As suggested in the title, this blog will tell you everything you need to know about our upcoming WNBA ”Game Face” 2024 Blind Box release. What players are included? Who are the rookies? What kind of parallels and inserts are you chasing? And what are the chances of pulling them? We’ll answer all those questions and more.
BLIND BOX MATH
Each 100% ghost stands 2.75″ tall. They are sold in “blind boxes”, which means you won’t know what ghost you get until you open the box. The 100% blind boxes come in cases, and each case contains 12 blind box ghosts.
Here are the key stats:
- Cases produced = 1,187
- ghosts per case = 12
- Players in the set = 15
- Rookies in the set = 4
- Famous Fans in the set = 1
- Player parallels = 5
- Inserts = 4
- Total unique ghost designs = 99
- Average hits per case = 1
At this point, you’ve probably noticed an abundance of trading card terminology “Parallel”. “Insert”. “Rookie”. “Hit”. If you’ve ever collected trading cards, you know these words well.
There’s a reason the language is the same. When designing this product, we borrowed all the greatest features and innovations from trading cards – like chasing a 1/1 variant of your favorite rookie – and made it part of the ghostwrite blind box experience.
But there’s one important difference between cards and ghosts. Well, two important differences, if you count the fact that ghosts are 3-dimensional. In a typical trading card set, pretty much every player in the league is included. But for 3-dimensional blind box toys, it’s impossible to make a set with hundreds of different players. For our WNBA 2024 collection, we had to narrow it down to 16.
This was by far the most difficult part of the entire process. We’re talking, choose your favorite McNuggets dipping sauce, difficult. Not difficult enough? How about, choose your favorite sneakers, difficult. Still not difficult enough? Fine. We’re talking pick your favorite child, difficult.
We tried our best to have a mix of superstars, rookies, legends: players who represent the past, present, and future greatness of the WNBA. We also made room for one “Famous Fan” (Aubrey Plaza), as a nod to the community and culture of the broader WNBA family.
We’re proud of our selections. But there are plenty of deserving names that didn’t make it in. Timing-wise, we had to finalize our list shortly after the July All-Star break, so we couldn’t take into account postseason performance.
We’re sure our set list will inspire some second-guessing. Shea Serrano has been sending us a “HOW COULD YOU LEAVE OUT NAPHEESA COLLIER??” text every week for the past three months. And Shea is on the payroll! So we’re sure the general public will have their gripes too.
But don’t despair. If your favorite player isn’t in this set, they will definitely appear in a future set. Phee will make her appearance in the 2025 collection (Shea put that in his contract) and will certainly be a top chase figure next year.
THE SET LIST
All dipping sauces and mea culpas aside, here’s the 2024 set list:
There are 12 active players:
- A’Ja Wilson
- Alyssa Thomas
- Breanna Stewart
- Brittney Griner
- Diana Taurasi
- Dijonai Carrington
- Kelsey Plum
- Sabrina Ionescu
- Angel Reese (Rookie)
- Cameron Brink (Rookie)
- Caitlin Clark (Rookie)
- Rickea Jackon (Rookie)
There are 3 legends:
- Becky Hammon
- Dawn Staley
- Lisa Leslie
And, there is one famous fan:
- Aubrey Plaza
THE BASE DESIGN: GAME FACE
The base design for our WNBA 2024 blind box is called “Game Face”. Each player is represented in their team uniform, with color-coordinated sneakers and crowns.
“Game Face” is named for how we portray the player’s expression. For this first release, we chose an expression that matched the intensity and ferocity of the 2024 season. Hence, “Game Face”.
There are four rookies in the 2024 set: Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Cameron Brink, and Rickea Jackson. Notice that each of their ghosts has a “rookie patch” on the jersey:
This detail was inspired by the “RC” logo that adorns the front of modern-day rookie cards – arguably the greatest product innovation of the past half century. So we figured we should borrow it.
PARALLELS AND INSERTS
Beyond the base design, every WNBA player has five “parallels”, and Aubrey Plaza has four.
So what’s a ghost “parallel”?
ghost parallels function just like trading card parallels. In a set of baseball cards, a particular player will have a base card. This is the most commonly produced version of that player’s card. After the base card there are other variants – or “parallels” – of that same card (same player and same image). The parallel variants have different visual elements, and they are produced in much lower numbers, making them more rare and more valuable to card collectors.
Just like cards, ghost parallels are ultra-rare variants of base “Game Face” design. Here, you can see the base design for A’ja Wilson, alongside her five parallels: Victory, Bet On Women, Gold, Chrome, and Fire.
Let’s take them one by one:
The first player parallel is Victory. It has the same coloring as the player’s base ghost but features a celebratory facial expression, like the expression one might have after winning a basketball game. Only 50 Victory ghosts exist for each player. Your chance of pulling a Victory parallel from a case is roughly 1 per 1.5 cases.
Next is the Bet On Women branded parallel. Only the 15 WNBA players in the collection have a Bet on Women parallel. We wanted to make one for Aubrey Plaza but she told us that unless we could top THIS purple look from the 2014 Golden Globes, the color was shut down for all of eternity. Only 25 Bet On Women ghosts exist for each player. Your chance of pulling one is roughly 1 per 3.2 cases.
Next up are the three metallic parallels – Gold, Chrome, and Fire. These parallels feature the same game face, jersey and sneakers as the base design but wear different metallic-colored crowns. These three parallels are extremely, extremely rare. There are only 10 Gold ghosts for each player; only 5 Chrome ghosts for each player; and just ONE Fire ghost for each player. The odds of pulling each are – 1/7 cases, 1/14 cases, and 1/66 cases, respectively.
It’s worth noting that these three metallic parallels will appear in every future ghostwrite Blind Box collection. This includes all future WNBA collections, and all other sport and non-sport collections. Now would be a good time to start making some room on your shelf for these true collectibles.
The penultimate chase ghosts are the three surprise “trophy” inserts. Unlike the others, they do not feature a specific player likeness. Instead, they have a chromed out trophy vibe, with the words “WNBA 2024” printed across their chests. The Gold trophy insert is limited to 10; the Chrome trophy insert is limited to five; and the Fire trophy insert is a one-of-one.
If you didn’t remember that penultimate means “second to last”, then you’ll be excited to know that there is one last and final insert in the collection: a ghostwrite branded 1/1 ghost. Like the Fire ghosts, this is a true 1/1: the rarest of rare. Like the trophy inserts, we’re keeping the design a surprise. But here’s a glimpse of what you’ll be chasing:
We plan to feature a ghostwrite branded 1/1 insert in all subsequent blind box collections, but the design will be different in each release.
TRANSPARENT SUPPLY
Every 100% ghost in the collection features numbering printed at the bottom of the foot. If, for example, you were to pull the immediately aforementioned, extremely rare, 1/1 ghostwrite chase ghost, you’d see the following numbers printed on the foot:
The first number indicates the month and year that the ghost was designed. In this case, October 2024. The second number corresponds to the number of ghosts that exist. Since this is a 1/1 ghost, the last number after the period is 1.
For another example: if you pulled a A’Ja Wilson Gold /10 parallel, you would see “1024.10” printed on the bottom. The number “10” at the end indicates that there are only 10 of these ghosts in existence.
Production transparency supports true collectability. By being transparent and open about the scarcity of our ghosts, we create long-term value for collectors. That’s why we’ve made it as easy as possible to know, for each design, exactly how many ghosts exist.
PLAYER EXCLUSIVES
ghostwrite was founded by a team of lifelong card collectors. Throughout this blog post, we’ve talked about all the lessons and insights we drew from trading cards when designing this set. But in addition to being card collectors, we’re ALSO a team of sneakerheads. So we took a couple lessons from sneakers, too.
Most importantly: the concept of the “player exclusive”. Player exclusive sneakers are specific colorways made exclusively for players. They’re never sold to the public; they’re gifted direct to the players themselves.
We did the same thing here. For each player, we created a unique /5 player exclusive parallel. And we’re gifting each player their five PE ghosts. Here’s what they look like:
To be clear: you can’t get these PE ghosts in the cases that you buy. They weren’t packaged into any of our blind boxes; they aren’t for sale. It’s possible you’ll see them someday on the secondary market. But if you do, know they came directly from the player herself (or, perhaps, an extremely close and lucky friend of the player, in the event they gifted them to someone else).
In addition to the Player Exclusive 100% parallels, we also created a series of 400% and 1000% ghosts, used only for seeding and promotion (again: not for sale, and not part of the Blind Box product). We’ll publish more information on those in a future blog post.
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So there you have it. From the set list and the odds, to the parallels and the inserts, you now know everything there is to know about ghostwrite x WNBA “Game Face” 2024.
We couldn’t be more excited to share this collection with you. And we couldn’t be more honored to partner with the WNBA and WNPBA and help tell the story of their incredible, unforgettable 2024 season.
ghostwrite 
