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Welcome to the Stacking Slabs, a podcast for sports cards collectors. There's been a tremendous amount of change to our Hobby over the last few years and the one constant has been the passion from the collecting community. Stacking Slabs is built by the collector and lives to tell stories for the collector.
What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to Stacking Slabs. This is your hobby content alternative flagship time. This drops on Christmas Eve.
I have to get my content calendar all organized. I am trying to bank a bunch of episodes, in a recording session here. I'm living in a time of uncertainty at the time of recording. I could have my third daughter any day now.
So I am trying to do whatever I can to make sure that the train keeps running, and a lot of these thoughts and episodes and topics that are coming, throughout the holiday season are things that I wanted to get to, and I'm fortunate to be in a position right now to be able to deliver content to you around the holiday season.
Hopefully, you're with your family, friends, loved ones, and, hopefully, you get to talk cards or you get to open up some packs or, maybe get a big pickup.
That is what it's all about. I still associate sports cards with Christmas and the holidays, based on my youth and what I used to ask for. So whether it's for you or maybe for your children, 'tis the season to celebrate sports cards.
And I wanna thank Inferno Red Technology, the engineering team behind some of the biggest names in sports and collectibles like DC Sports 87, Compsi, Collectors, Upper Deck, and eBay from AI powered solutions for startups to full stack platforms for industry leaders.
Their team can tackle your toughest technology challenge. They build awesome software for the hobby, leagues, and fans, and for everyone in between.
You can see what they can build for you at infernored. com. Thank you to my friends at inferno red technology for sponsoring the flagship episode of stacking slabs.
This episode is going to be, fun. It's going to be reflective. That's what we do here on the flagship dig into the psychology, share my perspective, around my collecting this year.
I wanna start the episode by naming something that took me maybe a whole year to notice. Again, this is when I spend time thinking about not only content, but thinking about my collecting.
And this episode will be maybe a reflection of both of those this year, but my collection changed in 2025. I don't think necessarily when I say that it's the way people usually mean it.
It's not about bigger cards, although I got some cool cards, and I shared that recently. It's not about rare cards. It's not about price, but it's about my personal relationship with collecting.
And yesterday, it's on the feed if you haven't checked it out already. I dropped an episode on my five favorite pickups of the year, and this that episode was all about cards.
That episode is about what changed behind them. Because when I look back at how I collected this year, the shift is clear. I stopped explaining cards, and I started explaining myself.
The earlier in my collecting journey and career, I felt the need to justify every choice, whether it was the set history, the parallel context, the market logic, all of these things.
That's what I felt like I had to do with myself, and, of course, that came through through content. And that stuff certainly still matters, but it stopped being the point.
In 2025, I cared more about why a card stayed with me than why it mattered to everyone else. Without a shout of a doubt, and I haven't gone through this practice, but I know for sure I bought fewer cards this year.
But I spent more time with each one that I got. I got sick of spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on cards and getting them and just putting them in my case.
To me, if I don't have a desire to spend time with the cards, then those cards likely aren't cards that are in my collection for the right reason.
Some cards sat in my head for months before I acted, and some never made it past that thinking stage.
And for the first time, really, that I noticed, I started talking openly about that part. The cards I didn't buy, the auctions I walked away from, the trade offs I made without regret.
That was new. I've said this, and I'll say it again. I do believe that the most impressive collections are built and designed with restraint in mind.
And I know that might sound counterintuitive, but in order for collections to evolve in a way that are admirable to us as the collector and others appreciate or it stops others in their tracks, most of the time, there is restraint shown, and you don't see that restraint on the surface because that individual collector's constantly saying no to awesome cards that are coming their way via auction or direct messages or whatever it might be marketplaces.
But that individual has to say no a lot of times to be in the position to say yes to the cards that fit nicely into the collection and are cards that that collector won't soon forget.
Personally, I stopped pretending every decision that I was making felt clean while I like to take care of my hygiene, shower, do all those things.
I am not really a clean operator running this business. I'm not really a clean collector. I think I thought that that was the way to go about building a collection where it was like, alright.
Let's have some structure. Here are the cards I want. Here's my list. And I've talked about that on stacking slabs and this transfer transformation from being more proactive to reactive.
And I think the nature of it is in these pickups that I've had throughout the years, You don't know what's going to come your way.
So so much of the way cards are introduced to us is they're introduced to us, and we don't know that we're expecting it.
And so you can't be clean in your process. You can't be organized in a way where you're constantly on offense. And so I make decisions and sometimes because I just wanna go.
I wanna I wanna get the card. I wanna make a decision for stacking slabs. I just wanna push out new content. I wanna move, move, move. Don't need it to be clean. I don't need it to be organized.
I wanna learn from the publishing the episode that I didn't really think too much about or the buying the card that looks really cool and might fit in my collection, but I won't really know until I get it.
I wanna learn from those experiences, and I've chosen this year to learn from those experiences because those experiences are gold.
And so some of the cards surprised me after I owned them, and some mattered less than I expected. Some certainly mattered more.
I talk about that too. Not to be right, but to be honest. At some point this year, my collection stopped feeling like progress to track, and it started to feel like a mirror. Started to rec remind me of why I'm here.
It was a reflection of a lot of different things, reflection of my time As a, as at the time of recording, soon to be father of three, who is trying to run his own business and be a good husband, there's not a lot of time.
But I spend time on collecting because it makes me happy.
I reflect on my energy that I have for this space, and here is something very evident to me and why I'm not hanging it up after one year here at Stacking Slabs or full time after one year and going to take a job at in tech.
Because when I reflect on this experience and reflect on collecting, my energy go is is higher right now than it wasn't last year, and that has nothing to do with the market, the values, what's happening.
This space is so interesting and fascinating to me.
My collection is so interesting and and fascinating to me. And those two things, working in an industry that's getting ready to grow and scale and building a collection that is more for me than ever before excites me.
So my energy is up. The other thing that is up is my patience. My patience for a lot of stuff. My patience for buying cards that, or waiting to buy cards that I truly want desire.
My patience to say no to cards that are coming my way that might be something I like, but I just don't think it is. My patience with other elements of this hobby that my I might not might not be for me or I might not agree with.
I'm I'm more patient than I was, and I'm not a patient person. I think a lot about what I care about protecting, and I care a lot about the position of the collector in this space.
And I hope if you're a longtime listener of stacking slabs, you understand that. I am not building up anymore in my collection.
I don't I don't consider I need to buy a $20,000 card this year. I need to get this grail that other people say. I'm not building up. I'm building in. And so I want this episode to be a reflection of that shift.
And I if you've listened to the top five pickups episode, this is kind of the other side of the coin. I'd encourage you go check that episode out. It's on it's literally the next episode behind this one.
But it's the thinking, the restraint, the pauses. And if your collection feels louder than you want it to feel, I hope this conversation will land. And so let's talk about this change.
I would ask you to do one thing before we get into this. If you're not following stacking slabs already, the the easiest way you can support stacking slabs is to hit follow wherever you're listening to stacking slabs.
If you are already following stacking slabs, would love little five star, or if you think I'm doing good, review.
A little review on wherever you're listening to it, trying to continue to improve discoverability. So the real theme of this episode is how I think now versus how I used to think.
I don't want this to be a recap episode. This is not going to be about wins. This is about how my relationship with collecting changed, and it's not new this year.
There's always change every point each and every year, and it's something that I recognize and it's something that I truly appreciate and admire about collecting.
It is an evolution. If your collection feels heavier than it should be, hopefully, something we talk about resonates. If someone looked at my collection today, what would they learn about how I think?
One of the observations is I stopped explaining cards and started explaining my self. And that's an interesting dynamic because we're in the hobby. We like to talk about cards.
But I think it's really important to not talk about something that I read or why I saw another collector buy this or why this set matters, but more come from the lens of what is the story that I have to tell about why this card is in my collection.
I've tried to talk less about what the card is, and I try to talk more about why it mattered to me. I need the cards that are in my collection to matter to me.
If they don't matter, it's I ask myself, what am I doing? And when I realize in spending time with my my collection, if there's a card that just doesn't matter, then I'm selling it.
I'm getting rid of it because I am on a chase, and I'm very hungry to find cards that matter to me. I no longer feel the need to justify taste through history or market.
Oh, I should be collecting this era because my favorite players in it, and it only makes sense. Well, there's a disconnect if the cards itself aren't my my favorite from that era.
So you have to constantly evaluate, or I constantly evaluate all the factors that way and try to make decisions based off of that. When I stopped needing validation from other people about purchases that I'm making, that was growth.
I hardly ever I don't know if I I can't think of one time, and maybe there's a time somebody that's listening that's a buddy that I checked in with them.
But I I don't seek counsel when I buy cards. I don't need to. I don't really care about what you think about the card.
It's my card. And the idea that I don't need to seek counsel about a card and a purchase and a price is really encouraging for me. I was thinking I'm thinking about a purchase I just made the other night, and it was a card I needed.
And I'll share the card, actually, because at the time of the recording, I bought this card last night, and this card kicks ass. It it I'm excited talking about it.
But I'm I've talked about Panini one and one basketball and how much I adore this product, and I am building out team sets. And I had I was it just been crushing the twenty four twenty five gold team set.
I went on a a, spree, finding my guys and and grabbing them. And then last night, just doing the safe searches, there was a Tyre the Tyrese Halliburton popped up.
And he's the central point for anything Pacers related for me that I'm doing. And so I I didn't even I didn't even see if I didn't check card letter.
I didn't look at a comp. The card was listed for $389. 49. And I looked at it and said, it there was it was there was no best offer, and I didn't even consider not buying it in that moment because $3.
89 49, you might do all the resource checking, and you might say, oh, well, that's a $100 over comps.
And I I still maybe after this recording, I'll check and see if one had sold. But to me, spending $400 on that card was worth every penny, and it was fit right within my kind of, level of comfort.
And that to me is something where you don't have to check a bunch of sources. You just see a card, and you're like, yep.
That feels right. I'm gonna buy it. So that's trusting my own signals. And I think when I explain the fact that I'm building out this team set, Tyrese Haliburton Burton's the central force for anything Pacers related that I'm building.
That should qualify and mean more than me digging into and trying to sell someone why Panini one and one matters and why this card is great.
Confidence in collecting shows up as clarity. Clarity. It doesn't always show up as volume. Another observation, fewer cards, longer conversations made fewer pickups, fewer posts across the board.
But by buying fewer cards, it allows me and affords me the opportunity to enjoy the cards that I've purchased more, have them mean something, have them be memorable, remembering the whole thing from the way I bought the card to the way it came to me, to the moments I had with the card at the beginning, to filing it away in my collection to going and spending time with it to seeing something on the card I didn't notice when I bought it, all of those things.
When each card earns more space, it allows me as a collector to appreciate it more. That those moments where I wasn't buying or no cards had popped up and it was quiet, that silence became part of my process.
There's something to be said about a card that holds your attention for weeks that you bought, and I felt that this year with several cards.
It is not always good or for me is not always good to go rushing to the next card. That Halliburton was the first card I had purchased post Reggie Wayne black finite 2012 black finite.
And the only reason and I was cool with sitting on the bench for a while because that's a big pickup. But the only reason I bought I the main reason I bought it, that Halliburton, is because I needed it. It was like, I need this card.
This feels right. There is this feeling you have when a card pops up, and if you hesitate, it's, you just walk away. I have found that the hesitation is a signal. And when I hesitate, that means you don't need it.
That's because I'm slowing down. I think momentum feels good, but residency feels right. I I started naming trade offs out loud, talk openly about what I did not buy. These are conversations a lot of times too to myself in reflection.
I say what a card cost me beyond the money. And there are things, a lot of things, time, energy, money, or not money, but time, energy, resources, all those things, those cost something.
And I've I've treated my collection in a way as being exclusive, and this is what I want, and that is part of the value.
When I buy a card now, I try to understand what I gave up, whether it's money straight out of the account, cards. Try to reflect on that.
Because when you when I reflect on that, I understand for the next deal if there was something I can learn from the last. I have found and I have learned in 2025 more than ever before that trade offs sharpen direction.
There is a there's always cards that might not be apparent or evident in my collection that might be blocking the right next move to be made.
And if I don't come to the realization and if I don't spend the time with my cards, it's something that I'll never observe.
I care less about being right, and I k care way more about being honest. I hope you realize throughout the history of this show, maybe especially this year, is I wanna share my doubts.
I wanna share my misses. I wanna share the things that didn't necessarily mature or something I was excited about that fizzled.
Like, I wanna be as transparent as possible because if I'm transparent as possible with the content I'm sharing and how I'm thinking about my collection, I'm hoping you as a listener are gaining value from that, and that's what this exchange is all about.
I think there's this important moment that happens after we buy a card, card, and there are these lessons about this.
And we don't get the lessons unless we spend a moment to reflect. And I don't know what type of collector you are, but there's many different profiles of collectors.
And maybe for you, there's too much volume coming in that you can't reflect on everything, and that's just the way you like to collect, which is fine.
But if you have the space to reflect on each purchase you you make, then the likelihood of you being confident around the next time you buy a card goes up, at least as it has for me.
Honesty builds more trust than certainty. I can tell you, I overreacted on some cards this year, and I bought them. And then something else I wanted more popped up, and so I'd have a card for a couple months.
And I'd end up getting rid of it because the North Star type card would appear. And I'm trying to think through how do I make less of that happen this year, and how do I be more certain?
But that only comes with the sharpened focus, and that comes from mastering restraint, which I am no master restrain. I'm still trying to learn. Being right feels good, but I have learned that being honest builds something special.
I there have been moments in my collecting career where I have considered whatever I'm collecting to be some sort of status or some sort of maybe scoreboard in a way, or I'm collecting player x, so I need these certain cards in order to be in this tier or this status.
That's ridiculous.
The more I think about that, it's ridiculous, and I'm glad that that is beyond me because the idea of comparing my collection of a certain player set era to the industry standard that is just made up and manufactured over time makes absolutely no sense.
What makes way more sense is me saying this card kicks ass. I love it for all the reasons. I don't care if anyone else likes it or not, but it's for me.
How does the way I collect reflect that? That is something I'm chasing. I'm chase chasing stopped feeling necessary. I try to be less rigid. I'm trying to buy cards that fit certain requirements in my collection.
I try to share my process, and I try not to give any rules. I don't wanna prescribe. There's too many people out there with a microphone or camera who are prescribing.
I wanna start narrating, and I think I started narrating. It's telling these stories. It's leaning on psychology. It's talking about the process. I and I trust you, like, if you're a regular listener of this.
Thank you. And I I trust that you're able to extract whatever I'm saying and make it apply to you and your situation. Signals for me replace different signal or different systems that I have been running.
It's a change. I'd I don't need rules. I'm not a rule follower, and so I'm not trying to over manufacture the way I go about not only content, but my collection. In 2025, my collection became a conversation.
Maybe it was the byproduct was with you, but it was more with myself, with my time, with what I want this hobby to give me. If your collection could talk, what do you think it would say about you right now, your process?
The one thing I would say as I close this episode out is that it is okay to change. It is okay to look at your cards and be like, you know what? I'm more into something else.
I think taste change and this hobby is an evolution. Now is always a interesting time. December always feels like a moment where I reflect, and I'm glad and fortunate to be able to share some of those observations with you.
If you want a companion piece to this episode, make sure you go check out my top five pickups of the year episode. Appreciate all of you. Happy holidays. Thank you for listening and supporting Stacking Slabs. We'll talk to you soon.