What's going on? It is flagship episode time here on the Stacking Slabs Network. I am Brett, builder, collector, creator, all the things here at the Stacking Slabs Network. Appreciate you being here, taking some time out of your day to listen to what we have to say about collecting topics that get us to think, stop, allow us to reflect on what we're building, what we're doing inside of our own collections. And I talk about this a lot.

Like, sometimes, there are these moments throughout the week when I'm having conversations with other collectors and topics come up, and I write it down because I think this is going to be a fun topic to explore in a flagship episode, and that is what we're going to do today. I'll share the topic here in a minute, but wanna say thank you for being here. If you're not already, make sure you're following along. Wherever you're listening, Hit the follow button. If you enjoy these episodes, make sure you tell a damn friend.

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When you open your phone to look at cards, how much of what you see is connected to the collection you actually want to build? That's a question I've been thinking about. That is a question that came up recently, and that is a question that we are going to explore here in the flagship episode of Stacking Slabs. There was a moment during our recording of letter confidential about one of ones that I wanted to come back to, and I actually mentioned that... I think this could make up an entire episode.

Chris was explaining how he keeps up with the categories that he collects in. He has saved searches in card letter sales history that he breaks up by the era he checks what's been sell... Selling. He also has searches on marketplaces to monitor what's becoming available. This allows him to look across sports, brands, designs, and different price levels.

He's following a specific category, but there is a lot of variety inside that category. While he was talking about this, I said we probably should do an entire episode around having systems and processes for the categories that we collect, so here we are. Because that part stayed with me because the part that stayed with me was how much thought he had put into being connected to something that he cares about. He knows what he wants to pay attention to. He has a way to find it, and he keeps coming back to it.

I think that can change our experience as collectors. Most of us know what it feels like to open our phone without much of a plan. We see a card, then another card, check a story, someone posts a sale. Now we're looking at something we weren't thinking about ten minutes ago. Sometimes that's fun.

Sometimes that's how we discover new interests, and I want room for that in my collecting. But if there's a category that you wanna spend years collecting, it helps to have some continuity between the things you do today and the collection you hope to have down the road. That's what I mean by a system, a repeatable way to stay connected to your collecting interests and use what you learn. It could be a couple searches and a note in your phone. It could be a spreadsheet you build out over several years.

The size really depends on what you want out of it, and seriousness doesn't have a dollar amount attached to it. Somebody building a team set with a 20... With $20 cards can have... Can be every bit as thoughtful as someone pursuing expensive one of ones. The question I wanna explore is pretty simple.

How do we give a collecting interest enough attention to understand it without making the hobby feel like another job? Before we talk about safe searches, I think we have to talk about direction. You can build a very efficient process around buying cards you don't really want. You can be organized and still feel disconnected from your collection. So the starting point is understanding what interest you have enough to keep returning to it.

Maybe it's a player, era, the photography, particular set. Maybe you care about the first appearance of a parallel across different products. The reason matters because, eventually, the buying slows down. The card you want doesn't surface. Something gets too expensive.

You lose an auction. A collector tells you they have no interest in selling. What keeps you interested then? For me, curiosity is a big part of it. I wanna be learning something while I'm waiting.

I want to understand the cards better. I want to have conversations with people who see things I haven't seen yet. During the same card letter confidential recording, I bought a card. I bought the 2005 Topps Turkey Red Philip Rivers wood border, one of one, that had caught my attention previously. I hadn't decided whether I was going to buy it, but I was already spending time researching the set and thinking about the card.

The design got my attention. The research gave me more to appreciate. That's an important part of collecting for me. A card can create an experience before there's even a transaction. Now imagine saving what you learned instead of trying to remember it all.

Imagine knowing which other cards from that release you want to see. Imagine finding somebody who has spent years collecting it. You're beginning to develop a process around your curiosity. Now I think about when the next 2,005 tops turkey red one of one pops up. I'm gonna probably look at it a little different than I did before I started reacher...

Researching the rivers, and I think that's the point. One useful place, I think, to start is finishing this sentence. I'm interested in collecting these cards because of this. It doesn't need to be impressive. It just needs to be honest.

You can give yourself a manageable area to explore. If your interest is so broad that every search overwhelms you, narrow it, shrink to see. I talk about that a lot. Focus on one release, one period, or one part of a player's career. Chris' one of one category is broad across sports, but the one of one requirement gives his searches a boundary, and and your boundary can be much smaller.

And you can change it. That's the best part. Learning more may change your own preferences. Having a useful process gives you a way to notice that the chain... What...

Notice that change and decide what you wanna do with it. You don't owe a collecting lane permanent loyalty because you once announced that you were collecting it, and I think that's an important point that we should continue to remind ourselves about. Once you know what you want to explore, the next question is how you're going to see it consistently. This is where Chris's explanation was so useful. He described looking at both what was selling and what was becoming available.

Those are different kinds of information. A listing tells you that someone is offering a particular card at a particular price. A recorded sale gives you evidence of a transaction. Studying both helps you understand the difference between what's being asked and what is actually happening. And you can learn from cards you have no intention of buying.

Maybe a sale introduces you to a parallel you didn't know existed. Maybe you recognize a design from another sport. Maybe you discover that player you collect appears in a release that had previously been overlooked. I like that part of Chris's approach. There's a collecting interest underneath the monitoring.

He gets to see more of the category that he enjoys. And for somebody starting small, I would think about a specific search and a discovery search. The specific search is close to the card you already know and won. A player, a year, a set, a parallel. The discovery search leaves a little bit more room.

Maybe it's the player, a set without that year. Maybe it's a release across all the players because you're trying to understand the designs. Those are examples of search ideas. Different sites handle search terms differently, so the important part is testing the results on the site that you're using. Does a card you know actually show up?

Are you getting buried by results that have nothing to do with your interest? That's how you refine and improve. And sometimes, the best thing that you can learn is that the search itself was asking the wrong question. You thought you wanted every card of a player from a certain year. After looking through the results, you begin to realize it's one particular design that keeps catching your eye.

Now you can follow that interest more deliver... Deliberately. EBay's own safe search guide explains that you can save a search and receive email alerts when matching items are listed. CarLadder also offers safe search filters, and its sales history guide explains filters for things like sale date, price, marketplace, and listing type. The technology can save you from entering the same information over and over and over again, but there's still judgment involved.

An overly narrow search can miss a listing while... With an incomplete title. An overly broad search can create so much noise that you stop looking. We've all been there. I've been there.

You might discover that sellers use different names for the same parallel. You might find your price filter has been excluding useful research examples, so you begin to adjust. One thing I would be careful about is assuming a search gives gives you complete visibility. Private deals happen. Listings can be described poorly.

Some cards can never appear where you're looking. A better search improves what you see. It doesn't give you a complete view of everything that exists, and alerts deserve some thought too. I'm not a big alert guy. I'm too distracted.

If every alert makes you feel like you need to act immediately, you're going to need to spend a whole day responding to your phone. It may make more sense to review some of the searches at a time based on what you choose and reserve notifications for a few things where timing matters to you. Chris acknowledged that his approach can take a couple hours a day. That's a level of involvement in his category. Someone else might get that they need fifteen minutes a few times a week.

The useful question is whether the time you're spending helps you understand and enjoy your collection. You can start with one search. You can add another when you know why you need it. Seeing something once and being able to find it again are two very different things that I've learned through building out my process. We have all had some version of this happen.

You remember seeing a card sell. You're pretty sure it was last year. You think you sent it to somebody. Now you're going through screenshots and messages trying to find it. That's a practical problem a simple record can solve.

I don't think that every collector needs a giant database, but if a sale matters enough for you to study it, having a consistent place to keep it can save you time later. You might start with the card's exact identity, date, where you saw it, link, image, if there's a price, record whether it has an asking price or a reported sale. Then you can add a reason why it matters to you. Start a swipe file. Just start dropping in screenshots.

It's the easiest way to do it. That's the part I would like for us to come back to. Why'd you save it? Was it an example of a design you liked? Was it a card that you never seen before?

Did it challenge something that you believed about the category? For a numbered card details like the serial number or visible grading certification number can help you recognize that this if the same copy appears again. Because five appearances of the same card tell a different story than five different copies appearing. If you're trying to understand availability, that distinction matters. And be careful about how much confidence you attach to the record.

A screenshot of an asking price doesn't establish a sale. A reported sale may deserve a closer look than the actual listing. Card Ladder makes a distinction in their documentation between sales history records and sales verified by its research team in the latter. Those aren't interchangeable labels. You can keep a note simple and still be precise about what you actually know.

If you're looking at a one of one with no direct sales history, related cards can help you ask better questions. Another player from the same release, another year of the same parallel, another card of an athlete that you collect. But the differences still matter, the brand, design, condition, and and player can change how collectors respond. A related sale gives you context. You can have to decide what this particular card means to you.

There's a research... There's research outside of collecting that supports the broader idea of keeping track of progress. Benjamin Harkin and his colleagues published a meta analysis in psychological bulletin in 2016 that brought together a 138 studies. On average, interventions that encourage people to monitor progress help them achieve their goals. Effects were larger when progress was physically recorded.

Those studies weren't testing sports card collecting. The connection I'm making is that keeping a record can help us see whether our actions line up with what we say matters. And in collecting, you get to decide what progress means. Maybe it's understanding a checklist. Maybe it's finding out where a card last appeared.

Maybe it's realizing that a card you've wanted for six months doesn't appeal to you as much as what you thought once you see an image of it, it, and that's useful progress. It doesn't require a purchase. The record gives you something to review. And over time, you can see which interest lasted, which questions you answered, and where you keep getting stuck. That makes the next research session more useful because you're continuing from somewhere.

Research can be more focused than spending an entire evening clicking through results. Pick a question you actually want to answer. Does the parallel exist for a player? What does the back of the card look like? Is the version in the listing the one I think it is?

Then look for a source that can answer that question. A manufacturer checklist checklist can help establish what's included in the release. Images of the actual card can help you inspect what you're being offered, and an experienced collector may point out a detail that you have absolutely no idea about. If you're still unsure, write it down too. There's a difference between a fact you've checked and a theory you're interested in exploring.

Keeping that distinction makes it easier to ask for help without accidentally passing on an assumption along as established information. The people part of this matters just as much as the searches. There are things you can learn through a conversation that would take you a long time to discover alone. This is the best part about the community aspect of the hobby. Somebody remembers a card selling before you were collecting in the category, and somebody has an image of a variation you've never seen.

Somebody can explain why a particular release matters to collectors who were there when it came out. Your research helps you find those people, and the more you learn, the more specific questions become. Think about the difference between asking somebody what you should collect and asking them about a design in detail in a set that they've collected for ten years. The second conversation has somewhere to go. You've given them a chance to share something that they care about, and you've brought your own interest right into that conversation.

When I talk about developing a list of people who collect in a category, I mean remembering the people and the conversations, who collects the same player, who knows the release? Who asks you to keep an eye out for a certain card? That could be as simple as saving an account and making a note what you discussed. And that interest needs to go both ways. If somebody teaches you something, thank them.

If you see a listing that fits what they collect, send it along. If you share information they helped you uncover, credit them. You don't need to buy from somebody for a relationship to matter. You can enjoy talking about the same cards for years. That's part of how a lane becomes something you want to stay connected to.

There are people there. There are out... Ongoing conversations. There are discoveries you want to share with somebody who will understand why you are excited. And sometimes, yes, the familiarity can lead to opportunity, and somebody remembers you, what you collect when a card becomes available, and a collector thinks of you when they're considering a a trade.

But knowing somebody owns a card doesn't mean that the card is available. Their collection deserves the same respect you want from your own. I'd also leave room for disagreement. A person can know a tremendous amount about a category and have a very different taste than you. Learning from them doesn't require adopting every preference that they have.

Maybe they prioritize the earliest year. Maybe you like a later design. That's a useful conversation to category that you care about. You learn, you remember, and you help other collectors learn too. And if you publish help other collectors learn too.

And if you publish something useful from your research, other collectors can add to it. They might have a missing image or a correction from your research. Being willing to update your understanding makes the work more valuable to everyone who comes across it later. Now we've got a direction. We have a way to see cards, a place to keep useful information, and people that we can learn with.

What happens when the card you want actually shows up? That's where we're getting it. Because this is where a lot of the preparation gets tested. You can spend months being patient, and then suddenly, you're worried that if you don't act in the next thirty seconds, you'll never see the card again. Sometimes timing does matter, especially with scarce cards.

That's why I like the idea of doing some of the thinking before this moment arrives. Psychologics, Peter Golwitzer and Paschel Sharon have studied what they call implementation intentions. In plain language, these are if then plans. You identify a situation in advance and decide how you'll respond. The 2,006 meta analysis found that these plans help people follow through on their goals.

And, again, that's research on goal pursuit, and I'm applying that idea to collecting. For example, if a card... Or if a target card appears, then I'll check the exact version, look at the condition information, and compare the total cost with what I decided I was comfortable with spending. Or if a card requires money I've already committed somewhere else, then maybe I'll pass. The specific response is yours.

The value is having considered it while there wasn't a seller waiting for an answer. And I think it also helps to separate cards you're actively pursuing from the cards you're simply interested in studying. Because once you start researching deeply, you can find the reasons to appreciate almost everything. That's one of the fun parts about the hobby. It can also become a very expensive habit if appreciation automatically turns into a purchase.

You might have five cards you're prepared to pursue and another 50 you wanna learn about. That gives you room to be curious without treating every discovery as a buying opportunity, and the process needs rhythm that you can live with. Maybe you can... Maybe you check if you save searches, during the week. Once a week, you save information that mattered, and there's a follow-up question.

Occasionally, you look back at what you've been doing and ask if it's actually helping. Those are possible routines. I'm a routine guy. I like to build in routines. I have a idea every day of when I'm gonna check my safe searches, and you can make yours much smaller.

What I like is that the routine gives you a place to return to after a busy week. You don't have to remember every unfinished thought. You can open up your note and know what you are exploring, and there is also permission to stop researching. You won't resolve every uncertainty around a scarce car... Scarce card.

In some point, you may understand that available information and still have to make a judgment. You can buy, you can pass, or keep watching. A system can make the judgment more informed. It can't guarantee the outcome. And if you lose the card, it's worth asking whether the process worked.

If it's sold above what you were comfortable paying, that may be perfectly fine and a good result for you. The auction result doesn't get to decide whether you made a thoughtful choice. Let's put this together in a hypothetical example. This isn't a story about an actual collector or a specific sale. Wanna make that clear.

Imagine you're interested in early cards of a favorite player. You've been buying whatever looks interesting, but now you want to discover one particular release. You write down what attracts you. You like the design. You like the year.

You want to explore a few parallels from that period. You also identify what you're comfortable spending from your hobby budget. You save a specific search for the player in the release. You save a broader one so you can see other players and learn what different versions look like. In the first week, nothing you want becomes available.

But you find an old sale, you save the image, date link, you note the condition differs from what you're hoping to find. In the second week, you notice two listings with different titles that appear to describe the same parallel. You check a reliable checklist and improve the terms you're using in your search. Now you're less likely to overlook a relevant listing. In the third week, you find a collector who has been posting cards from the release.

You ask specific questions about the detail you notice. They explain it and point you towards another source. You add that source to your note and thank them. In the fourth week, a card appears. You recognize the version.

You have context for the price. You... And because you've looked at other examples, you know what condition details you wanna examine. Maybe you buy it. Maybe you ask for better images.

Maybe the price is beyond what you wanna spend, and you let it go. Whatever you decide, you've had a month of collecting that connects to the next month. You understand more. You've met somebody. You have a better safe search, and you have a place to continue when you come back.

That is what I find so appealing about building a process around the lane. It creates continuity even when the collection itself isn't getting bigger. And over time, that continuity can put you in a better position to recognize and pursue a card you might have missed before. There is a point where this can become too much, and I wanna make sure that is very clear. If you're spending all of your hobby time maintaining a spreadsheet you don't use, simplify it.

If alerts keep pulling you away from the things in your life that actually matter, change them. If the research has become an obligation, take a break. The time you've already invested doesn't obligate you to keep going in the same direction. There will also be quiet periods. If you are collecting scarce cards, your routine might turn very different for a while.

You can decide that checking in less makes sense. You can spend that time enjoying another part of the hobby. Staying in a lane for a long run needs to accommodate the rest of your life, and that is an important reminder I'm constantly telling myself. I would also watch for the moment when you re... Your research becomes an effort to justify a purchase you've already decided you need to make.

You can find a favorable sale if you look long enough. The more useful question is what information might change in your mind a collecting process should leave you open to learning that you are wrong, and I should leave room to enjoy the cards cards I already own. Looking through your collection, sharing your favorite cards, or talking about why you like it belongs in that experience too. When I think about getting serious in a lane, I think about giving it a thoughtful sustained attention. That can happen with very little technology.

It can happen on a very small budget. It can happen during a month when you buy absolutely nothing. Chris's explanation helped me see how deliberately he stays connected to his interest. I appreciate him sharing that, and I appreciate Josh's perspective in the conversation as well. The part I wanna carry forward is finding a way to keep learning and participating that fits your life.

If the idea interests you, start with one category and keep returning to it. Save one search. Keep one note. Have a conversation with someone who collects cards in that lane. See whether that makes the experience better, and you can build off of that.

And I love to hear about the things you've already developed. Maybe there's a routine you have had in place for years, and it helps. And what has it helped you understand? If you kept collecting this lane for another five years, what would you want to know that you don't know today? That gives all of us somewhere to begin.

I hope this conversation has you thinking a little bit differently about building a strategy process, thinking about technology, and the people in the collecting lanes that we enjoy. I appreciate your support. Make sure you tell a damn friend. Hit the follow button. Do all the things.

Happy collecting. Have a great week. We'll be back soon. Take care.