WNBA trading cards - anyone collect?

[cdubbz]

I've recently gotten back into trading cards as a hobby and while I haven't purchased any WNBA cards just yet, it's been on my radar. Ive been searching ebay and prices are sky rocketing for cards. The WNBA boom is happening all around.

[Doctor MJ]

I've recently gotten back into trading cards as a hobby and while I haven't purchased any WNBA cards just yet, it's been on my radar. Ive been searching ebay and prices are sky rocketing for cards. The WNBA boom is happening all around.

I do! I got back into collecting cards during the pandemic and have focused on basketball. More mens than womens, but definitely women's too and I know the collecting landscape generally if you have any questions, though to be clear I'm really not doing it with a financial goal in mind so there's a lot of stuff about selling cards that I don't have direct experience with.

One relevant distinction I can make in terms of collecting: When I was a kid, I was mostly buying packs of cards in a shop. Since getting back in, I'm mostly buying singles on ebay.

In terms of who I collect, it probably comes to the surprise of no one here that Maya Moore's been my main.
Others that come to mind: Cynthia Cooper, Lauren Jackson, Napheesa Collier.

[cdubbz]

I've recently gotten back into trading cards as a hobby and while I haven't purchased any WNBA cards just yet, it's been on my radar. Ive been searching ebay and prices are sky rocketing for cards. The WNBA boom is happening all around.

I do! I got back into collecting cards during the pandemic and have focused on basketball. More mens than womens, but definitely women's too and I know the collecting landscape generally if you have any questions, though to be clear I'm really not doing it with a financial goal in mind so there's a lot of stuff about selling cards that I don't have direct experience with.

One relevant distinction I can make in terms of collecting: When I was a kid, I was mostly buying packs of cards in a shop. Since getting back in, I'm mostly buying singles on ebay.

In terms of who I collect, it probably comes to the surprise of no one here that Maya Moore's been my main.
Others that come to mind: Cynthia Cooper, Lauren Jackson, Napheesa Collier.

Awesome that you are back into it too and collecting WNBA as well. I'm trying to get better and having an eye for imperfections in raw cards. Down the line i will probably grade my raw cards if i ever go down the hobby box path, but currently doing singles with retail boxes here and there.

I've watched countless youtube videos about the hobby and so far my goal has been to collect PSA10 Warriors players while also picking up packs here and there. Antawn Jamison, Vonteego Cummings, Podziemski, Trayce Jackson-Davis, Moses Moody are psa 10 cards i have purchased.

Today I picked up raw cards of Jacy Sheldon, Arike, and Sabrina. There's plenty of 2024 boxes for sale, but $40-50 for 24 cards is steep for me. I was in a few bids on Ebay for PSA10 Kelsey Mitchell which I got outbid and it sold for $37. There was a PSA10 Jacy Sheldon that sold for like $70. I've jumped on a few Sue Bird PSA10 auctions, but i'm not budging over a certain amount. Would love to have more WNBA player card especially with the amount of team switching that is and will be happening.

[cdubbz]

Just got a 2024 Sue Bird '24 Panini Gold Millionaire Shimmer Prizm 291/500 PSA10 for $34 off ebay.

Yikes. im in deep fellas.

[zike_42]

Just got a 2024 Sue Bird '24 Panini Gold Millionaire Shimmer Prizm 291/500 PSA10 for $34 off ebay.

Yikes. im in deep fellas.

Love it. I got a 2022 Lauren Jackson Panini Revolution signature a few years ago which I love (she is out basketball goat after all).

Prices are just too expensive for me now all the Clark hunters ate pushing up prices. Maybe next season's set won't be as pricey with her not being a rookie any more.

[cdubbz]

Okay I purchased 2 Panini Prizm Monopoly blaster boxes for fun -- got a Kelsey Plum Gold Millionaire Shimmer and a bunch of base cards including Caitlin Clark base card. It's definitely fun to 'chase' cards, but it can get pricey. It was fun to open though and now i have a solid small collection of base WNBA cards to just have.

I think i'll go back to buying singles in the future. Just get what I want.

[cdubbz]

Target BoGo 50%off WNBA Monopoly blaster boxes fellas.

[Ito]

I want to start collecting cards I had some dope ones back in the day when I was younger marvel cards and Pokémon cards and some basketball cards but I gave them away I took a trip overseas one time and somebody asked me for a spider man card and I gave them away and to another kid my mom used to take care of for a friend he would go over my house and my sister would help him with school work and he would be in my room playing with my n64 and looking at my cards and I gave him all my Pokémon cards one time lol but now that I’m older I want to collect some cards I’ll buy some sports cards next time I go in a place that have them.. definitely gon start a lil collection nba and wnba

[cdubbz]

I want to start collecting cards I had some dope ones back in the day when I was younger marvel cards and Pokémon cards and some basketball cards but I gave them away I took a trip overseas one time and somebody asked me for a spider man card and I gave them away and to another kid my mom used to take care of for a friend he would go over my house and my sister would help him with school work and he would be in my room playing with my n64 and looking at my cards and I gave him all my Pokémon cards one time lol but now that I’m older I want to collect some cards I’ll buy some sports cards next time I go in a place that have them.. definitely gon start a lil collection nba and wnba

That is awesome!

Feel a lot of adults want to start back collecting for fun after having a few cards as kids.

[Ice Man]

I went on Amazon and all the boxed cards seem to be from 2024. No chance at Paige Bueckers, no purchase from me!

[rmontro]

I still have a fascination with card collecting. But overall, as hobbies go, I find it to be one of the more disappointing ones. There's nothing you can do with cards other than look at them. I guess that's my main problem with it. I still think they're kind of neat though. My favorite card that i have is a Star Trek card of Yeoman Colt from the pilot, signed by the actress who played her, Laurel Goodwin. I've always had a thing for redheads. She's also known for being in an Elvis movie, Girls Girls Girls.

[Doctor MJ]

I still have a fascination with card collecting. But overall, as hobbies go, I find it to be one of the more disappointing ones. There's nothing you can do with cards other than look at them. I guess that's my main problem with it. I still think they're kind of neat though. My favorite card that i have is a Star Trek card of Yeoman Colt from the pilot, signed by the actress who played her, Laurel Goodwin. I've always had a thing for redheads. She's also known for being in an Elvis movie, Girls Girls Girls.

So, speaking as a card collector, yeah, it's weird. Why do I feel a pull toward these little piece of cardboard that I largely store in the dark?

The clear starting point is that it was just what we sporty kids did when I was growing up.

I quite collecting a long time ago, only to get back into it during the pandemic, at which time I found it absolutely fascinating to understand how the hobby had evolved in the decades since I was a kid. It's definitely a nerd/geek rabbit hole for me.

Here's one thing I'll say though: If you have room to have full size art in your mansion, then I don't know why you'd bother with tiny little cards...but if you don't, a tiny little card is a space efficient way to collect your aesthetic.

One thing that's a part of card collecting that is certainly a bit arbitrary is the focus on rookie card. Not looking to defend this necessarily, but here's an image of my favorite WNBA-related card that I own:



So this is Maya Moore, who I consider to be the best women's basketball player who's ever played, on a card from when she was a McDonalds' All-American in high school, and it is an autograph. When Moore posed for and then signed this card, she was a high schooler who had no idea what her basketball career would entail. The young woman we see there is just someone in the process of seeing what she could become.

I just find that to be really cool.

I should note, I'm not really keen on "prospecting", as in buying cards of super-young players not in the pros yet as a bet on their future, but from a perspective history, knowing now what Moore became, this card speaks to a moment.

[rmontro]

When I was a kid and was collecting baseball cards, I used to be a completist. Meaning that if I collected something I wanted a complete set. Then when I got older and card collecting had a boom (in the '90s I think it was), I learned that you were actually penalized value-wise if you had a complete set. A complete set was actually worth less than the value of all the cards. That never made sense to me. Oh well.

People at that time were interested mainly in the flashy "insert" or "chase" cards. I never thought it made sense to buy a pack of cards and only one in the pack was considered worth anything. I do like the looks of some of those flashy cards though, with the die cuts and the holographic technology.

The one thing I liked about the plain old fashioned baseball cards I had when I was a kid was you could look at the card and it usually had the player's statistics on there. You could tell how good of a player it was by looking at the card. And you could look at the cards and it helped you learn the players. As I got older though, I started to consider spectator sports a waste of time, although obviously I still partake. Just not as much as I used to.

[Doctor MJ]

When I was a kid and was collecting baseball cards, I used to be a completist. Meaning that if I collected something I wanted a complete set. Then when I got older and card collecting had a boom (in the '90s I think it was), I learned that you were actually penalized value-wise if you had a complete set. A complete set was actually worth less than the value of all the cards. That never made sense to me. Oh well.

People at that time were interested mainly in the flashy "insert" or "chase" cards. I never thought it made sense to buy a pack of cards and only one in the pack was considered worth anything. I do like the looks of some of those flashy cards though, with the die cuts and the holographic technology.

The one thing I liked about the plain old fashioned baseball cards I had when I was a kid was you could look at the card and it usually had the player's statistics on there. You could tell how good of a player it was by looking at the card. And you could look at the cards and it helped you learn the players. As I got older though, I started to consider spectator sports a waste of time, although obviously I still partake. Just not as much as I used to.

Makes sense.

For me, when I was a kid, it was mostly about going to card shops with friends, and then buying & opening packs together, and then possibly making trades.

I too had an aversion to inserts, as well as anything else that was making it so that most the cards in my packs were explicitly "not special".

Since I got back in, I've largely just been buying singles online, so you lack the excitement of opening up a pack...but you also avoid that sense of gambling. I'm on a card forum and there those who are still "wax" oriented (packs/boxes/cases to open) seem like gambling addicts to me, which I would like to avoid like the plague.

For me at this point, it's about having something concrete that represents phenomena of history I'm interested in, which is mostly about sports, and nowadays mostly about basketball, but not always. Example: I'm a physics teacher and I have an Albert Einstein card from the 1920s. To me, that's cool!

[rmontro]

Since I got back in, I've largely just been buying singles online, so you lack the excitement of opening up a pack...but you also avoid that sense of gambling.

Wow, is that an Albert Einstein tobacco card? Lol. I'm joking, but the more I think about it, maybe it is...

I don't really collect much these days, but the last several bunches I've been buying individual cards online, like you. That way I'm sure to get what I want, without all the filler, and the gambling. But having said that, I will say this: There are few things as fun and exciting in card collecting as sitting down and opening a bunch of packs. Unfortunately, there is also usually a sense of disappointment afterward because you usually end up with a ton of doubles. Oh well.

I can tell you are much younger than I am, because when I was growing up there were no card shops, and most of the cards came with a stick of bubble gum. I don't even remember inserts being a big thing back then either, they weren't flashy, and I found them mostly annoying, because I just wanted the regular player cards.

[Doctor MJ]

Since I got back in, I've largely just been buying singles online, so you lack the excitement of opening up a pack...but you also avoid that sense of gambling.

Wow, is that an Albert Einstein tobacco card? Lol. I'm joking, but the more I think about it, maybe it is...

I don't really collect much these days, but the last several bunches I've been buying individual cards online, like you. That way I'm sure to get what I want, without all the filler, and the gambling. But having said that, I will say this: There are few things as fun and exciting in card collecting as sitting down and opening a bunch of packs. Unfortunately, there is also usually a sense of disappointment afterward because you usually end up with a ton of doubles. Oh well.

I can tell you are much younger than I am, because when I was growing up there were no card shops, and most of the cards came with a stick of bubble gum. I don't even remember inserts being a big thing back then either, they weren't flashy, and I found them mostly annoying, because I just wanted the regular player cards.

Yup, the Einstein card is a tobacco card. Really back before World War II, card collecting wasn't primarily a "boy thing". Adults of both sexes were doing it. Then after the war, baseball cards really separated themselves from everything else as it became a phenomenon among boys of the Baby Boomer generation.

Re: age. So I'm in my 40s for reference. I had some cards in the '80s, but it was the early '90s where it became THE thing all my peers were doing with an eye toward Beckett price guides. Then the baseball strike happened and the market crashed. With that souring of the milk, many (including myself) stopped collecting and the industry was forced to figure a whole bunch of stuff out - which included a bunch of bankruptcies.

Anyway, cheers rmontro! Glad you're here!

[rmontro]

I had some cards in the '80s, but it was the early '90s where it became THE thing all my peers were doing with an eye toward Beckett price guides. Then the baseball strike happened and the market crashed. With that souring of the milk, many (including myself) stopped collecting and the industry was forced to figure a whole bunch of stuff out - which included a bunch of bankruptcies.

I'm pretty sure the card market would have collapsed even without the baseball strike. There was just too much product out there.
That was a great time in a way though. I used to be able to drive through a city and find a card shop every few blocks. It was fun while it lasted.

[Doctor MJ]

I had some cards in the '80s, but it was the early '90s where it became THE thing all my peers were doing with an eye toward Beckett price guides. Then the baseball strike happened and the market crashed. With that souring of the milk, many (including myself) stopped collecting and the industry was forced to figure a whole bunch of stuff out - which included a bunch of bankruptcies.

I'm pretty sure the card market would have collapsed even without the baseball strike. There was just too much product out there.
That was a great time in a way though. I used to be able to drive through a city and find a card shop every few blocks. It was fun while it lasted.

Oh absolutely. Sadness was inevitable.