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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. Of course, the flagship episode coming at you. I hope you have had a great week of collecting.
You are finding the grails that you've been searching for, or at least you're working hard and enjoying doing it. I'm having a blast collecting sports cards in 2026 and sharing my thoughts and sharing the thoughts of others here on the Stacking Slabs network. Really appreciate all of your support, getting a lot of great feedback on conversations, what we're doing, where we're going. If you wanna show your support, make sure you hit the follow button to get all of the content here on the Stacking Slabs network. Tell a damn friend.
Run on over to the Patreon group, putting out new and exclusive content each and every day. Excited about where we're headed. I try to when I have a conversation that makes me think, I try to reflect, and I try to look for opportunities. I try to identify opportunities to dig into a topic because I think it's important, and I want to explore it more. And I had a lot of thoughts after my conversation last week with Andy at Buy Buy Baby Cards.
Sure. The conversation was around collecting in the nineties, but there were so many nuggets. And the nugget that I wanted to zero in on is this concept of rarity and scarcity across different eras and our own interpretation of what we believe is rare and scarce. And that's what I wanna dig into today. Before I do that, I wanna shout out my good friends at Inferno Red Technology for sponsoring the flagship episode of Stacking Slabs.
They're the engineering team behind some of the biggest names in sports and collectibles like DC Sports eighty seven, Commsi, 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, for leagues and fans and for everyone in between. See what they can build for you at infernored.com. Have you ever noticed some cards are everywhere on eBay while others seem permanently locked away in someone's collection?
Today, I want to explore why scarcity in cards is not just about how many exist, but most importantly, who owns them. I want to dig into scarcity as a social component, not just a numbers game, and hopefully give some practical tools to turn insights into better collecting. I did some digging in card ladder, and I just thought, okay. Who is a very popular player right now in the hobby? What is a very popular card?
And as I'm recording this, the two, names that just jumped out in my mind was Drake May and Kaboom. And so I just did a little search in card ladder and saw that and the search was twenty twenty four Drake May Kaboom. And what it shared with me was that there has been, according to Card Ladder, at the time of this recording, there has been 108 sales of the 2024 Drake May Kaboom online. This is three Drake May kabooms twenty twenty four selling a day, which is wild. I think doing those sorts of things gives us some perspective in context for rarity and scarcity.
And I think I wanna start with this counterintuitive truth. And I'll also say this, I want to share some lessons and things that I'm thinking about post Andy's conversation. We're gonna get to those, but I wanna start with this counterintuitive truth that a card with a million copies printed can be scarcer than a one of one depending on the ownership. And I know it might seems crazy. But a thousand copies exist all held by 10 traders who flip constantly.
That can be card a. Card b can be 10 copies exist, but one collector owns nine of them and never sells. On the market, card b will rarely appear making it effectively scarcer. This means who owns a card, whether they are flippers, long term collectors, or institutions, determines its effective supply. When I had the conversation with Andy, one of the things he may, one of his observations are talking about cards that never come up on the market only until someone decides to sell, then suddenly they do.
And I think that's interesting, and I don't think that is something we dig into too often. Why does ownership matter so much? I think it comes down to collector psychology. We buy cards not just for the picture on them, but for the story and status they represent. I think, for example, sellers who are passionate about a card often hook buyers by telling its story.
Maybe it's a rookie rookie card from a hometown hero or a one of one of parallel that has been stashed away forever. When buyers hear the pitch, they're eager to acquire. This social signaling means collectors lock away cards to preserve the status. There's the endowment effect, and I keep talking about this. But once collectors own something rare, they value it highly and don't wanna let it go.
You combine this with FOMO, and these psychological factors make scarce cards even more sought after and seldom available. Scarcity is in our heads, in our hearts, not just on the supply sheet. I think this varies across eras. This varies across categories. You can look at modern cards, huge print runs, and group box breaks.
Most modern cards have plenty of floating supply, but think of the one of ones or the ultra limited parallels. If those are tucked away by a few holders, they just become scarce. Group breaks flood the market with cards, but key hits from those breaks get scooped up and vanish. So among modern cards, the supply that can actually change hands is always driven by the owner's behavior. The category of cards that we talked about with Andy was nineties, and it's the classic era of overproduction speculation.
Nineties cards are famous for seeming worthless and yet sometimes exploding in value when we tie that value to rarity and scarcity. Here, ownership really rules. Many iconic nineties cards had known had unknown print numbers, but big collectors held them. Obviously, this is different with manufactured scarcity later on in the nineties, but Annie noticed that these nineties parallels with 50 copies are now selling repeatedly in short time, whereas a few years ago, they might only trade once a year. That shift happened because a handful of collectors selling.
And the lesson is a nineties card that might feel disappeared for years, then suddenly four copies pop up. It's scarcer. Its scarcity isn't about printers. It's about the one collector who finally let it go. And we see this all the time when one big card who hasn't sold that hasn't sold in a while goes for a record high.
It usually pulls out others in the collection with collectors who are finally trying to capitalize on the gains. You can take this to vintage cards with, lower print runs, fading archives, and vintage cards have naturally lower supply, but what's available still depends on the ownership. If the few surviving cards are tightly held by collectors or museums, they rarely hit the market, and this could be you could focus and have a whole conversation around, grading scarcity. For instance, you could have a 52 tops Mickey Mantle and a PSA nine sold for millions because only a few exist. The entire population could be a single owner or sitting in a vault.
Now we know that's not necessarily true, but that's a circumstance that can present itself in vintage and in other categories. Even so, when a vintage card does appear on an auction site, demand is crazy high because so many collectors wanted it. It could be because they're trying to improve their grade. It's maybe they need that card for a set that they're building. I think these are all things we should consider and think about when we're making our own decisions on what cards we wanna buy and when we wanna buy them.
So how can collectors use this? We can turn scarcity of ownership into some sort of scoring system if we want. We can track how many copies are actually available. If a PSA pop is a 100, maybe you've only ever seen two or three on the market, that could be a red flag. Second, we can estimate how concentrated that ownership is.
And I know this isn't easy, but if you're really trying to nerd out and you're really trying to find value, these are the things you can be doing. For example, you can a known collector who owns a set of 20 cards means 20 of those cards are off the market. Think we can measure churn, and I'm I'm a big fan of churn. I think about not not necessarily a big fan of churn. I'm a big fan of analyzing churn across business, across cards specifically.
And this is how often do these cards trade? If a card sells only every few years, it's effectively locked. Now contrast that card that sells every few years with the 108 Drake May 2024 Kabooms that have sold in thirty six days as I'm at the time of recording. There's a a stark difference there. Ownership scarcity can be a whole index you can create for yourself, and you can dig in, and I'm sure there's plenty of tools that can help you build that.
Where low availability and low churn push a card score up, and collectors can apply these metrics by checking auction databases, card ladder, pop reports, you name it. Some of the takeaways that I'm thinking about as I'm building this out in my head is you don't just count how many exist. Ask who has them. And I know it's not easy. I'm curious.
I like to ask questions. I ask questions for a living. So this comes naturally to me, especially if I'm investing a lot of money in a specific cart. I wanna know where the supply is or as much of the supply as possible. You can use ownership metrics, monitor listings versus pop, note the long gaps between sales, and watch collectors' behavior on Instagram forums or wherever conversations are happening.
I think also patience is power. If a card seems rare, chances are it will appear eventually. I know an instance for me right now as I'm going through my this 2025 Colts prism build, you know, the there's a Tyler Warren gold prism that popped up, and it's available at the time of this recording, and it's listed at $4,000 OBO. I don't even wanna play in that game because that card is not that valuable to me. It's not worth that.
So I'd rather let the dust settle and let people get the card and have it flipped around, and then, I'll get it maybe a year or two years, maybe even three years now. I think that to me is my maturation in understanding rarity and scarcity and understanding that if there's 10 copies of a card, I don't need it right now. I can eventually get it later. But chasing every scarce card can also be a trap. We can focus on ones where you can take your time and entry and exit based on market signals.
I think understanding scarcity as a function of ownership flips the script on how we evaluate our value cards. It's no longer just a supply and demand vacuum. It's a supply and who's holding it. It's the context, and this context is everything in this hobby. It's everything in collecting.
It's going the extra layer to ask the questions, and understanding who are holding these cards and their intentions is really important. It's nontransactional, and so much of the hobby is transactional. But if you slow down and you search and you really have a passion to dig into the mindset and mentality of other collectors who have a card that you want, it will help you make better decisions. By thinking like this, collectors can spot these hidden opportunities and always the collectors who have done the best. And when I say the best, I'm thinking about two facets.
One, creating a collection that's highly impressive, consistent, cohesive, and is something that I'm impressed with, paired with, has done well on selling cards. You pair those two things together. That's what I'm classifying as the best. And I think those collectors are able to spot hidden opportunities because they've created their own scarcity index in their system, and they apply that to every purchase that they make. And it helps them over avoid overpaying for hype.
I wanna dig into now after I've kind of shared that. I wanna dig into the conversation that I had with Andy. And if you haven't already, I I I highly recommend, and I don't say this often, but, like, hit pause on this and go back. The conversation was dropped at the end of last week, last Thursday specifically, And just listen to the conversation with Andy. You are going to learn a lot about scarcity, mindset, mentality, evolution, and maturing as a collector.
But I went back, I listened to the episode, and I just documented some things that Andy said that I think pair well with this episode and are worth exploring or revisiting maybe from a different angle. Never comes up is something that was discussed. It was Andy saying there are cards that never comes up because it is a story. It is a a way for people to position cards when they're maybe trying to get rid of cards or testing the market on a card. It's a story that people tell themselves.
We tell ourselves this all the time as collectors and never come up could be a card that hasn't come up in a year. But Andy said, collectors love to say certain cards never surface. They do until they don't, and then they do it again. And this matters because this kills false scarcity. A card isn't scarce.
It's just locked up. I think this reinforces what I'm talking about with ownership based scarcity where supply is not static. It's dormant, and dormancy is an ownership behavior, not print math. The market didn't change. The owners did, and I think this helps reframe patience as a skill, not luck.
The next, going back to churn. Churn reveals intent. Andy observed nineties cards that used to trade once every year or two suddenly transact multiple times in a month. Same card, same population, different behavior. This is the singest single strongest proof of what I'm trying to say.
If print run dictated scarcity, this would not happen. This reinforces ownership based scarcity by considering high churn means flipper ownership, and low churn means collector ownership. Now it's not black and white, but I think this should give you some groundwork as you're considering this for yourself. Scarcity lives in that delta. Churn is the market telling you who owns the card.
Next thing, liquidity is not the enemy of rarity. Andy showed collect collectors get uncomfortable when rare cards trade often. They think it might cheapen the card. Andy didn't panic. He just observes, and he he he talked about his evolution where, yeah, this impacted me at one point, but now I don't think about it as much.
It matters because liquidity does not mean abundance. It means willingness to sell. This reinforces ownership based scarcity by a card owned by 10 sellers feels common, and that same card owned by one holder might feel impossible. The card did not change. Ownership did.
A liquid rare card is not less rare. It's just owned by the wrong people. Next lesson here. The most scarce cards have the weakest sales history. Andy hinted at this.
Some of the most significant cards barely have comps, not because demand is low, because owners are immovable. And that's what we want. We want this ability when we're to have a conversation. I talk about this a lot. It's like, just give me to a conversation.
Conversation with the person who owns the card that I want. And I know my mindset is I'm not gonna pry this card out right away, but I'm playing the long game. And at least is if I have an opportunity to have a conversation that gives me an opportunity to establish a relationship, and I can't get a card that I want that's tucked away in a collector's collection without at least establishing a relationship because that develops trust. And then that gives me an opportunity down the road to potentially make a play at the card. This matters because most collectors rely on sales data.
I think it breaks down here. No sales does not mean no value, and this reinforces ownership based scarcity because lack of comps often signals concentrated ownership. One or two collectors might hold control the supply, and that's real scarcity. If you need constant comps to feel safe, you're not hunting scarce cards. I think this helps separate collectors from speculators.
I think narrative strengthens ownership. Andy said great sellers always have an elevator pitch. They know why the card matters. Narratives create attachment. Attachment creates long term holding.
This reinforces ownership based scarcity because the stronger the story, the longer the hold. The longer the hold, the scarcer the card feels. This is social scarcity. It's not technical scarcity. People don't sell cards that feel like a part of them.
'90 scarcity is misunderstood because the production lies. Andy talks about this. Nineties cards, we all know, might have been overproduced, but certain cards behave like vintage because ownership is consolidated quietly. Print runs meet mislead collectors in this era maybe more than any other. And this reinforces ownership based scarcity because unknown or high production does not prevent scarcity.
It only delays it. Ownership concentration complete completes this process. The nineties taught us the scarcity doesn't start at the printer. It starts with collector's hands. Patience is the market's edge.
This is the number one lesson I have learned over the last two or three years as I've matured as a collector. Andy talks about waiting. He talks about the the he doesn't chase the myth of a card. And I think it's important because impatience transfers money from collectors to flippers. This reinforces ownership based scarcity because lock supply eventually unlocks, not randomly, but predictably.
When price rises, the narrative always shifts. If you know who owns the card, you know when it will come out. And I think patience is really important when it comes to that. I think a lot about this. I think a lot about cards that I wanna go after, where they're at, how to get them.
I think a lot about the way the mainstream of the hobby presents rarity and scarcity, and the way it's presented couldn't be more different than the way I look at it. And that's fine. I'm not saying I'm right. I'm just saying I'm creating a system because I wanna make sure all the money that I'm spending on cards is intentional, and it's measured by the things that I value the most. Now, sure, I value the card.
I value the aesthetics, the photography, all of the things, the design, all of the things that compose a great sports card. But I'd be lying if I didn't consider rarity and scarcity, as a factor. I love cards for a lot of different reasons. One of the most important reasons I love collecting sports cards as I've matured is because it gives us the opportunity to buy cards that no one else in the world owns but us. And there's something very exciting about that.
There's something that lights me up inside. And I'm not trying to be a snob here, and I've got many different collections with inside my collection, and I'm not I'm not buying cards that aren't one of ones. I have plenty of gold prisms. I have plenty of gold vinyl. I have plenty of cards that have higher print runs than one of one, and it's fine, and it's fun.
And I love those cards. And I view those cards as a part of a broader collection. But then there's another collection, and that collection is cards that no one else can have but me. And that ownership and that feeling of having certain cards that no one else owns is really, really valuable to me as a collector. It lights me up inside.
It is the fuel behind every decision and move that I'm making in this space. And I can't just take it at face value. I have to understand all of the components and all of the elements, and I don't wanna rely on a bunch of other people telling me the story and telling me why I should think these cards are a certain way. I I've got my own mindset on this hobby and what I want and what I desire. And what's really important to me is creating these systems for myself and applying them to decisions that I'm making in this space.
It's really important to understand the layer below the layer, and the more we dig, the more educated we can be on our own collections and what we desire, the money we're spending, and decisions we're making right now and a year down the road. Think a lot about sports cards. I think a lot about creating content about sports cards. I think a lot about collecting sports cards. There is enough in this space to keep you hungry.
There's enough in this space to keep you interested. There's enough in this space to keep you engaged. It's the perfect hobby that connects our our desire to collect and to build something with the great history of cards and sports. It's a beautiful thing. It's why I've given up my career in technology to go all in on talking about sports cards all day because I find it more interesting.
I find it more fascinating. I'm very intrigued by not only my evolution, but other people's evolutions. And I think that episode with Andy is a good example of an evolution and a good example of great insight that helped fuel and power this episode we've got today. Appreciate all of you showing your support for stacking slabs, telling a damn friend, following, doing whatever you can. Get the word out, man.
I'm going hard. I'm trying out here. I'm trying to put together great shows, great content that are gonna resonate with you, the collector of sports cards. Hopefully, this was one of them. Appreciate all of your support.
You all take care. We'll be back with more content on the other side. Thank you for supporting the Stacking Slabs Network. We'll talk to you soon.