what's going on everybody welcome back to stacking slabs your hobby content alternative i am brett hopefully you're having a good week enjoying your time in the sports card hobby sports card industry and appreciate you spending a little bit of time here on the stacking slabs network we have a fun topic every once in a while there's an opening in the week and i get to just share a topic that is on my mind and a lot of these episodes come from inspiration inspiration from all the passionate collectors business owners and operators and individuals that i'm interacting with in this space i love pulling ideas for episodes from individuals and that's what you're going to get today we're talking how to build a thesis before you buy the card before you buy your next card i just wanna answer one question just answer one question what is your thesis i think that is a very powerful question that's we're gonna explore today this is not your reason for liking the player not looking in card ladder at the last comp and certainly not the print run or not the fact that the card may never surface again what do you believe about the card that gives you confidence to buy it own it and live with the decision after the excitement wears off and this question came out of my recent conversation with jameson long on passion of profession this was at the end of the episode and it was i wish we would have spent more time on it but the the the the conversation was more about his business and less about his buying but maybe we'll have one down the road about his buying but i asked jameson how he has made so many strong buying decisions over the years he has bought cards that later he sold for multiples he left corporate america he opened up a card shop he moved that shop into a space four times his size he has made decisions that carried risk doubt and money i asked him how much he leans on instinct and his answer stayed with me he said that when he makes a decision he wants to understand why he is making it he does the research he talks with the people he trusts he looks for a counterargument then he builds a thesis the thesis does not guarantee the outcome it gives him a reason to act and i think that distinction matters and a thesis is not certainty a thesis is the work that lets you move without certainty and today i want to talk about what a buying thesis in sports cards might look like how you build one how you test one how you know when you're ready to collect that way and how you trust the work after the card becomes yours because the strongest collectors i know do not buy cards and search for reasons later they build the reasons first then they decide now if you listen to the flagship episode yesterday i talked about the purchase of the twenty twenty two immaculate roman reigns platinum memorabilia autograph platinum one of one i spent the episode walking through the biggest purchase i've made in my collecting life the price was thirty thousand dollars but the price was not the point the point was everything i said in that episode and what the card required in that episode i talked about research relationships negotiation card funding selling parts of a collection i'd spent years of building trusting my view of the card while accepting that the future is very very unknown and that episode was the story of one thesis in action and this episode is about the process behind it and i have been building theses around cards for years even when i didn't use the word i did it with the twenty twenty five john cena superfractor one of one i put out an episode about that i did it with tyrese halliburton rookie crown royal one of one i did an episode about that and most recently did it with the roman reigns immaculate one of one and all three of those cards are different the price points are different the reasons that i bought the cards are all different the process has become the one consistent thing around all of those the process always starts with affinity but what i have learned as i've grown into a collector and a collector who not only wants to buy cool cards buy cards that i appreciate but also buy cards that not only hold value but maybe have a chance of going up affinity is only the floor it is not the thesis so i think what's really important is for us to spend this episode first talking about what a thesis is and i'll give you my definition a buying thesis is a clear explanation of why the subject the card the version why the price and why the moment makes sense for your collection it also explains the risk you as a collector accept and the evidence that would change your mind the last part separates a thesis from a sales pitch and we see a lot of sales pitches on instagram every time i open up the app i see a see a sales pitch about a card a sales pitch only gathers reasons to say yes think about that for a second think about all of the information you see related to cards and think about how much of them are sales pitches and how much of them is a thesis someone is offering i think a thesis must survive the reasons to say no collectors get into trouble when they decide they want a card then they build a case around that desire we've all done it i've done it for a majority of my collecting career you see a card you feel feel it you you look for the lowest print run you find the biggest sale from the subject you find the pop report that supports you you ask a friend you know who has some idea about the card you call that research and i'm not sure that's research it's permission you're asking someone permission a thesis works in the completely different direction it starts with the question what has to be true for this purchase to make sense and it's not to make sense for everyone else it's makes sense for you and then you go to work and this is one of the joys of the hobby for me this is what i'm super passionate about this is what gets me out of bed in the morning when it's nonrelated to creating content or building stacking slabs but when i'm thinking about my collection you learn the subject you study the product you map the hierarchy of the card you start to understand the supply you examine the collector base will there be future demand for this card are there people who care about this that's important you compare the asking price with the evidence you have you consider what else the money can do and this is my natural position when i'm thinking about the thesis building a thesis i i i have to compare that purchase with the money that could be used on my business and that's a very big distinction and it's really important do i believe that this money should go into my business and should be used to continue to build it or do i put it into this card because i built a thesis that's so strong that i'd be stupid not to to buy it right now the point is not to remove emotion emotion is part of collecting it belongs here the point is to keep emotion from doing every job your heart tells you that you care but the thesis tells you whether you should act when i asked jameson about instinct he did not pretend every decision came from a spreadsheet sometimes he gets a feeling he spent thirty years in the hobby he has bought and sold at multiple levels most collectors won't touch he has watched products develop subjects rise markets change and deals fail that experience is really important because it creates pattern recognition what looks like instinct from the outside often has years of evidence sitting underneath it and that person cannot always explain every signal in the moment they still recognize the pattern that does not mean every gut feeling deserves trust an untrained gut is often emotion wearing a different shirt jameson does something that matters after that feeling appears he researches it he runs the decision by people he trusts at times he chooses someone who he expects to disagree with him he wants the counterargument then he makes the decision that is the relationship between instinct and thesis instinct points the thesis tests the decision inevitably follows too many collector when they think about that they were or they act in real time they reverse that order they decide they defend they call the defense conviction sound familiar have you seen that in action conviction does not mean you can argue for the card conviction means you have done enough work to accept both the upside and the risk in these types of conversations we can be theoretical we can dig into a lot of different elements oftentimes to dig into the psycho psychology behind these decisions but i think what i have learned is the most helpful in how to ground all of us when we talk about a big topic like building a thesis for sports cards is to create some sort of system now the this is when i'm preparing these episodes i i reverse engineer my thesis making and i try to condense it down into a system and then i apply it to the run sheet of each of these episodes and that sort because i wanna leave you something practical and so as i was preparing this episode and digging into my own thesis making and doing some self reflection i'm thinking about six parts that i believe every successful card thesis needs now you might already have your process or maybe this is the first time you've thought about this but you if this is something that you're looking to do or do more of this isn't necessarily rinse and repeat what i'm saying here but it's make it your own but this is my own the first element of the thesis making process when buying a card is having a personal case why do you care about the subject this is where affinity enters the player the wrestler the team set product whatever it is what has the connection to you and that connection does not need to impress anybody else it needs to survive when no one else sees the card if the card never appears on instagram do you still want it if the subject falls out of the hobby conversation for six months do you still care if another collector says they would have bought a different card does your desire remain with the roman card the personal case was built over several years and i talked about in that episode the card did not create that connection the card expressed it that is what you want the personal case should exist before the listing ever pops up second part of this is the card case why is the right card why is this the right card of the subject i'm using a lot of wrestlers and wrestling card as examples because this is where my head is at right now this is where i've been spending most of my money and buying cards so it doesn't obviously it does not have to be exclusive to wrestling cards these are just my examples but like liking john cena does not explain why i bought one john cena card over thousands the card case has to account for the product context design card type place in the parallel structure the autograph or memorabilia details condition and the role the card plays in the subject's catalog my cena purchase was the twenty twenty five topps chrome wwe base super fracture one of one that card sat at the top of a product hierarchy i understood came from topps chrome wwe it was the base image of an all time subject the super fracture was not one rare version among several cards that felt equal to me it was the final card in the base rainbow that is the card case the print run tells you about the supply the hierarchy tells you about the meaning a one of one can still be the wrong one of one the serial number does not always do all of the work the third case is the market case who else cares and why would they care why would that care remain this is not the same thing as asking whether if the card is gonna go up you're trying to understand the demand around the subject in the card how broad is the collector base how established is the product where does the card sit compared with other choices in the same price how's the subject's place in sports and culture has it been established does the card have a feature collector to understand without long explanation the market case matters even for a personal collection life changes collections change you can love a card and still care about what happens if you need to sell it the mistake is letting the market case replace the personal case if if you only have the market case you are renting conviction from other buyers if you only have the personal case you need to accept that the market might not support the amount of money you are spending in that moment and some of the strongest purchases sit where the personal case and the market case overlap this is a great zone to be in i care about the subject i understand why other collectors care and i know those two forms of demand are not the same i think about this a lot when we get into this conversation around goats well if you have a connection with a goat like a michael jordan and he's one of your favorite players of all time it's there's insurance in that you can build your thesis for a specific michael jordan card and you're mitigating risk because you are buying michael jordan cards and there will forever be demand for michael jordan cards now you can't guarantee that the price you paid will be matched or maybe you'll get more if you when you when you decide to sell it but there's a little bit of a safety net with buying a goat and that's the overlap i love the player and there's built in demand for it the fourth part is the price case why does the purchase make sense at the number a great card can be a bad purchase at the wrong price a thesis does not end when you have when you prove that the card matters you still have to value it with rare cards the evidence will not hand you one clear clean answer you might have to use sales from other parallels you might compare similar cards for the same subject you might compare the same card type across subjects you might study private sales auction history population and the number of collectors who have shown interest to you on that card you are building a range not searching for a magic comp talked about this in the episode the scene of superfractor was listed at ten k i did not wanna pay ten k the ask did not end the conversation because the ask was not the market it was the seller's position i'd done enough work to believe in the card at a lower range so i made an offer the deal came together closer to five thousand the thesis gave me room to negotiate without talking myself out of the card it also gave me a line i was not willing to cross and that line matters as much as the offer itself fifth is the ownership case what is your plan after the card arrives this part gets ignored because buying feels like the finish line it's not are you holding the card for years does it complete a run does it start a lane is it replacing other cards what attention and money will the card require after the purchase the roman card has an ownership case i already owned the same premium memorabilia autograph card number to five number to twenty five the platinum one of one did not send me in a new direction it moved me deeper into a direction i had already chosen the purchase also required consolidation i sold halliburton cards broke apart colts runs i consigned over sixty cards the ownership case was not only about keeping the roman it was about the collection that would exist around and every card major card creates opportunity cost your thesis needs to name it what are you willing to give up if the honest answer is nothing you might not believe in the card as much as you think six is the risk case what would make you wrong i know we have big egos i know we're confident collectors but make yourself vulnerable for a little bit this is the part that keeps a thesis honest name the risks before you buy it the subject can lose collector interest the product can fail to hold its place the card can have condition or authenticity concerns the market can reprice the entire category a better card can surface your own collecting rep priorities can change your price comparison can be weak the seller can know something that you do not know and naming a risk does not mean you should walk away it means you should know what you are accepting you should also decide what evidence would break the thesis not every lower sale breaks it not every negative comment breaks it new evidence can if you learn the memorabilia is not what you believe that matters if the card is altered that matters if the product hierarchy was misunderstood that certainly matters if your connection to the subject fades and doesn't return that matters a lot a thesis that can never be wrong is not a thesis it is attachment with the vocabulary those are the six things that i think through when i'm making big purchases the process becomes clear when i compare these three purchases from my own collection the halliburton crown royal one of one started with curiosity the twenty twenty crown royal tyrese halliburton crystal platinum one of one rookie was outside of one of my normal rules he was pictured with the kings and not the pacers at first i did not have a full thesis i had a question why was i drawn to this card the research built the answer i learned the history of crown royal i learned the role of the die cut crown design i learned where crystal platinum sat in the parallel structure i understood that this was not a random one of one it was the top of a real hierarchy each piece of information added weight the research did not talk me into liking halliburton i love halliburton he's my favorite player i already cared about him because of what he meant for me as a pacers fan the research explained why the card belonged i missed it when this card sold the first time and when it came back i had to test if i still wanted the card or wanted relief from losing it that became part of the thesis the cena super fracture that i've talked about started with price tension i knew the subject the card i did not agree with the ask the work helped me separate those those facts collectors often let an asking price make the entire decision for them they panic because the card pops up and it's expensive and they treat the price as proof that the card is important neither response is enough my thesis told me the card mattered my price work told me the listing did not set the value that gave me the confidence to engage without accepting the seller's first number the roman immaculate one of one started with the sacrifice knew the subject the product i knew the card was the only copy the harder question was whether the card deserved to outrank other parts of my collection the thesis had to survive a thirty thousand dollar decision it had to survive selling cards i'd like it had to survive breaking runs i'd sent year spent years building the thesis was not strong because i wrote more reasons it was strong because i was willing to reorganize my entire collection around it three cards three starting points curiosity price tension sacrifice the same process helped me to to decide building a thesis sounds rational we grew up we went to school we heard about having a thesis this became a part of our normal operating in life collectors are not machines though there are forces working against us through the entire purchase you got confirmation bias once you want the card your brain starts collecting support you remember the sale that helps your case you dismiss the sale that hurts it you ask people who you know will agree the fix is not to remove your preference the fix is to search for the strongest reason not to buy ask one person to challenge it write down the bear case before the offer if your thesis survives your confidence has earned more weight the next force is scarcity pressure one of ones create a real problem there's no second copy that fact can turn urgency into meaning and they aren't the same scarcity explains why you must decide right now it does not explain why you should say yes with the roman i had to ask whether i wanted the card because i had one chance or whether the one chance mattered because it was the right card that question right there helped separate fear from fit the next force is anchoring the asking price becomes the first number in your head the last comp becomes the second soon the entire decision lives between two numbers set by other people build your range from evidence before you even negotiate you got social proof when other collectors want the card your desire can feel safer when no one talks about it your desire can feel risky this is where borrowed conviction enters a thesis gives you a source of confidence that does not depend on the room agreeing with you you've got loss aversion too after you buy a card a lower sale can feel like proof that you failed that feeling can push you to sell defend the purchase online or search for new reasons to believe before your you react or overreact it's easy to just ask a question did the evidence change or did the price change sometimes a lower sale is evidence but most of the time one sale is just one sale your thesis should tell you the difference got sunk cost it can work in both directions you can hold a card because you paid too much and refused to admit that your thesis broke you can keep building your run because you spent years on it it happened with my colt's collection the projects had started to feel like responsibility i kept going because i already gone so far but that roman card forced a question if i did not own these cards today would i start the same projects again and the answer was clear it was no the answer gave me permission to move forward not every collector needs to start with a thesis when you're new exploration that's the work you should buy some cards because they look good you should try products you shouldn't make small mistakes you should learn what feels different in hand than what's on your screen you should sell a few cards and notice which ones you miss you cannot build a strong thesis before you have taste and you cannot develop taste without reps the thesis building phase begins when your patterns start appearing you know the subjects that gain your attention you know the difference between rare and important you understand what products matter you understand or you start to notice cards you bought because other people were excited you have enough experience to say no i think that last one really matters a collector is not ready to trust a thesis until they can walk away from a card that they like i've been walking away from a lot of cards that i like because i've been pressure testing them the ability to say no proves the process controls the purchase you are not you're also ready when you start thinking in trade offs not only do i want this but what deserves to leave if it comes in what other purchases am i delaying does this strengthen the collection or add to the obligation the shift is not about spending more you can build a thesis for a fifty dollar card the shift is about requiring more clarity from yourself when i think about writing a thesis i think it's important to understand you don't need a full report you just need honest answers before the next card that requires a real decision write down seven lines i care about the subject because this is the right card because the card sits here in the subject catalog and product hierarchy the price makes sense to me because the strongest reason not to buy is if i buy it i'm willing to give up i would change my mind if i learned if you cannot finish those lines you're probably not ready to buy the card that does not mean the card is wrong it means your work is unfinished you can reduce the thesis to one paragraph my thesis paragraph on the roman reigns purchase is i want the twenty twenty two immaculate roman reigns premium memorabilia autograph platinum one of one because roman is one of my core wrestling subjects the tribal chief period carries meaning for me and this card is the top parallel of a design i already collect it comes from the first immaculate wwe release it includes an on card autograph superstore worn material and has no substitute within the run the thirty thousand dollar price requires me to consolidate cards that no longer match the direction of my collection the risks are the lack of a direct comp the size of the purchase and the need to sell cards to fund it i accept those risks because i plan to hold the card and i believe it represents the collection build next that paragraph does not prove i will make money it proves i know what decision i am making the purchase does not end after the test owning the card creates a new set of emotions you will see another card you want you will see a lower sale someone will question the price the market will move its attention somewhere else the excitement will settle none of those events mean your thesis failed you just need a way to separate separate evidence from a new emotion stop reviewing the decision every day that's an important one comparing the new information with the risk case you wrote before buying give the ownership case time stay willing to change your mind these are really important things to do when building your thesis a card can be right for one season of your collecting life and wrong for the next the standard is not permanent ownership the standard is whether you make the best decision available with the information resources and priorities you have jamieson said that some of the decisions that gave him the most butterflies ended up becoming some of the strongest decisions leaving corporate america opening his first shop moving into a larger space buying the ohtani card that he later sold to kevin o'leary he thought through those decisions he had doubt he rebuilt the thesis then he moved the butterflies were not proof that the decision was right they were proof that the decision mattered there is a point where more research stops improving the decision you can study one more sale ask one more person wait one more day at some point the search from certainty becomes a reason not to act that is where a thesis really earns its value it gives you a line between thought and action i understand why i care i understand the card i understand the price i understand the risks i understand what i'm giving up now i decide that the outcome can still go up against you that does not mean your process failed a good decision and a good outcome aren't the same things you can make a good decision and lose you can make a bad decision and be rewarded if you judge every purchase by what happens next you will learn the long rest wrong lessons judge the quality of the work study the outcome use both to improve the next thesis that you build as we close out this episode i think it's important to understand that the hobby in this industry gives us endless reasons to react as i'm recording this i had to turn my phone upside down because i kept getting updates from ebay on new listings there's constant distractions coming our way you need to know what deserves a decision that is what a thesis gives you it will not predict the future it will not remove risk it does not just immediately create winners it gives your feelings and your conviction some sort of foundation start with affinity build the personal case build the card case build the market case price case ownership case and name the risk case ask the question that matters have i done enough work to live with this decision if the answer is no keep learning or walk away if the answer is yes stop asking the room for permission make the damn decision trust the work live with the result then use what happened through that experience to become a better collector these are the things that i'm thinking about these are the topics that i think no one's really talking about but i think are important and are core to the brand that we're building here with stacking slabs so i appreciate you tuning in i hope this helped you i appreciate you spending time with me each week each episode if this episode resonates with you tell a damn friend throw it up in your instagram story tag me at stacking slaps if you're enjoying the content hit the follow button tell a damn friend run on over to the patreon group appreciate you we'll be back with another happy collecting talk to you soon