Welcome back to another episode of Hobby Jobs here on the Stacking Slabs Network sponsored by my good friends at BCW Supplies. Very excited about what is happening across the industry from an operator, entrepreneur, and business perspective. Have gotten so much good feedback from you. This has been a bet that I have placed this year when building and expanding the stacking slabs network. And each and every day, I continue to work on the hobby job side of stacking slabs.

I get more rewarded. I'm fired up. I'm very excited about where we're going heading into 2027. Hobby jobs is going to be a big part of how we roll. Operator conversations, focus perspective, offering content to you that you don't get anywhere else.

The conversations with operators will continue. We... I'm flying solo this week, but there'll be another one. I'm lining those up, getting inside look on businesses, the builders, and how they do what they do. It is a part of the DNA of HobbyJobs, and I'm excited about the list of individuals that I'm coordinating with right now.

Here's the thing about operators in this space. Everyone has something to do all of the time, and getting on someone's calendar is a bit of a challenge, but I like the challenge. It is... Part of my role is to continue to communicate effectively, to source the right people in the right companies that I think we all can benefit from hearing from. So my goal is to continue those chats next week, and I'm excited to be here.

If you're here for the first time, welcome. This show exists to support the people building in the sports car industry. You are the fabric of this space without the business builders. It would be very, very difficult to navigate what we're doing. It would be hard to forecast growth.

It would be hard to find inventory. So shout out everyone who's a builder, who's tuning in. Today, I want to talk about a decision that gets harder when the hobby becomes your livelihood. And the question is, what do you keep? That can mean a card you spent years trying to find.

It can mean a service your customers like. It can mean work you've always done yourself even though the business has grown behind... Beyond what you can handle alone. In this conversation, we're gonna start with PSA because its latest service changes put the question in front of businesses throughout this entire industry. Then we'll get into the tension between owning cards and giving a business the resources it needs.

And by the end, I want you to have a way to examine one decision you've been putting off, whether that's a card you're keeping or an investment that you are considering inside your own business. Shout out BCW supplies for sponsoring hobby jobs. For over forty five years, BCW has helped retailers and wholesale partners stay stocked with storage and display accessories collectors trust backed by dependable fulfillment and consistency to keep shelves stocked and margins strong. You can learn more at bcwsupplies.combackslashwholesale. Okay.

So PSA announced its latest service update on October 28. Standard and priority turnaround estimates each came down by twenty business days. Standard is now seventy to eighty business days, and priority is fifty to sixty. Value reopened October 29 at $39.99 per card in The US with a $500 maximum insured value and ninety to one hundred business day estimate. Value bulk still remains closed.

These estimates... These are estimates and not guarantees, and the new estimates don't rewrite the terms orders that are already submitted. PSA says new value orders will follow existing orders. I must be transparent because transparency is key here on... Across the Stacking Slabs network.

PSA is a Stacking Slabs partner, and I wanna be clear about that relationship as we examine what these decisions mean for people running businesses across the sports card industry. The useful question is what happens on the other side of the submission form. Think about a dealer who buys raw cards, grades them, then sells the slabs. The grading fee is one expense. The time between paying for the card and receiving the money from its sale matters too.

During that time, another collection might become available. Rent still has to be due every month. The dealer might need to buy inventory for a show, and having valuable cards somewhere in the process doesn't automatically give that person money to use today. Now think about the shop submitting cards for customers. The shop may not own those cards, but it owns the conversation with the person who dropped them off.

An uncertain return date can become another email, another phone call, another uncomfortable exchange across the counter. And a consignment business may be waiting for graded cards before it... They can be photographed, they can be listed, and ultimately earn its commission. Those are examples of how a grading timeline can reach into several businesses at once. I wouldn't assume every operator experiences the same impact.

But if grading sits inside your process, changes to that process deserve your attention. And to understand this update, we have to go back to the pause. PSA stopped taking new submissions in four value tiers on June 2. Its May announcement said a submission surge had pushed the backlog towards 10,000,000 cards even with grading output at a record level. Higher service tiers remained open.

My read is that this was a capacity decision. When work enters faster than it can leave, accepting another order adds to what somebody is already waiting for. Increasing output helps. It doesn't solve the problem if incoming work keeps growing faster. That is a useful lesson for a small business too.

A breaker can fill more streams than the shipping team can fulfill. A shop can buy more collections than it can sort and list, and you can have demand for your work, but the business might not be prepared to complete it. There's also a fair question about how the reopening is managed. PSA originally named a 5,000,000 unit backlog target. Its October update puts the backlog at 7,200,000 and describes this as a phased reopening with lower priced services still to come.

Both of those facts belong in the conversation. Services are coming back before the original target has been reached, and the reopening is partial. PSA's tracker also shows that the backlog continued growing after the June pause reaching 12,400,000 in late July before its subsequent decline. For me, that makes the actual performance the thing to watch. Can existing orders move through?

Do new submissions return with the estimates people are using to plan? Can a shop give its customers an an update that holds up? More availability is useful. Reliability is what allows someone to build a business around it. If you can buy cards to grade and resell, revisit the whole deal before sending the next batch.

What might it sell for in a lower grade? What happens if the selling price falls while you wait? What other purchases become harder while that money is committed? If you submit for customers, you must communicate the estimates as an estimate. Make sure they understand whose timeline it is and what your own service includes.

The confidence you create should come from being clear about the process. And if you're operating any hobby business, ask where your own backlog is forming. How many purchases how many purchase collections are still waiting to be listed? How many customer issues are you waiting to resolve? What are you still accepting because turning down the work feels uncomfortable?

And sometimes the decisions that protect the business is limiting to what comes in until you can take care of what's already there. That brings us to a personal version of the same problem. How much can you keep committed to cards while still still giving your business room to work? This week, in the operator note of the Hobby Jobs newsletter, check it out. Link is in the show notes.

It's free. It's on Substack. I wrote about owning a business changing what you keep, and I wrote it because I can believe in a card, and I can believe in stacking slabs at the same time. And those beliefs can still compete for the same money. I love collecting.

I built my entire business and life around collecting. The research matters to me. The relationships matter. There are cards that carry years of attention, and I don't want to turn every one of them into a calculation about what I could fund instead. But when you're responsible for a business, you start seeing possibilities differently.

You look at a card and think about the help you could bring in. You think about the resources you've delayed. You think about having enough money available to make a patient decision instead of a rushed one. You can feel that tension even if your business doesn't sell cards. I build a media business.

Somebody someone else might be building software or provide another service. The collection can still become part of the conversation about what the owner is prepared to commit. Had a conversation this week on Passion and Profession with Chris Sewell. He gave me a useful example. He and a partner bought a 52 tops mantle for roughly $13,000 years ago.

They kept it for about a week and sold it for 15 because they had... They needed money to pay bills. Imagine spending years in the hobby and finally having a card like that in your hands and knowing it needs to leave. What interested me was how Chris understood the parts of collecting he enjoyed. Buying a collection, sorting through it, learning what was there, he could enjoy that work and still let the cards move along.

He also kept the PC. He had to make room for both. The lesson I take from that is you gotta decide what a purchase is supposed to do before you make it. If you're buying inventory, the plan should include how it gets sold. If you're buying something for your personal collection, recognize that you're choosing to keep money in a card because the ownership gives you satisfaction.

Both choices can make sense. The difficulty comes when you keep changing the explanation. You buy a card because the margin looks attractive, then you get attached to it and decide it's personal. Later, when the money gets tight, it becomes a business inventory decision again. And you can make almost any purchase feel reasonable if you're allowed to change its purpose whenever the decision gets uncomfortable.

There is research, and I've talked about this research a lot. It's maybe the most mentioned piece of research throughout stacking slabs this year, but it's a well known study from Daniel Kahneman, Jack Niche, and Richard Thaler, and they gave people ordinary objects, including coffee mugs, and studied their willingness to trade. Owners often required more money to give up something than buyers were willing to pay for it, and that's the endowment effect. That study wasn't about rare cards or people running card businesses, but it... And it doesn't prove that an owner who wants to keep a card is making a mistake.

It does give us a reason to check how possessions change our own judgment. And one question I find useful is this. If I had a realistic sale proceeds in cash today, would I choose to spend them on this card? It's a great it's a great test I've run. You might say yes immediately.

You might remember how hard the card was to find and realize you couldn't replace it, and those are real considerations and consequences. But you might also realize that you're protecting a decision that you made years ago even if your priorities change. The point is to understand the answer. You should know whether you're keeping the card because you you still want ownership or because letting go feels like you're admitting something about the purchase. There's another question that I think deserves scrutiny.

What happens after you sell? It's easy to get specific about a card. We know the year, the grade, the pop. Then we get vague about the business investment. We say we're gonna reinvest the money into our business.

We say we're betting on ourselves. I think the business deserves at least as much research as the card we're giving up. Here's a hypothetical example. These are made up numbers, and I'm just trying to illustrate some sort of decision that we might go through as a business hold... Owner.

But it... Think about this. An owner sells a card and has $6 left after the cost they've allowed. They wanna use it to hire help with shipping and listing for three months at $2,000 a month. The first question is what that person will actually take over, which listings, how many shipments, who checks their work, how long will the training take, then what will the owner do with the time that becomes available?

If it's six hours a week, those hours need a place to go. Maybe the owner will follow-up with collection sellers. Maybe they'll build relationships with repeat customers. Maybe they'll finally get the inventory they've been wanting to get photographed photographed and listed. If the answer is just that the owner will be less busy, the plan needs more thought.

Reducing an unsustainable workload can absolutely be a valid goal. You can name the goal honestly and don't attach a revenue promise you haven't worked through. For example, let's say the plan is to spend the recovered time source in collections. The owner expects those purchases to produce enough additional margin to support the help after the three months end. Now there is something to evaluate.

How much money remains available to buy those collections? How long will it take to sell? What if it takes longer than expected? And who decides whether to continue paying for help? Notice how much work comes after deciding to sell the card.

A sale provides money. You still have to build a process that uses it well. General small business guidance makes a related point about cash flow. The timing of money coming in and going out matters. I know this very, very well as a business owner in this space, and the inventory and pricing decisions affect what's available to operate.

For a hobby operator, I would bring that down to a simple weekly view. Start with cash that's actually available. Put expected receipts on the week you reasonably expect to receive them, then put in the payments you know are coming. Don't put the full asking price of unsold cards in the cash column. Don't assume a graded card becomes the money the day it comes back.

There still may be listing, selling, and waiting, and things to get paid off. Run a slower version too. What if a buyer takes longer? What if a collection doesn't move at the expected price? What if the grading estimates change?

You aren't trying to predict everything. You are trying to see where a delay would force your hand, and that view can also help you distinguish an investment from a recurring problem. Selling a card to test a defined opportunity can be a deliberate choice. Selling another card every month because the normal business doesn't cover its normal expenses should trigger a different conversation. Sometimes owners knowingly fund an early stage business.

That's a decision they can plan and limit. But if there's no amount you're prepared to commit, no date to review it, and no evidence of improvement, the collection can hide how the business is actually performing. You deserve to know that before any important card leaves your collection, and selling isn't the only option available. Think about running smaller tests. Could you take less hours for that work?

Could you improve the process before adding another person? The alternative to selling isn't always do nothing. It feels that way sometimes. Sometimes it's learning enough to make a better decision. I also want to make the case for keeping some cards without putting them on trial every week.

If every card has to compete against every possible business expense, collecting becomes exhausting. There's always another use for money. There's always another person you could hire or tool you could try. And at some point, you need a boundary that you can live with. For an owner, that might mean identifying a personal collection you intend to protect, then setting a limit on new purchases that fits the business and the life that you can support.

The boundary can change, but changing it should be a decision that you recognize. For cards purchased to resell, write down the expected selling right and the reasons you're buying. If the card isn't moving, return that to the original plan. Has the market changed? Was the price wrong?

Did you buy something you understand as a collector but don't know how to sell as a business? That matters before the purchase too. A card can be a good deal and still be the wrong commitment for you this month. That takes discipline in an industry where knowing more often creates more temptation. Your expertise lets you recognize opportunities.

It doesn't give you unlimited resources to pursue them. And the same applies to what an owner keeps on their calendar. Chris described bringing in help with shipping and sorting and eventually hiring ahead of operations. He talked about how capable people expanded his view of what the business could become. And that transition asks the owner to release some control.

Someone else may do the work differently. You have to explain the standard, teach the process, and decide what they can handle without coming back to you. Before paying for help, choose one recurring task and write down how to do it. What does the finished job look like? What information does the person need?

And what mistakes require them to stop and ask? That work makes your investment more likely to help. Otherwise, you can spend money and remain the person everyone is waiting on. And keep reviewing the services you offer. A service might bring in sales while creating more support or than you can sustain.

It might deserve a different price, a better process, or pause. Customers benefit when you can deliver what you've agreed to. That takes us back to PSA. The scale is much different, but the operating question is familiar. What are we willing to accept, and what do we have the resources to complete?

The role I want to highlight this week is sports card buyer at Layton Sports Cards. It's one of the jobs in the newsletter, and it connects directly to this conversation. The newsletter describes the work that includes evaluating collections, negotiating purchases, assessing condition and liquidity, and protecting company margins. Think about the the amount of judgment that requires. You can love a card and still decide that the company shouldn't buy it.

You can know exactly why the set matters and still recognize that the asking price leaves too little room for the business. If you want to turn collecting knowledge into a career, practice explaining the entire purchase decision. Take a collection you could realistically evaluate. What would you offer? Which card support that offer?

Which ones would take the longest to sell, what costs come between buying and getting paid, what information would would make you lower the offer or walk away. You can write down what happened to your assumptions as a market change. That gives you something more useful to discuss than simply saying that you know cards. You're demonstrating how you think when somebody else's money is involved. The responsibility is what makes this skill valuable.

A business needs people who can use their hobby knowledge while staying accountable to the job and the inventory needs to do. You can find this job in the Hobby Jobs newsletter. Link is in the show notes. Before we wrap up, I want to come back to why we started with PSA. An operating decision inside one company changes what other people can do with their time, money, and inventory for a shop or a dealer.

The question becomes what they can responsibly commit while they wait. The decisions inside your own business deserve that same attention. You may have a card you love and an opportunity you believe in. You may have work you want to hand off and have a hard time trusting someone else to do it. Owning the business means taking responsibility for those trade offs even when neither choice feels easy.

I still want a collection that I enjoy. I also wanna give stacking slabs room to grow. Learning how to support both requires me to be honest about what I'm asking each purchase, sale, and investment to accomplish. Here's where I would start this week. Choose one decision you've been putting off.

Keep it small enough that you can actually work through it. If it's a card, write down why you still wanna own it and what you would realistically have available if it's sold. If you're considering using that money back into the business, name the expenses and what you would expect to improve. Give yourself a date to check out what happened, then consider what you could learn before committing the full amount. A smaller test might show you whether the opportunity deserves more resources.

It might also give you a good reason to keep the card. You can feel good about either outcome when you understand the decision. What gets expensive is continuing to avoid it while the business needs an answer. If you work through something like this, I'd love to hear it. I'd love to hear from you.

If you're a business builder in this space, if you are plugged into a hobby company and you're listening and enjoying this and this is helping you out, please get at me. You can find me on social at stacking slabs everywhere. You can email me stackingslabs@gmail.com. These are the decisions I want us to keep bringing into the open so other people in the industry can learn from them. Make sure you just subscribe to the newsletter.

Comes out every Tuesday, and a big thank you to BCW Supplies for supporting HobbyJobs. If you are a retailer or wholesale partner, visit bcwsupplies.com backslash wholesale. I'm Brett McGrath. I am a collector. I am a builder.

I love talking about business. I love talking about this industry. It is so much fun to build in this space. I love connecting with so many of you, other builders, and I love hearing your stories. I'm excited to share more stories soon.

Thank you for spending part of your week with Stacking Slabs and HobbyJobs. Happy building. I'll talk to you soon.