Darth Vader, Paige Bueckers, and a Phrase to Avoid Googling

With Caitlin Clark coming off a record-setting year in the WNBA, there's a “gigantic all-consuming star” void in women's college basketball, which is about to re-enter our shared consciousness (Midnight Madness events started this week!). 

Or is there?

It’s strange that people forget Paige Bueckers was Caitlin Clark before Clark. She's also coming off a whirlwind offseason, eclipsing 2 million IG followers, popping up in NFL social posts, and getting profiled by Vogue during her trip to New York Fashion Week. 

Bueckers is already the projected No. 1 pick in the next WNBA draft where she could end up in LA or alongside Angel Reese in Chicago, depending on how the lottery balls bounce. She can light up a scoreboard, and she’s great at social media.

Which leads us to this conclusion: Paige Bueckers cards are badly underrated. 

Bueckers’ cards are already priced at a high-ish point, but they should be pointing up. And up. And up. Think “Dancing With the Stars.” NIL deals. Nike commercials. Her own curated Topps sets. WWE appearances? (Maybe a bridge too far). Bueckers has figured out the media ecosystem, and she will be using her final year at UConn to take full advantage of that. 

Bueckers’ cards are mostly in the Bowman U line, and Bowman U is such an infant in terms of the market that we don’t yet know if we’ll be looking back on these early sets and “1st” cards and realizing how great they are — or mostly casting them aside like, say, Prizm Draft Picks.

WNBA cards are a relatively new entry into the collecting world — yes, sets have existed since 1998, but they didn’t really explode until 2020, when Panini gave them the Prizm treatment and sets sold out across the country (led by Sabrina Ionescu’s RC). So, really, getting a player in her WNBA jersey doesn’t have that deep of an attachment to collectors. Is a Sky jersey more iconic than a UConn one? If you were playing Family Feud and they asked you to name a team Caitlin Clark played for, would the number one answer be the Fever or Iowa?

With Bueckers, we’re looking at a unique combo of massive talent, the ability to deliver on the hype, a recognizable traditional powerhouse team that will be good, a full year of No. 1 Draft PIck speculation, the ability to thrive in the public eye, and a huge social media following. How much is too much to pay for a piece of that? It depends on how far you think Bowman U (or even Beuckers’ Leaf cards — they got her on an NIL deal early) can go on the open market. 

And if Bowman U isn’t for you? Tread carefully on these grounds, but Bueckers' SI For Kids rookie from 2021 might be the best deal of them all -- if you get the right condition, grade, and centering. Her SIFK pre-dates Bowman U and will ultimately not be as omnipresent. But the prices are currently low relative to her other cards. 

Want some more college names to consider? Lauren Betts and Kiki Rice from UCLA are going to take that team far this year, and Betts is a camera-friendly legitimate model. I have too many of Betts’ cards; she is going to tier up this season and could be a Top 4 pick in the draft. 

@lolotallgirl123

@timea

Like any other normal person (this is normal, right?), the first thing I do after watching an episode of any show is run to Reddit to discover the weird easter eggs I missed. After knocking out the first three “Agatha All Along” episodes on Disney+, I was ready for some trivia. And then I stumbled upon The Funko Controversy. 

“Agatha All Along” has very obviously tried to conceal the true identity of two of its characters — one known as “Teen” (a young witch-y guy) and another known as “Rio.” (Aubrey Plaza’s character) Apparently, Funko accidentally spoiled the true identities of the characters thanks to a back-of-the-box photo of Agatha’s POP figurine, showing “other characters” from the show’s series… with their names. 

I followed the rabbit down the hole – and it kind of came up empty. I’m an accomplished studier of hoaxes — and I doubled down after falling for a white van scam in my younger years. So after seeing a bunch of the same cropped photos and no links to anything, I figured it was a photoshop. But then I found the deleted Funko tweet link and a photo of the box from a British toy store’s site, and… well… bummer. 

The good news? Knowing the spoiler identities (all for the sake of this newsletter!) doesn’t really ruin the show for me — I’m not going to pretend I’m deep enough in Scarlet Witch comic book lore to know who these people are supposed to be. But you might be, in which case I would suggest not googling “Agatha All Along Funko 1472 1473 spoilers.” 

Quick aside on the above section. I was in a Canadian Wal-Mart in 2015 when “The Force Awakens” figures were released. So, using my “collectibles sense,” I grabbed a couple of the main characters and the mysterious “Constable Zuvio” – who I assumed would be a kick-ass bad guy with a major role based on his costume and cool hat. It turned out to be a very wrong assumption; Constable Zuvio appears for a split second in the movie and then had a short appearance years later in The Mandalorian.

But hey, he still has a pretty lengthy backstory. 

My plan now is to hold it and keep it in pristine condition, and hope that one day Disney+ will announce a Zuvio spin-off (starring Paige Bueckers), catapulting his 3.75” figure into a higher realm of “buy it now” pricing.

Quick aside to the aside. Two of my (one of my?) favorite collectibles in the action figure space? The Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker Vintage Collection VC13. 

The figure was released as Anakin Skywalker, but someone along the way figured out that they had the timeline and canon messed up and he was already Vader at that point, so Kenner changed the printing to be Darth Vader in later runs. So it’s the same exact figure, but two different names. The error and the fix were made in equal number, so both run about the same amount to buy. 

I somehow managed to get my hands on both in real time as I saw them at a toy store and figured something weird was going on. I love them and think there’s more upside — but I’m also not buying more, at their $150 price tag (Anakin example here/Darth Vader here)

Last note before we wrap this one up… You may have read the viral story of Derrick Anderson, who is running for Congress in Virginia. He released a campaign photo with a family that wasn’t his — it turns out he’s not married and has no kids and explained it as him just posing with his friend’s family. Wherever you land on this story (honest misunderstanding vs. overt obfuscation), if you immediately thought to yourself, “I should check eBay and see if anyone is selling one of his campaign postcards with that photo…” (note: they are not; he hasn’t made mailers with the photo…yet), you will enjoy this newsletter every week.

Thank you for reading. We hope this was fun! Please send all complaints to [email protected]!