what's going on everybody welcome back to stacking slabs your hobby content alternative i'm brett builder here at the stacking slabs network and collector of sports cards excited to be here fun topic wanna dig into finding great cards where the hobby isn't looking it is something that i think about a lot i think about the attention think about where everyone is and where everyone is going and where there is opportunity on the other side when i first started stacking slabs one of the first catch phrases that i would bellow out almost every episode is turn left when the market is going right and i was thinking about that and i was thinking about the current state and i figured it might be a good time to bring that back up and we can talk about how we find great cards where the hobby isn't looking at least we can talk about my experience and that's what we do here share some perspective from one collector to another if you're enjoying what we're doing here make sure you hit follow wherever you're listening to get all of the content coming out every day we can't stop we won't stop we're dedicated to consistently delivering high quality collector focused content and and operator focused content for those building in the industry before we get into it a little bit of business stacking slabs is sponsored by inferno red technology they are the engineering team behind some of the biggest names in sports and collectibles like dc sports eighty seven comps seed 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 everyone in between see what they can build for you at inferno red dot com so this idea came to me when i was out walking and thinking about a number of cards that are being introduced into the hobby every single week think about what's happening right now there's always another product coming out another release from topps releases from panini or upper deck you've got football basketball baseball wrestling and all these other categories where collectors are chasing that next big card and when these products come out we know what happens there are super fractures debut patches one of ones there are all of these cards that immediately become the center of attention breakers are opening cases of product on their streams people are spending money to try to hit these cards somebody pulls something big and within minutes that video is everywhere you hit instagram it's there it's on twitter tiktok all the social channels you see people talking about what the card is worth or asking questions how much is this worth you see people speculating about where it might end up and then the next product comes out and we do it all over again there's nothing wrong with any of this this is the fuel for the hobby this is how things move in the current state i love seeing great cards being pulled i love seeing collectors get excited i love the fact that these moments bring people into the hobby but i've been thinking about what this environment means for the rest of us because when you're surrounded by all this activity it starts to influence what you believe is worth collecting you see the cards over and over again you hear about the same players you hear about the same sets and after a while those cards start to feel like the ones you're supposed to want i think that's worth examining because the cards getting the most attention aren't necessarily the only cards worth owning and the cards getting the least attention aren't necessarily the least interesting in fact i believe there's opportunity sitting in parts of the hobby that most of us don't spend enough time exploring i'm talking about established players i'm talking about cards with legitimate scarcity i'm talking about products that have been around for ten fifteen twenty or maybe even thirty years cards that have been sitting in collections for a long time cards that don't show up in content we're consuming every day and what i wanna do is spend today's episode talking about how you go find them how you become a collector who knows where to look how you research to understand what exists how you identify cards with lasting appeal that aren't receiving the attention they deserve and how you build enough conviction in your own understanding to buy something without needing the rest of the hobby to tell you that it's a good card i think there's a lot here and i wanna get into it with you i wanna start with something that i think is really important the hobby's intention isn't distributed evenly and i don't think we spend enough time thinking about that let's take a new baseball product before that product even comes out you've got a manufacturer promoting it they're showing pictures of the big cards that are telling you about the chase they're showing the super factors the autograph variations and whatever else is going to drive interest in that release then the product goes out to distributors and breakers you've got people opening it up on live streams you've got collectors participating in the breaks and when somebody hits one of those big cards that moment becomes content and that content gets distributed other accounts pick it up people share it people start talking about value and then suddenly this card that didn't exist in the public market a few weeks earlier has an entire community paying attention to it think about how much activity goes into creating that moment you've got manufacturer distributor breaker customer content creator the audience watching and everyone has a reason to participate pay the manufacturer wants people to buy its product the breaker wants people to participate in the breaks the content creator wants to share something peep that will reach people and people will watch and collectors want that experience the excitement of finding something that's how the system works and it's a powerful system i think the digitization of the hobby has made it even more powerful than ever twenty years ago when a big card got pulled you might hear about it at a card shop maybe you might see something in beckett you might read about it on a message board today somebody can pull a big card in an afternoon and thousands of collectors can see it before dinner that changes how attention collectors can see it before dinner that changes how attention moves through the hobby and the interesting thing is that attention becomes its own form of validation people start to associate the number of times they see a card with the importance of the card it's everyone's talking point it's the conversation that everyone's having they're great they're great cards a lot of these cards are great cards some of them will become important pieces in in the hobby history but that doesn't mean that the cards being talked about today are the only ones with significance but it feels that way and that's the part that interests me because while all the attention is being directed towards the next release there are decades of cards that already exist think about that for a second every card that has was produced five years ago there every card that was produced ten years ago twenty years ago those cards haven't gone anywhere they still exist they're still owned by somebody and some of them are incredible but they don't have a manufacturer promoting them this week they don't have breakers opening up cases of them tonight they're not generating thousands of new clips so the attention moves somewhere else and that's where i want to spend more of my time as a collector here's something i've been thinking about a card can be important without being popular at a particular moment and a card can be popular at a particular moment without becoming important over time those are two different things i think sometimes we combine them we see a huge sale we see a card that everyone wants we see people competing to own it and we automatically assign significance to it but significance isn't something that needs to hold up beyond the moment when everyone's talking about it this is where understanding the history of our hobby becomes useful you can go back through different periods and look at the cards that that collectors wanted you can look at the sets that introduce something new you can look at the designs people still talk about you can look at parallels that have developed a following and you can ask yourself why those cards matter sometimes it's the combination of player design scarcity moment in time it can be anything and i think here's where it gets interest interesting once you understand why certain cards became important you can start looking for those same characteristics in places that aren't receiving much attention you're no longer asking what everyone's buying you're asking what makes a card worth owning in the first place and that's a completely different approach and it changes the type of research that you're doing one important distinction though being overlooked and being undervalued aren't the same thing there are plenty of cards that nobody talks about because nobody wants them a one of one doesn't automatically have value because only one exists you still need a reason for somebody to care about it that's why i don't want this conversation to turn into a discussion about finding cheap cards and hoping somebody will pay more for them later that's not what interests me i'm interested in finding cards that have qualities collectors have demonstrated that they care about established players historical significance recognizable sets scarcity that means something cards with a story behind them and then understanding whether those cards are being valued in a way that makes sense relative to other things happening in the market to me that's where research really becomes an advantage let me give you an example of what i'm talking about think about panini basketball panini became the nba exclusive trading card partner beginning in the two thousand and nine and ten season and from that point forward there were years and years of products being introduced think about how many different sets existed during that period think about the different players who appeared in them think about all the parallels autographs inserts and memorabilia cards and then ask yourself a question how much of that catalog do you as a collector understand because i know i don't understand all of it not even close when we think about important panini basketball cards our minds tend to go towards brands everybody knows prism national treasures flawless those products have established themselves collectors have spent years building collections around them there's a track record of demand and that's meaningful but it doesn't mean everything else panini produced during those years should be ignored go back to twenty thirteen twenty fourteen there was a panini crusade pro basketball product and when you start looking through the checklist you find something interesting you've got a large crusade set featuring established players including curry lebron james james harden klay thompson you've got gold parallels numbers to ten you've got green parallels number to five you've got black one of ones now i'm not telling you that every one of those cards is valuable and i'm not telling you that krusay deserves to be valued like prism what i am saying is that this is an example of a place you can start doing your research here's a product from more than a decade ago it has established stars low numbered cards it has specific design and there's a history behind the behind the crusade name so what do you do you investigate you look at the cards you look at the checklist you figure out which players are represented you try to understand how collectors have valued those cards over time you compare them with other cards of those same players and you start asking whether something there belongs in your collection then you go to another product look at twenty thirteen twenty fourteen panini gold standard basketball you've got base cards numbered to one ninety nine you've got platinum parallels number to ten you've got a black one of one that checklist includes lebron dirk curry along with established veterans and retired legends now you've got another set to investigate and then you can go somewhere else twenty fifteen twenty sixteen gala basketball that product had veteran and legend base cards number to ninety nine and rookie base cards number to eight eight that's an unusually small number for a rookie base card but here's where you have to be careful does the fact that the card is numbered eight automatically make an important rookie card of course not does the product have a collector following do people appreciate this design does a particular player have a collector base interested in that release is there a history of meaningful sales those are the questions the print run gets your attention the research tells you whether there's another one worth pursuing and you can repeat that exercise across all different releases preferred court kings select gold standard crusade gala many others and you begin to realize how much exists beyond the handful of products that receive a majority of the attention and this is is isn't exclusive to basketball you can do it with football baseball wrestling the process is the same find a period that interests you understand what they produce and study the cards that came out of it you don't need to know everything you need to know enough about a particular part of the market to recognize something when you see it i want to connect this back to something from my own collecting a card that that i've spent time thinking about is my twenty twelve prism reggie wayne finite one of one now i know prism isn't a forgotten product that's not the point of this example the important part is understanding what makes that card meaningful full to me first it's reggie wayne i've if you've listened to this show at any length you know how i feel about the colts and the players i grew up watching reggie means something to me i have memories attached to watching him play second it's from twenty twelve that's the first year of prism football and if you go back and look at the product it's fascinating how different it was compared with what prism became there were far fewer parallel options you had standard prism red die cuts gold number to ten finite one of ones compare that with how many versions of cards are produced in modern prism releases it's a different world so when i'm looking at that reggie wayne i see more than a one of one i see a card from the beginning of one of the most important product lines in modern football collecting i see a player who means something to me a player who caught a touchdown in super bowl forty one the mountaintop moment for me as a fan i see a card that has a specific place in the history of the product and those things matter to me and they help explain why i wanted to own it but here's another part of the story the card doesn't receive the same attention as the biggest quarterback rookie cards from that year and i understand why the football card market is driven heavily by quarterbacks they're that's where a lot of money goes that's where a lot of people tend to focus but if you're a collector who cares about reggie wayne the colts or the history of prison football your priorities are different and there's nothing wrong with that you can find meaning in a card that the broader market isn't focused on that's one reason i enjoy collecting we all get to decide what matters to us and i think there's an advantage in understanding that because the to us and i think there's an advantage in understanding that because the more you understand what you want the less dependent you become on everyone else's opinion now we can go back even further because i think there's another area worth spending spending time on think about the nineties when people talk about important cards from the nineties certain things immediately come to mind precious metal gems essential credentials flare showcase and other sets that introduce scarcity in designs that collectors still care about today these cards have established their place in the hobby some of them have sold for enormous amounts of money but i want you to think about the history of one of ones because there is something interesting or at least i find interesting in ninety seven flair's showcase baseball introduced masterpiece parallels these were among the first true pack issued one of one parallels in the hobby think about what it meant at that time today we're used to seeing one of ones in every product but in ninety seven the concept was new and there was something different about the idea that only one example of a particular card existed then you look at how it how that concept expanded you had flare showcase masterpieces across sports you had ultra masterpieces you had metal universe gym masters and ninety eight metal universe football for example had precious metal gyms numbered to fifty and gym masters that were one of one think about the players represented in some of those products barry sanders jerry rice deion sanders brett favre some of the most important football players of the generation and these weren't products that were introduced last week we're talking about the cards that have been out in the world for nearly thirty years cards that have moved through collections cards that some collectors have owned for decades now i'm not suggesting that these specific cards are sitting out there waiting to be bought for pennies on the dollar a lot of serious collectors understand how important they are now some of these one of ones already command significant prices in january twenty six a nineteen ninety eight metal universe gym master one of one deion sanders sold for eighty seven thousand dollars including buyer's premium that tells you there's real collector demand for certain cards from that period but here's what i want to take want you to take away what else was produced during those years what other one of ones exist what other parallels were introduced what other players were included there are a lot of questions we we can ask and what products have characteristics that collectors continue to value that's where my mind starts going not simply towards the cars that everyone already knows but towards understanding the full range of what was produced think about being a collector of a player from that era maybe you collect marvin harrison maybe you collect peyton manning maybe you're interested in a player that doesn't receive the same attention as jordan or kobe you can spend time going through the old checklist and you can start finding cards you didn't even know existed i love that part of collecting that moment when you find an image of a card you've seen never seen before you start looking at it you find out what set it came from you find out how rare it is you try to figure out the last time one sold and before you know it you've spent an hour learning about something that wasn't on your radar when you started that's an experience i want more collectors to have because you're developing your own understanding you're finding things because you're interested in them not because somebody showed you a clip and told you to care so let's get into the process because i don't want this episode to be a conversation about opportunities without giving some sort of way to find them let's say you're listening to this and you want to spend some time looking for cards that aren't receiving much attention where do you start i think the first thing you should do is narrow your focus and i mean really narrow it don't start with every football card ever produced don't try to learn twenty five years of basketball products at once pick one player pick a team pick a specific period maybe you're interested in your team from ninety eight to twenty twelve maybe you're interested in basketball cards from twenty twelve to twenty fifteen maybe you're a kobe collector and you wanna understand the products that that came out during the final five years of his career whatever it is pick something that interests you because that's important your interest gives you a reason to do the work it is work i enjoy the work but the deeper you get into something you care about the more knowledge you develop then i would start with the checklist this is one of the most valuable resources we have as a collector and i think it's underused you can spend hours looking at listings on ebay but those listings only show you what's available available for sale a checklist helps you understand why it was produced and that's a huge difference because some of the most interesting cards not might not have ever been listed for sale you don't know to look for them until you know they exist you don't know to look for them until you know they exist so i dig into resources like beckett cardboard connection trading card database and original manufacturer checklist look at the products player lists parallels print runs design and start writing them down you might find a card number to ten that you've never seen you might find a one of one you didn't know existed you might find an insert set that you think is creative that's how the process starts and then i would move on to sales history this is where i dig into card ladder all the time wanting to understand what has sold but i wouldn't stop at the exact card you're searching let's say you find a steph curry gold parallel from an older panini basketball product first look at the sales of the exact card if there aren't any look for sales of the players in the same set then look at other curry cards from that year look at similar parallels look at differences between products people know and ones that are receiving less attention you're trying to understand how the market values things and i wanna emphasize something a comparable sale isn't necessarily a card that looks exactly the same sometimes you're trying to understand the broader relationship between a player product and scarcity you want to know how the collectors behave what do they pay up for what do they ignore what makes one card sell significantly more than the other these are the questions that help you develop an understanding of value and sometimes you're going to find something that doesn't make any sense to you and that's okay write it down keep researching because the answer isn't always the market is wrong sometimes there's something you don't understand yet maybe the set has a stronger collector base maybe a particular parallel has a history that goes back far longer than you expected maybe there's a reason a particular card doesn't receive much demand you need to understand those things before you start spending a lot of money this is where i think collectors need to be disciplined because it's easy to get excited when you find something rare you see a card number to five a one of one a player you love and immediately start thinking about owning it and i've been there but i think there's a difference between identifying an interesting card and identifying an attractive opportunity to me there are questions that we need to ask ourself and do discovery in order to help understand if it matters does the player have an established collector base that's an important collect con question doesn't mean that the player has to be the most expensive in the sport there are plenty of retired players who people still collect there are plenty of there are players who mean an incredible amount to a particular fan base these are the players who represent important periods in a team's history and then there are athletes whose accomplishments have created demand that has lasted for decades and i think that matters because if you're looking for cards with lasting value you wanna understand why people will care about that person on the card ten years from now second question is about the product what makes the particular set worth caring about was it a first year of the product does it introduce a specific card or parallel was it important to the era and i and sometimes i think you need a you need to be able to explain why the set matters and sometimes the answer is is it doesn't and i think it's just useful information the next question i think about is scarcity how rare is the card and i don't mean how many have been graded i mean how many were produced those are different things a card with a psa population of one isn't necessarily rare maybe nobody else bothered to grade it maybe hundreds of copies are sitting wrong in collections so you need to understand the production was it number to ten was it a legitimate one of one was it unnumbered short short print run are there multiple versions that look similar this is especially important when you're looking at modern products because every release contains a large number of one of ones you need to think about what makes one particular card stand out the fourth question is about the card itself very simple question do you like it i think it's important one of the most important questions do you like the design the photography the way it looks ultimately you need to be able to enjoy being with the card it is probably the most essential thing i know the best cards in my collection when i take them out of my case they're the ones that look the best to me and that's the starting point the fifth question is about demand and value what evidence is there that other collectors care about this type of card this is the part that separates something from being rare from having a market can you find previous sales can you find active collectors actively pursuing the set if you needed to sell the card who's the buyer i think that's always an important question and it is one you'll need to answer because sometimes you're going to find something that is rare interesting and meaningful but has very little demand outside of your own collection and that's fine if you understand it the mistake is assuming that every card you love is something the market will eventually recognize those are two different things i wanna spend some time on the next topic because i think it's central to what we are talking about when i say there's an opportunity in looking at cards that aren't receiving attention i mean two things there's an opportunity to improve your collection and there's an opportunity to recognize value that other people aren't currently prioritizing those two things overlap but they're not identical let's start with the collection say you collect a particular retired player you spend time sending his cards you find something from fifteen years ago that you didn't know existed you love the design it's rare it represents a period of his career that means something to you and you have the opportunity to buy it at a price that worked for your collection that's a successful outcome even if the card never becomes more expensive even if nobody talks about it on social media even if it never records an auction you added something meaningful to your collection and you use your knowledge to find it there's value in that experience now let's talk about the financial side because i know a lot of collectors are going to listen to this and think about cards they might be able to acquire before demand increases and i understand that and i think it's reasonable to study those opportunities but you have to separate what you know from what you're hoping will happen a card being old doesn't mean it's going to become valuable a card being rare doesn't mean it's going to have an increase in price a card being overlooked from an overlooked product doesn't mean that collectors are eventually going to pay attention to it you need evidence you need to understand the player the product you need to understand the history of demand and you need to understand the price you're paying let's say you identify one of one from an older basketball product you look at it and you think the card should be worth more okay why is it because comparable cards sold more is it because the product has historical significance is it because other cards from the same period have developed a stronger demand or is it because you want to own the card you're trying to convince yourself is a good financial decision that's a question worth asking i think a lot of collectors get themselves into trouble when they confuse those things they find something they like they buy it and then they build a story around why everyone else should eventually want it but the market doesn't owe us that outcome i think the strongest position is when you can look at a card and say i understand what it is i understand what why it matters i understand what people have paid for similar cards and i understand what i am paying for it and i'm comfortable with owning it even if no one else starts talking about it because that is conviction and that's different from buying something because you think it is gonna go up and be the next big thing i wanna get into something that connects all of this and that's the role that content plays in our collecting decisions because i produce content i'm part of the system i spend a lot of time talking about cards i share cards that i like i talk about the things that i'm buying i bring collectors on the show who share what matters to them and i love doing it but i never want someone listening to stacking slabs to believe the cards i collect are the cards they're supposed to collect that's not the purpose of this show or any of the other shows on the stacking slabs network my hope is that when you hear me talk about something it gives you a reason to think about your own collection maybe you agree with me maybe you don't maybe you maybe something i say gets interested in in part of the hobby but you haven't explored before and i think that's great but i want you to develop your own opinions and i think that becomes more important as the hobby continues to grow because there are going to be more products there are going to be more breaks there are going to be more people talking about the next big card there's always going to be somewhat something competing for your attention and if you follow all that activity to determine what you want you're going to spend a lot of time chasing what other people are excited about i don't think that leads to the best collecting experience what i have found is that the more i understand my own interests the more enjoyment i get out of the hobby and the less i feel like i need to participate in what is happening i've talked recently about buying less i've talked about the difference between wanting a card and wanting to make another purchase i've talked about spending time with cards we already own all of this connects to this conversation because when you decide to slow down your buying you create more time to learn and when you spend time learning you develop a better understanding of what you actually want and that changes what you search for it changes how you approach a purchase it changes how patient you're willing to be and i think it makes collecting better i wanna come back to the idea that started this episode because i think there's something important here right now somewhere in the hobby there's a collector who owns a card that most people have never seen sitting in a collection it's been sitting there for years it's from a product that hasn't been opened in a long time maybe that person who owns it bought it when the product first came out maybe then maybe they acquired it from another collector maybe it's been sitting in a box because they haven't thought about selling it and maybe that card represents something important to another collector favorite player team period of their life part of the hobby history the card doesn't need to be featured in a break it doesn't need to be shared by a large account it doesn't need everyone talking about it it already exists and somebody who understands what they're looking at might find it incredibly meaningful that's what i love about this there is so much history in sports cards and we're living in a period where so much of our attention is directed towards what is being produced right now i don't think we should stop caring about new cards there are great things that are being produced there are cards that are coming out today that people are going to want for the next twenty years and i believe that but i also think we should spend more time looking backward not because everything old is better not because there's so much to learn and when you develop that understanding you begin to recognize things that you wouldn't have noticed before you understand history of a particular product you understand design parallels you ex we can explain why one card isn't peeled beyond just a serial stamp and i think that's knowledge and that knowledge is one of the greatest advantages you can develop as a collector because the hobby's attention is always going to move there's always going to be another release big pull record sale another car that people want to talk about and you can enjoy those things without allowing them to determine what belongs in your collection you can be interested in what's happening right now while spending your own time somewhere else you can appreciate the newest super fracture being pulled while researching an obscure parallel from fifteen years ago those things can exist together and i think they should give ourselves permission to collect that way here's what i wanna leave you with today the next great card for your collection might not be coming out this week it might already exist it might have been produced ten years ago or twenty or thirty years ago and the reason you haven't thought about it isn't because it's a bad card it might because be because you don't know it exists yet and i think that's worth spending some time on because you can start going through old checklists looking at different products and studying the history of cards you can begin to understand how much there is to collect and how little of it we talk about on a daily basis the majority of the hobby is always going to have attention directed somewhere that doesn't mean you need to follow it you can study something different you can develop an understanding of a particular player in a set most collectors don't have you can take your time and when somebody something comes along that fits your collection you can make a decision based on your knowledge not because everyone's talking about it not because somebody told you it was going to be valuable but because you understand what you're buying and you know why you want it and i think that's a great position to be in as a collector the best part is that you don't need to spend any money to start you just need time and curiosity you need to be willing to look at things that aren't getting everyone else's attention so the next time you sit down and look at cards try something different instead of starting with what's new or what's available go find something you don't know anything about old checklists first sets never studied find a card that causes you to ask questions and see where it takes you you might find something you want to own you might find something that changes the way you think about your own collection or you might walk away with an understanding of a part of the hobby you didn't understand before any one of those things is time well spent that's what i wanted to share with you today as always i appreciate your attention here hopefully some of this episode helped you in your own collecting journey i'm brett i collect sports cards i build a lot of content here on the stacking slabs network it goes out every day appreciate you following along take care happy collecting talk to you soon