what's going on welcome back to another episode of stacking slabs your hobby content alternative i'm brett excited to unpack today's topic which is on apex cards in the psychology of conformity in collecting now there was another episode planned for today we had some scheduling issues so that episode is going to come out at a later date which left me with a gap and instantly i just decided to jot down a couple notes hit record and just go because i felt so inspired around the topic of apex cards after i got done talking with josh and chris in the latest episode of card ladder confidential so if you have not heard that episode yet just hit pause on this go back it was released a couple days ago the catalyst for this episode was actually the cold open question that i decided to lob chris and josh's way and i did not expect there to be so much substance so much to think about so much to consider and i jotted it down apex cards i wrote it on a note next to my desk because i was thinking you know what there's gotta be an opportunity perhaps in next week's flagship to cover it but you know what we're we're doing it early which is great because it is fresh on my mind it gives me something i'm super motivated and super passionate to explore and isn't that what content is all about in this space content in the hobby or content in general i always find is the most interesting and entertaining when the individual behind the camera behind the microphone feels a lot of energy towards the topic and is passionate about delivering the episode or whatever the format is and i'm feeling it now i'm excited i'm motivated i'm ready for this opportunity to dig in before we do that just make sure you're following stacking slabs and the broader stacking slab shows on the network just hit follow tell a damn friend if you like what i'm doing run over to the patreon group the conversation with chris and josh left me more energized than usual we are content pals i would consider chris and josh friends i've collaborated with them on a number of things over the years and i've done a lot of content with them but i realized why after we got done with the recording it wasn't just because we talked about big cards that had moved and we were wondering why this all happened at once it wasn't just because the hobby had another one of those big headline cycles where everyone starts texting each other or dming each other saying did you see that it was because buried inside that conversation was a much deeper question and i haven't been able to let it escape in the last forty eight hours and the question is will new apex cards emerge or will legacy cards continue to dominate indefinitely that is the card question underneath that i think there's a human question why do we conform in collecting why do we let the hobby tell us what peak collecting looks like why do we so often accept that the most meaningful cards have already been decided for us this week gave us the perfect setup you had the kobe bryant three point one million dollar pmg green sale to the alt fund you had a four point two five million dollar jordan game jersey autograph via golden private deal you had major grail movement major attention major money and yet what stuck with me most was not the size of those sales what stuck with me was chris subtly sharing that he has basically been turning over his entire michael jordan collection here's a guy who's owned some of the most respected jordan cards from the nineties and he is moving out of some of that established greatness to get into the less discovered rare jordan one of ones that grabbed me that sunk its teeth in me that made me curious that made me motivated to explore this in an episode because that is not a normal move if your goal is simply to conform to the hobby existing hierarchy that is a move made by someone who wants to think for himself that is a move made by someone who is not content to merely inherit a canon that is a move made by someone who wants to author one and i love the tension because at my core i'm a builder i am not naturally wired to plug myself into systems that already exist and just follow a path i am wired to look at the map ask who drew it and then wonder if the map is already out of date that is the real question so i do not want to talk only about cards i want to talk about taste i want to talk about conviction i want to talk about what it means psychologically to buy the card everyone already respects versus buying the card you believe should be respected because those are not the same action when you buy the card the hobby has already crowned you are buying more than cardboard you are buying clarity you are buying agreement you are buying the comfort that comes from knowing that if ten serious collectors walk into the room nine of them will nod and say yep i get it that is a monster and listen that impulse isn't weak it's human you can dig up any research on social influence and it will tell you people are pulled by big motives over and over again people wanna feel right they want to feel like they're connected to something and they want to protect the favorable image of themselves people want to feel right they want to be included they want to be smart and that applies to everything that applies to politics that applies to fashion that applies to consumer choices and it absolutely applies to collecting because collecting is incredibly social and it's a social form of decision making even if you collect alone you are never really collecting a loan you have the hobbies memory in your head you have the price histories in your head you have auction results in a in your head you have the other collector's collections in your head you have instagram posts in your head you have podcasts in your head you have all of that shaping what feels important before you even click buy so when somebody buys the accepted jordan grail or the accepted kobe grail that is not just groupthink sometimes that is just a rational response to uncertainty it is a way of saying i do not need to solve the whole puzzle myself i can trust the market's accumulated judgment and that is conformity yes but it's also why conformity feels so good in collecting and this is where i think we have to get honest a lot of collectors love the posture like they are rebels they love to posture like they only buy what they like and that they buy they don't buy what they what everyone else cares about most of the time that's true most of the time we care a lot we care whether other smart collectors recognize the card we care whether the market has taught us how to rank it we care whether the card has enough history that we can defend it if somebody challenges us we care whether in a pinch we could move it that is why legacy apex cards stay powerful they are not just rare they're legible the market knows how to read them and that matters more than people like to admit people collect for a lot of different reasons achievement social membership competition legacy nostalgia financial value there is a wide motivational stack that goes into collecting and there's diversity across the entire hobby and that's what i think makes it fun the established grail satisfies a bunch of those at all at once it connects you to childhood memory it connects you to other collectors it places you inside a known hierarchy it gives you a sense of accomplishment it can even feel like responsible stewardship because the card already has culture standing there's also something else going on that i think is really huge and that's control control is a fundamental motivation in collecting when the market gets noisy when there are a million releases parallels and a million one of ones and everyone's screaming for attention the accepted grail feels like order in the chaos that is why price guides matter that is why population report matter that's why consensus matters consensus is not just a taste out consensus is emotional infrastructure it helps us feel like the ground is not moving underneath our our feet but then something else happens if you stay in the hobby long enough and stay curious long enough there's a real chance that the consensus starts to feel a little too clean a little too rehearsed maybe too settled you start hearing the same narratives the same stories over and over again this is the best card because this is a grail because this is important to the hobby because at some point if you are wired in a certain way that starts to suffocate you and i believe the more time you spend hearing these narratives the more suffocating it feels you start to want to blaze your own trail you wanna discover instead of just do what everyone else is doing you start wanting to surprise yourself instead of validate what others are thinking you start wanting to learn something new and not merely repeat what everyone else is doing and this is where i think chris and josh were both going in different ways josh talked about the more interesting card becomes the card that he did not even know existed the unseen card the card that has not surfaced the card that enters the chat and suddenly forces everyone to rethink hierarchy chris has been signaling this in every host cast he's done for the last years chris said something in the conversation that was similar but in it from it maybe a different register he basically asked how long can the apex cards remain the same apex cards before the whole thing starts to feel stale when does the market need somebody with capital and conviction to come in and shake up the snow globe this isn't boredom in a trivial sense this is more is a more advanced form of collecting because once you are no longer asking what is the best card you start asking why do we all agree that this is the best card and then if you keep going you ask a very dangerous question should we still agree this is where tastes actually starts i am someone who always goes against the grain when everyone starts feeling a certain way and projecting it i want nothing to do with it and i'm not just trying to be contrarian contrarian to be contrarian but it's just how i've always been as a human being i don't wanna be weird for the sake of being weird but with understanding the center so well that you can finally depart from it intelligently because when you depart from it for me personally as a human being and a collector that's where life gets interesting the line from the trans the the transcript of the conversation that stuck with me too you can only zag once you start to understand the status quo there's real frontier collecting and that's not ignorance it's informed rebellion and i think we need some rebellion in this hobby we need some people doing different stuff and not only doing different stuff but talking about it this is why i'm doing this this is what i'm seeing and this is why i'm spending my money the way i am that is content i listen to every day and i will appreciate the individual who's going out on a limb to try something new and i think when you look at it there is a body of work across consumer behavior and consumer psychology that shows that people do not simply conform or differentiate they often do both at the same time they will conform on the big identity signaling dimension and then differentiate on the smaller within group dimension that is the perfect description of what so many sophisticated collectors do they stay inside the michael jordan lane they stay inside the kobe bryant lane they stay inside the elite lane they stay inside the acknowledge this matters lane but within that lane they start choosing differently same player different issue same mountain different route same universe different signal that is why i do not view chris's move as really leaving the jordan grail world i view it more as a refined form of identity signaling inside the world it says something like i know the accepted hierarchy i just don't need to be ruled by it and that is what makes the less discovered jordan one of one so psychologically charged because now the collector is not merely displaying wealth or access he is displaying authorship he is saying i can see what matters before the market fully sees it and that is a totally different emotional payoff and if you are a build a builder by nature that payoff can be intoxicating i'm going through something right now that reminds me of this because it feels like buying stock it it feels less like buying stock and more like founding a company less like joining a club and more like starting a movement less like owning an answer and more like advancing an argument but i have to be a little bit ruthless because this is where collectors lie to themselves most obscure cards are not future apex cards most obscure cards aren't future apex card rarity alone is not enough a one of one is not automatically profound a card being hard to find does not mean that the market will eventually care a card being ignored does not mean that the market is wrong sometimes the market is missing something a lot of time the market is ignoring something for a reason so if you want to blaze a trail you need standards you need to ask harder questions of yourself and of the cards is the card truly scarce in a meaningful way does it have historical firstness if that's a word does it connect you to the right era the right player the right visual identity can the case for the card be explained clearly and quickly for a serious collector does it have enough symbolic force that once it's seen it alters the way someone thinks about that player's catalog and maybe most importantly can enough other smart people be taught to see it because apex status is not a private feeling apex status is a social outcome and a card not a card does not become apex because one collector believes it becomes an apex when the belief spreads that is why rarity matters too consumers collectors pay extra for rare stuff but rarity has to be recognized framed and made and made and made intelligible rarity without legibility is just isolation so i don't think the answer is buy every weird jordan one of one and wait for the hobby to catch up that's just being a lazy contrarian the better answer is find the cards where rarity history aesthetics and explanation all stack together so strongly that once people see the case they can't unsee it so let me finally answer the title question directly will new apex cards emerge of course absolutely but not in a broad democratic way not because the market suddenly wakes up and decides to overthrow every established grail and not because every hidden one of one deserves promotion new apex cards emerge selectively they emerge when a stronger story beats an older one by default they emerge when a card offers better scarcity better symbolism better providence better timing better historical status than the market has previously appreciated and the hobby already shows it can do this this brings a lot of opportunity but it can also bring burden because if you want to be early on a future apex card you need to have guts you need a thesis you need to know why the old hierarchy exists why the card challenges it and why other serious collectors would eventually agree otherwise you're just otherwise you're not building the future you're just wandering away from the center and just calling it a vision there is one more piece here to think about and i think it's important and it came through in the discussion around discovery relationships and even collector entitlement one once collecting becomes identity work territory starts to matter this is why certain collectors feel they have earned access to certain cards this is why seniority matters socially even when the market is technically open that is why a lane can feel like more than one lane it can feel like home so when somebody has spent ten years in a niche built relationships there sourced cars developed taste it should not surprise us that they feel more financial attachment they feel narrative ownership now that can become ugly if it turns into entitlement but it can also be healthy if it becomes stewardship and one thing that i thought was important was the better instinct from the conversation the better instinct was not i deserve the card the better instinct was patience building the relationship knowing where the card is respecting the person holding it because the hobby isn't the hobby is transactional on the surface but underneath it it's deeply relational a lot of the best cards are not won by the loudest bidder first they are won by the person who becomes credible over time so i guess where i land is this legacy apex cards are not going anywhere they're always gonna they're gonna matter they deserve to matter in many cases they are apex for good reason but if the hobby ever becomes a place where the same cards rule forever simply because they ruled yesterday then the hobby stops be being a living culture and starts becoming a museum gift shop and to me that's its death what keeps this thing alive is not only money what keeps it alive is reinterpretation fresh eyes discovery research conviction a new language new stories collectors who understand the old map well enough to redraw parts of it that is why we play games this is why we collect cards not because the hierarchy is already finished but because taste is always negotiated in real time so maybe the right question for all of us is not just what is the apex maybe the better question is am i collecting for approval or am i collecting for truth am i buying what everybody already agrees with or am i doing work to decide what matters to me and maybe the best collectors the ones who really last are not the ones who choose one side forever maybe they do both maybe they know when to stand inside the cannon and maybe they know when it's time to plant a new flag somewhere else what do you think about apex cards how do you collect are you chasing the apex are you doing something different appreciate all your support you all rule so motivated to get up here and deliver episodes like this day in and day out appreciate all of the support make sure you tell a damn friend we'll be back with more stacking slabs take care talk soon