have another time to talk about no it's okay the gray oak card but i i sent you a picture of sabrina portside twenty twenty four and that card i think hits this conversation perfectly i've posted that card for sale you may have even asked me about it at one point a couple years ago yeah and i was very high on it and i'm like well if someone buys it that's fine i think the estimated print runs of the quartzsite zebra is probably like less than ten i haven't seen many that have popped up and so i would post it every now and then like okay if i sell it this is gonna fund another one of the twenty twenty prism sabrina's and i'll just tuck that money aside but that is a card i've a hundred officially hundred percent officially said that's pc i'm never posting that card again it's in there and i just think it's the eye appeal i think it's the scarcity of it the three point champion trophy doing the night night it it it just hits everything for me on on a card that goes into the pc so that's something i i think that's a perfect example that's one that was in purgatory for a while and now it's like nope this one's pc oh i love that i kinda wanna hit on this card while we have it up if you don't mind i kinda wanna hear go for it i wanna hear the story of how you got this card maybe how you discovered it and to your point there's been this proliferation of parallels in modern wnba collecting alongside all other lanes of collecting and so a zebra parallel is something different it's new we don't have zebra parallels going back to nineteen ninety seven but there's something special about them maybe could you talk about what set the zebra parallel apart for you maybe compared to say getting any other parallel that's available i think that i love the unknown of how many there actually are and if panini actually prints less of the court side because we don't know i mean panini doesn't release an odd sheet like tops or fanatic products do and so i would literally when i when i got this card i would just track it okay how many are on ebay how many are confirmed sold and i think it took a few months before like one or two were sold and i just think the eye appeal of it really pops compared to other cards and for some reason the zebra on this card just looks really cool i don't i don't know why maybe it's just my opinion but i just love the scarcity the eye appeal and i think it is a worthy parallel to have obviously it's been in the nba cards now for a lot longer and i think now it's kinda being a bit overdone the way they're doing the animal prints because they're also starting to print more of them yeah you can tell they're not as case hitty if you will but i i just think they're a welcome addition to the wnba line if they keep them as scarce as they have been especially the first year of select i thought they're very scarce very hard to hit cards absolutely this this card when you talk about i appeal i think i appeal is a concept that is not talked about enough period in i agree extra modern collecting it's something that is almost exclusively talked about in vintage collecting and i i just don't think we should keep it that way i think the eye appeal like you said of this card the design elements the shine the photo the all the aspects of it contributes to a larger picture of saying i think this card looks really fucking good so yes i like i like that you call that out yes i i agree with you i think iappeal is not something many modern collectors or people that are talking about modern cards talk about but it just i can just say this from my experience selling stuff iappeal always sells so much better than perceived rarity or rarity so that's why i like this card because it's iappeal plus perceived rarity right i mean you can you can have a i think i owned a sabrina monopoly i think they called it like the brown parallels like brown out of one twenty four or something it was a hundred and twenty four copies i had in a psa ten nobody wanted that card but you'd go on and you'd see the monopoly gold which are out of five hundred weirdly enough and that's at the one of the golds i think the millionaire gold or something those would sell all day and they're like double what the brown is selling for so whoever says i appeal doesn't matter it hundred percent matters and should be a conversation i love this i love talking about cards that look nice i think like me and you share that common ground i think how we kinda like got talking was that i just like the type of cards that you picked out to put up for sale so it makes sense that you'd focus on good eye appeal so i'm glad that we got to talk about that kinda like grail that you have in your collection thanks for sharing that griff yeah yeah thanks for not buying it from me yeah yeah maybe maybe maybe i'll find my own but i think what i was asking you about that card just to defend myself because i know that i've said a lot of things about sabrina in the past i think there's a certain kind of respect that goes to somebody that you know takes a piece of my my fandom heart she she had the dagger i was in person when she hit the three in the finals and amazing and there's just something about showing my respect to somebody who just you know they shut me right up like shut me up and i gotta pay my respect in some way so at the time that card did speak to me because like you said the i appeal so that's why i reached out it was not because i'm a sabrina collector or a liberty fan that was not the reason i i thought you might have a secret pc yeah can you imagine this whole time i've been like accumulating liberty cards no no that would be a great time to break that news right now too so yeah we will not be breaking that news today i think i'd have to be on something else to to talk about that kind of thing happening okay let's let's move on let's talk about one of the segments that we have each each week which is around the emotional side of collecting i mentioned that what's interesting about the new york liberty is that they've been successful they've spent nearly three decades chasing a championship and they finally got it i mentioned they had six finals appearances before breaking through a couple years ago i wanna ask you as a liberty fan when your team is almost expected to compete for a championship every year you mentioned vegas odds what kinda creates your emotional attachment to the team what what kinda gets you excited besides the the notion of winning or is it all about winning to me it's not to me it's more what are the new things and fun stuff coming out right so i'm pretty sure sabrina hasn't signed now in two years maybe but the addition of i know someone you will show appreciation for as you already have on your shirt maureen johannes in a lot more product yeah super appealing i love maureen johannes i think she is underappreciated in so many facets i'm so glad this year she's been getting more minutes unfortunately it was because sabrina was her but she's balling out i mean she's awesome and she's so fun to watch i i think the emotional side of it is more looking forward to what could come out who's gonna sign who's gonna be a player are are they gonna do any kind of team cards right and i'm very excited i'll just say this now my new favorite player is pauline astia she is insane watching her in person play the spars i'm like she's she's insane she's my new favorite player love her and i cannot wait to start picking up tons of her cards next year when next year's sets come out so that kind of stuff is what really fuels me yeah because it's like okay take take someone like paige right paige is awesome in the mvp race you know up there top five player in the league top ten player in league whatever you wherever you wanna fall in that argument right but i i don't feel any attachment to collecting page cards she's not on the liberty she's not someone that i watched in college unfortunately mainly because of yukon and all that that's that's a different that's a different story but but someone like that it's like i don't necessarily get the excitement it would be kinda like you with the sabrina cards it's like if i find a really cool page card then i would love to you know chase it and pick it up and put it in my collection but someone like pauline i'm just emotionally attached to i need the next thing on the liberty i think she's someone that i'm gonna just pc and collect a ton of her cards but also hope she takes that next step and becomes a great player in the league she's got the liberty on on her jersey that's gonna make her cards go up right all that kind of stuff so i'd say that's kind of the emotional side to me it's not really the winning oh perfect so the winning take that winning helps but but that's never something especially from a pc side of things the winning is isn't something that is a factor in my collecting i mean collecting carmelo anthony for twenty years will do that to you yeah yeah so it's never been something that side of it emotionally is is never been a part i think from a business side when i go to buy cards to sell to other people i think winning's huge right i think when i i don't watch much baseball i used to back in the day but i would i i would buy all these different players and oh this will go up they're gonna be a great player now i just it's like yankees red sox cubs dodgers you buy those winning teams because odds are there's fans and the fans are gonna collect and want something cool in their collection so that that's kinda for me no but i know for a ton of people that's gotta be a huge factor one hundred percent and and once again you've segued me perfectly to where i wanted to bring you which is speaking of fans and fandom the liberty have always had this very passionate fan base when i see a liberty fan i know you're a serious wnba fan over the past past few years though it feels like that franchise has completely exploded because of what we discussed with stardom with the championship barclays center and just the growth of the wnba in general what has kind of the liberty card collecting community felt like over these past couple years too has it changed does it feel different post championship what are the vibes you know i i don't think that i can really speak to that and mainly because i feel like i collect in such a bubble as far as wnba cards go and it's actually something that i'd love to ask you more about and what you've experienced in going to card shows but out here i'm lucky to find a card that's not caitlin or paige i mean it's yeah it's very difficult to find out here there's there's some people i've met locally you probably know them too that are big w collectors but it's more the shared love of the wnba it's not necessarily hey i collect the liberty i think it's more people i've met that know why pc sabrina or know i would buy a cool liberty card that i've met and that's what i really appreciate community wise like jason okay so you're gonna have jason on i bought both of jason's sabrina inscribed jerseys off of him i was like jason i need those and he ran them on whatnot for me when he used to do whatnot streams and i did and i won them and it's like that's the kind of thing that i find cool about the wnba community a lot of times people are more than willing to help you get grail pieces or collection pieces perfect i think i i i helped you get the one card i had it was a teaspoon the tisha teaspoon yeah gold for your your pc because you're like i think the one you had wasn't in a lynx uniform or something yeah and i was like yeah of course let's let's figure it out so that's the aspect that i love as a whole so i know it's not liberty fandom if you will but more just the w collecting aspect i think it's awesome it's a great community so i think it's interesting i like to ask each guest like about the geographical component to collecting i think a lot of collecting is so tangible it's about what you can hold in your hand you talk about how the experience of a card show is unmatched it's just something different and so you mentioned that you're on the opposite coast of where your fandom lives new york city is not socal so when you're not local to your say your team's locality has following the team from afar almost created collecting make it more powerful i suppose is what i'm trying to ask does does distance make the heart grow fonder when it comes to cards or is it do you see it as more of a negative that you're not in new york so you can't get all the new york cards at every show i would say from a fandom perspective that's made my heart very fond because none of the games are blacked out and i can watch every single liberty game on league pass versus if i lived in new york i couldn't but yeah i i think like i was telling you when i first started collecting it was like yeah every show i'm finding a liberty card i'm buying it i'm putting it in my pc nowadays it's so rare and i think if i was in new york i would definitely find a lot more cool stuff there's one card i regret not buying it was at the west coast card show last year a guy had a origins patch autograph which that's one of my kind of niche pcs i collect the gold out of ten patch autos from origins either year it doesn't matter they have the best patches usually he had a stewie gold patch auto and the patch window was the torch from the liberty logo but the number he wanted on it was just like insane i'm like i i will gladly pay you like double of the last comp but i'm not paying that and it just it didn't happen so i think if i was in new york i'd be finding a lot more stuff like that but then at that point it's like okay you pay the local tax on it yeah so i i think it makes it fonder to answer your question because i think it makes me appreciate it more when i do stumble upon something for sure it it really feels like griff so much of your collecting philosophy your north star whatever you wanna call it whatever is you know making you collect is so much of the chase and i love that i find that to be like it's just a through line to everything you're talking about even in the team that you're rooting for it's like you gotta follow them you gotta chase and i i think there's something special to that that only us collectors understand we're it's if you try to explain this to somebody that doesn't collect cards they're not gonna get it but like that chase there's something about it and i think the way you're kinda bringing it through this conversation is is making me think about just like the chase the concept the the way that it moves us and the way that that you kinda respond to that need is so interesting so yeah that's that's pretty neat yeah i i would say that's definitely a number one driver for collecting in a lot of things i also like to do multitudes of things and just learn them i i produce music i used to do like craft plants back in the like i just would like when i find something that i think's cool i'm just like i just dive in i'm like okay i'm going hundred percent in i think it can all be tied back to that feeling of like okay i wanna learn i wanna chase something just experience i mean you meet so many people when you just dive head first into various things you're like i have no idea what i'm doing let me just dive in and meet people and most of the time people in in hobbies like this are just like willing to help yeah you make new friends you never would have made otherwise and and the chase thing it's like for example the new twenty twenty five platinum anniversary baseball set just came out and everybody is loving it i'm like okay let me look into this oh they do variations of the players but you have to know the code on the back which topps does a lot of so like the code on the back of the card is different so i'm like okay next card should i go to i'm finding one in the dollar box right and i and it took me like two or three shows found one got a really good deal and it was just like i was just so happy like yeah i found that chase right so just silly stuff like that but to me it's like i learned a new set i learned a new card i got good trade value somebody else made some money off it right so stuff like that's just so fun and and to me it's it's the chase the relationships learning new things all the above it's it's just and i think the hobby of card collecting card selling in general is is a great way where all of those things intersect one hundred percent and i think they all feed each it's not even just like an intersection it's almost like a cycle or a web right and what what i mean by that is you you talk about kind of this this process driven where you you're like okay i'm gonna discover something new that maybe i think commands some sort of demand in the market for some reason now i'm gonna go apply that knowledge in the value bins i'm gonna go make a decision i'm gonna make a series of choices spend my money and come back and once you if you can find one of those and you find yourself saying well i i think i got a pretty good deal i think i can make a buck off this it puts you in this in group the sense of community the sense of being like you know i i do know this about the cards and i understand what it's worth and therefore i'm part of this group that gets it i think there's something about that that's so human and so fun and i find great joy in it and i don't think necessarily finding that card discovering that card needs to be something that then you put away for twenty years and call your pc it can be something you move the next day i think there is some merit to that and some real fun that can be had so when you talk about the chase the knowledge the relationships like you said it's an intersection but it's also this cycle that where if you keep feeding it and nurturing it it's gonna keep repaying you so you're speaking my language and i am just excited to to hear you talking about it so that's pretty cool there's there's a group of people in the hobby that still love that and do that right it's not hey buying at x percentage selling at x percentage cases which hey some people love doing that and there's a thrill in that too right but then there's there's people that love value binning or learning things about sets from ten years ago nobody else knows and and to me a lot of the times it's just fun to learn it in general if i don't see one of those cards i i don't see one but it just it it keeps things fresh it keeps your mind active yeah and it's great i i really wanna come out there to one of your local card shows and see how it is because i feel like the minnesota stuff has to be crazy right and i know this isn't a this isn't a lynx podcast or a timberwolves podcast i i'm very connected to minnesota due to my partner so i wanna go to a show out there and go with you and just be like okay show me the local scene right because it it's just so different everywhere and i i love that i went to denver last year and met a couple people from x and i was like the scene was so different but it's so lively and you meet new people and new vendors and it it it's just it's that is where i think a lot of my passion comes in in the hobby is that kind of stuff i hear you on that i hear you on that i'm gonna i'm gonna switch us to another passion that you've talked about throughout this podcast episode which is about sabrina i think that's the elephant in the room or the zebra in the in the room maybe but you've collected sabrina heavily over the years what kind of made you gravitate towards her was it intentional you thought maybe she was gonna go up in price you saw the demand was it the timing with panini's first entrance of prism was it something else i just i just wanna know why sabrina i would say probably a little bit of all of those aspects to a certain extent i love watching sabrina play she was one of the players i'd watch prior to like really diving in she's exciting player to watch i i when i play basketball i love shooting threes so anybody that just likes launching threes me i get it instant fan so that drove a lot of it but then the whole first year of prism this is the first time wnba's had prism all that kind of stuff that drove a certain aspect of it because for a time i was just buying any twenty twenty prism i could i could find of you know sabrina sotto like anybody it didn't matter stewie whoever it was just because i i thought that that was gonna be icon i i to a certain extent i think that could still happen one day but i don't think to the extent i used to yeah i actually think the rittenhouse cards are a way better play right now but yeah i think it was it was all of those plus the fact that i just liked watching screenplay and and then going and seeing the liberty in person that you know fateful day four years ago i was just like i'm sold yeah so and and i've always been someone where i'm a player collector like i'm going all in on that player another one you you know is mikayla blake's like i'm all in on mikayla blake's she she'll probably be someone else wherever she goes i'm gonna have like a secondary fandom of wherever she gets drafted because i think she's a very exciting player so all of that it's like need a player to collect okay sabrina here's all these reasons love watching her play liberty fan boom boom boom okay that's what i'm gonna go after and back in the day it was a lot of stewie too i was buying a lot of stewie but i always felt like sabrina was more fun to chase i don't know why stewie's cards seem to show up and it's like okay i have thirty stewie autos but sabrina's don't show up as much so back to the chase i guess always back to the chase is always the the common denominator here of the questions that i had written down that i kinda wanna pick your brain on and see if you get where i'm going with it is this concept around sabrina kinda changing the tune of wnba card collecting i think we have these players in these moments in our hobby that kinda shift the narrative i think clearly the biggest one is caitlin clark we we know that she changed the game she changed the money in the game for the most like that's the big thing that she changed i think sabrina was one of those moments too and maybe she just came a little bit earlier but do you think that sabrina maybe changed the way that wnba card collecting was perceived or behavior in wnba card collecting or am i talking out of my ass here i i think the best way that i would put it and see if this makes any sense to you sabrina to the card collecting world versus caitlin sabrina was the myspace caitlin was facebook she's the one that took everything over right and it really popped off and boomed but there was that boom with sabrina and there was that for for a little bit right and it was also kind of due to covid and that whole crazy bubble if you will but it was there and i remember going to shows back then and i was like you would only see sabrina cards you wouldn't see any of the other wmb cards it'd be that's true ten base of sabrina it's twenty twenty prism and it i don't know what it was back then probably like three or four hundred dollars something stupid back then but i mean that i think that's that's the way i'd describe it it's like it was the first bump up and then caitlin obviously was the floodgates just opening i mean how many cards in your collection do you feel like just 10xed yeah overnight when caitlin kinda blew blew through the wnba right and got drafted i mean sophie cunningham's market is the most ridiculous one of the most ridiculous things i've ever seen in cards any sport it doesn't matter what sport it is that needs to be like a data analysis phd like paper on what the hell is going on there in terms of money because it's inexplicable to me like i get it i understand that it's the radius to caitlyn that creates this sort of yeah cult following and i get it i get that's that's appealing but just the money the the factors that we're talking about here when we think about comparing to somebody like say stewie even we're talking factors of stewie's prices so yeah that that's another tangent that i could i could go on and on about but i think to your point about what sabrina kinda was especially kind of the the comparison or the the idea of compared to caitlyn is so interesting i think you could use the fire analogy of sabrina kinda being the kindling and then caitlyn was just the gas right there on the fire so like i i think sabrina kinda set the stage for what we saw later and i think that her like you said she was the player at least from from my personal perspective she was the player that started occupying physical space in cases at shows i think that is very very important we talk about availability accessibility all these different words we wanna hit on sabrina was the one that kind of entered that space and was able to penetrate it and i think that it it you know we don't talk about sabrina's impact enough but i do think it's something very real and i think for that reason she she has a spot in wnba card collecting history at least in my opinion i agree and i think to me maybe this sounds crazy i'll ask you so the other thing to me is the accessibility of wnba collecting and cards right like i mentioned the rittenhouse sets five hundred cards per i think per per each release in twenty seventeen and eighteen i think it was five hundred cards and then you get the one year of the optic set right with really low print runs and it the accessibility is so low right if you find one of those in a case in twenty twenty one twenty twenty back then odds are you just hit a gold mine or it's like some random player that someone has priced exor like through the roof just because oh well because of sabrina right i know who sabrina is so this card is a gold of whoever let me price it ten x of what it should be worth so yeah to me it was the accessibility for people to collect more which is awesome in my opinion and now it's led to more sets because they've shown there's money in the w space right and again that does go back to caitlin sure but i think it really started with sabrina that first year prism and then just kinda opening it from there and it was honestly quite smart that they went to prism i agree being a premium set right so a sought after set and that and that opened the door so i agree with what you said and the accessibility factor i think is one that isn't really discussed but yeah go go try to find a wnba card in twenty eighteen yeah and get back to me right it's like you're you're not gonna do it right maybe maybe at asia or maybe at plum somewhere in vegas or texas whatever but i i think that that is another factor that's not discussed when you talk about sabrina's impact on card collecting i agree my my last point on sabrina before we kinda keep moving is i think there's certain sets particularly prism that have been co opted by players and what i mean by that is when i think of twenty seventeen prism i think of patrick mahomes when i think of twenty eighteen prism i think of luka doncic and when i think of twenty twenty prism i think of sabrina and it's just it's just what i think of that's what i when i close my eyes and i think about the base design that's the card that comes up and i think that that speaks for itself so that's that's kinda my last point on sabrina i don't wanna talk any more about sabrina i'm like this this has probably been painful for you honestly no no it's it's therapeutic really my therapist would be very proud of me for enduring this right now no okay let's pivot though i've got a couple hard hitting fast questions for you the first one is around this concept that i claim to have coined i don't know if i did but it's called the disrespect index it's this concept that a player is performing really well on the court but their market is not meeting that same performance if you had to pick a liberty player to put on the disrespect index who would you put stewie hundred percent stewie i i mean the the fact breonna stewart's cards sell for so little is mind boggling to me and and i mean kind of goes hand in hand with asia wilson i think asia wilson and her accolades what she does recently too it's not like stewie in seattle right which i guess is an argument but asia it i mean she's the goat and she's doing it right now everybody's witnessing it if you're tuning in her cards are absolutely disrespectful a hundred out of ten and so i think to to a lesser extent stewie's right there i mean the accolades that she has picked up over her career she's still playing awesome yeah i thought she was starting to decline a little bit but then it kinda came out last year she was injured and that's why and now this year she's playing phenomenal again so she's also another one of those players you if you watch brianna stewart play how can you not appreciate brianna stewart i mean unbelievable yeah she's a baller player and and with with such a good dedicated but yet i think underappreciated market like you said i think that's a great pick because a lot of the times a lot of people interpret disrespect index as meaning somebody that's underrated per se like there's somebody that's under the radar maybe there's six woman you know that can't take a take like that but stewie is one of the greats and yet we're still talking on you know episode fifty something that stewie's undervalued it's like yeah i completely agree with that pick i'm gonna hit you with the next one which is a really hard one so if you had to pick a mount rushmore of liberty players do you think you could do it so i have when i was thinking about this i have two ways of viewing it okay i think on one hand if you want the mount rushmore that goes for the historical part of liberty you can easily do that you just go you know like one player from each era people are happy or you just put up sabrina stewie john quell and another maybe maybe just put up becky hammond as the last one i don't know you just put them up there because they won the title i mean if it if it's all about winning then that's who you put up there and i think becky hammond is a great example of exemplifying someone in the wnba that's not just a great player yeah but what a coach i mean how many championships does she have now right is that four i think with with the asus four right three or four yeah and she had an incredible career and she coached in the nba so it's like i i think no matter what becky hammond's on there for me and then it really just goes okay do you wanna do like a like teaspoon on there go all decade team right pick someone from the og starting five i think that's totally acceptable i think i would just put championship team up there if you can add a fifth person and just put the starting lineup up just put the starting lineup okay i i like that answer like i think i think i agree with you that maybe the take of needing to spread it out across decades while a lot of people would appreciate that approach i'm kinda in the winning camp okay i'm in the winning camp when it comes to greatness winning is defined or greatness is defined by winning in my in my opinion so i think i agree with you as much as it hurts me to say those players names i i i think i'm on the same same page as you yeah i think i broke another one of your rules of your questions of four people max but i think you just put the starting lineup up i like that we'll we'll make an exception this time okay okay okay let's move to the kind of our final segment i know we're running out of time here but i i just like talking about cards griff but let's talk about kind of that's great hobby market perspective we talked about your reselling roots or your reselling i suppose perspective we're talking about the liberty's rise in in parallel with the rise of wnba cards in general so i have a couple hobby market perspective questions for you the first one k is a hard hitting one and you know i hope this one makes you think which is do you think that reselling has made you a better collector that is not a hard question i mean absolutely one thousand percent it has okay i think i think until you evolve as someone that resells cards you aren't fully seeing the whole spectrum of things and maybe that's just me myself so a little background i so i've like i said i collected since two thousand three obviously i was a kid back then but back then it was me and my buddy set up a lemonade stand and see how much money we can make to go rip a hobby box for seventy bucks and hope we get something cool right then we sell that cool thing back to the store at seventy percent to get the card we could have just bought in the first place right so to to me when i really started reselling and setting up and being a vendor and all that kind of stuff you really start to see so many other people's perspectives on cards from those people that just entered the hobby and know absolutely nothing and there's so many things that they see cards as or somebody that's you know in their sixties seventies eighties that's been collecting a while and how they see cards right and so you just see all these perspectives from reselling you see all these tactics that people throw at you to try to get a good deal which by the way i love i love always seeing new tactics thrown at me right as long as it's not this player sucks you should just give me the card for x amount i'm like that that tactic's never worked okay but i think it absolutely does i think reselling will make you a better collector but i would say only resell if it's something that you enjoy right if it's something that you're gonna be like this is a job i don't like this then don't yeah don't resell cards yeah but for me i'd say absolutely hundred percent and it's made me change my pc over the years so which is awesome i i'm gonna echo everything you said like i completely agree this is like part of the conversation i wanted to get to which is i think it's a i don't think anybody's saying it's bad to be a reseller but i think there is this kind of distaste sometimes that comes with being a reseller but i think the fact of the matter is it's fun it can be fun i have a i have a really good time buying cards keeping them renting them for a couple weeks a couple months a couple years renting a card i like that yeah you know like i might even lose money on it i might even pay my rent on it but but i i enjoyed it while i had it and it was a fun experience and not only that but i kinda get to go into this i don't know i had a friend of mine and i take this as a compliment say you know when caitlin goes to a show she gets into a different kind of killer mindset when it comes to negotiations you get to kinda channel some of that that business like acumen the the fun like love negotiating with people that i really respect i like watching deals go down there's something about it that i'm not ashamed to admit that i like and i think that you know when you find people that understand that maybe reselling isn't always just about the money it's about the process it's about the hunt the chase the knowledge the learning all those components together can make a hobby experience so much more fulfilling and well rounded as opposed to somebody that's just buying when you're on both sides of the table whether that table's physical or online it can expose you to a lot of different perspectives that maybe you didn't see before so you know yeah as i would say from from somebody who both resells and collects it's always good to have both i think it's just the the full experience so i'm glad that you kinda kinda hit on that yeah and and i think especially in the sporting world of the hobby right i think i've never been perceived at least that someone said in front of me someone could have said something behind my back right at a show but it's always a good thing i mean i had a guy when i i set up two weeks ago and i had a guy tell me he's like i wish you would have waited like one more month before you set up because i can tell you set up recently because i'm not buying as much from you he still bought like a ton of cards from me but he's like he told the guy next to me he's like if you get to this guy's table first you're gonna find fifteen dollars cards for five dollars you're gonna find like gems right and he's like i always try to get to his table for and stuff like that makes me feel good and and whenever i deal with people or negotiate with people like i i sold you a bunch of cards recently yep i just i just wanna make it easy i don't want it to be painful it's just like what's your value what's your number and and i think that there's a barrier to access if you don't fully open your mind to everybody perceives value differently yeah right i i know there's a ton of people that it's like the card comped for fifty five dollars but they paid ten dollar shipping so it's a sixty five dollar card and i'm like if you wanna think that then that's fine so your value is sixty five dollars my value is fifty five why don't we value it at sixty right so as long as you're open minded and know the way you value a card is never gonna be the way somebody else values a card and then just have fun negotiating with people make deals easy make deals fun and a lot of the times those people reciprocate it back to you right so i i just i think the whole aspect of selling is and again like i said earlier if it's something you enjoy do it and if not then don't go trade i mean trading isn't i used to back in the day i used to only trade i love trading cards so i don't know i i think maybe in the tcg worlds the reselling is looked at a little differently and i agree i'm not as knowledgeable about it i like opening tcg because it's fun but i think in the sporting world it's just so different there's so many valleys and peaks and avenues and all the sports and all the players and all the sets it's just it's just such a blast i love that i guess one of my we'll we'll kinda keep going i think i have like three questions left for you griff if you don't mind yeah if you had to give one piece of advice to somebody that maybe is embarking you know i've been collecting for a while but i might start reselling a couple things because i'm thinking about the concept of consolidation it's not something i had considered before and i think you know i'm gonna take control of my collection liquidate it into some take some equity out of my collection and and resell it and get something else if you could give somebody that's starting on that journey a piece of advice what what would you tell them i think i would ask them first what is your ultimate goal with it is it to liquidate once and then use that money for something cool are you completely just done with cards and wanna liquidate or is it like i'm dipping my toe in the water and wanna see how reselling goes right because i think the most valuable thing in general in life is time but in the card world time is very valuable i one of my biggest pet peeves at shows if you do not price your cards and you can't just look at them and go i'll take them for sixty bucks i'm not waiting forty five minutes at your table because there's fifty other tables i need to get to before somebody else finds that stewie auto for ten bucks right so i i would say i would ask them that question because if you don't wanna spend the time and learn to resell there's so many great options now you can either consign through people you can send them you know to someone that'll liquidate them for you and take an easy percent but if you really wanna dive in i think my biggest advice would be don't be afraid to make mistakes and know you're not just gonna sell cards and make money every time be willing to take losses that was something i learned like the first six to eight months and yeah i think it helped me grow the most if you will for sure for sure i think that's a good piece of advice that you know we're still learning i think i'm still learning that sometimes i'm like i don't wanna sell this because i'm gonna lose money and then i'm like ugh but i can move it and you know there's all these factors i think that's a a great place to start okay i said i have three questions that was the first the second question is what's next for you griff what's next for your collection or for your reselling business i think collecting west coast card show's coming up i always find something for a pc when i'm at the west coast card show so i'm very excited about that i just picked up a two thousand three carmelo anthony limited logos from exquisite yeah so that's kind of like why i'm not like i'm not sure what's next because that took some prying out of my pc to get i would like to hopefully add some more mikayla blake's before the season starts because she's another one i think her market's too low also someone where i'm like cool i have a bunch of her cards that have gone up in value but i'm also absolutely not selling them right now because i know she's gonna be so good right yeah i think from a resell perspective i i run stack sales or at least try to run a stack sale every other week on x and i think the next thing is i'm focusing on finding more lanes for buying i have certain area i go to a lot of shows physically i use discord but i'm always trying to expand finding other people to build relationships and buy from but then also i would like to get to more shows in the next six to eight months and kinda grow that because i think x is wonderful and that kind of organically grows just as you keep selling if you will so i'd like to just expand meeting more people more relationships that kind of thing right now for sure that's i i wish you good luck i hope it goes well thank you we'll we'll go to our final question which is a question i ask to every guest on this season which is if someone's listening today and they're saying to themselves damn i like this wnba league a lot i like collecting these cards a lot but i haven't settled on a team to root for could you make your five five second thirty second elevator elevator pitch for why the new york liberty should be in their consideration youtube marine johannes highlights period i love that answer that is like the per because i agree like she makes me watch liberty games and i think that's a powerful powerful movement right there absolutely well see if you you get them to see that and then they go watch the team and then they're like oh wow this is a good team i no i should be rooting for the liberty okay we'll we'll leave it there let's not let them go too far now no griff this has been an awesome conversation we've been talking for a while now i don't wanna take any more of your time but i really enjoyed kind of having this well rounded conversation about many aspects of the hobby of what we do with buying selling trading collecting all the things if people are looking to connect with you maybe they wanna buy something from you maybe they wanna sell something from you maybe they wanna talk to you about rakia jackson maybe they just wanna talk to you about liberty cards where can they find you what what platforms and what are your handles so rocky's cardboard r o c k y s cardboard x and instagram that's mainly where i'm active for cards i i am in a couple of discords but i would say just shoot me a dm if if elon's ex isn't connecting with me please just at mention me in a tweet because that's the that's the other thing that not to go off on a tangent at the end here but the dms you don't even get notified anymore and so i've had people trying to connect with me and i and i feel bad so if if you really do wanna connect please do i have boxes upon boxes of wnba cards and especially if you're just like a team collector i'm always happy like hey i've got a fifty dollar budget can you just put something together for me always happy to do that i have full sets of the veteran twenty twenty prism base that i always will give to people real cheap and i think if you have stuff to sell i'm always looking i'm a little bit pickier with w stuff right now but just reach out to me and if you wanna buy cool cards check out my x you can just scroll my feed and see if it's something you're interested in but thank you caitlin this has been so much fun i rarely get to talk about wnba cards or the league except with a few select people that i know locally so this has been fun and and just talking about cards in general is always fun one hundred percent griff it was a pleasure having you on and if you don't follow griff at rockies cardboard shoot him a follow can vouch for him a hundred percent we've done thousands of deals or thousands of dollars of deals now together griff so it's been a pleasure and don't be a stranger we'll talk soon everybody we'll see you on the next episode with some more fun wnba card content thanks everyone