welcome back everybody stacking slabs your hobby content alternative i'm brett builder creator collector here at stacking slabs shout out you tuning in wherever you're at on the go i'm assuming that is who i'm building for i'm building for the on the go professional got a lot going on that small sliver of time you have you dedicate to the escape that you know and love and that is collecting your damn cards hopefully you're enjoying all the content we're putting out here on the stacking slabs network each and every day you will find a new piece of content around collecting or building across the sports card industry i'm so excited about the shows that we have and the shows that will be here in the coming months there's a little teaser get ready strap in it's going to be fun i am not a static individual i like change i like evolution i like things to evolve i listen i hear you and i'm excited about what's going to happen here on the stacking slabs network going into twenty twenty seven would not be able to do it without you and your support showing up showing out telling a damn friend make sure you're following along make sure if you want more from stacking slabs head on over to the patreon group gotta shout out my good friends at inferno red technology for sponsoring the flagship they're the engineering team behind some of the biggest names in sports and collectibles like dc sports eighty seven comc 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 for everyone in between see what they can build for you at inferno red dot com the topic today is a topic that i think about all the time but i am not sure we've gone long form and explored the topic from a collecting perspective here on the flagship so we're opening it up and do it doing it today we are going to be talking about how availability shapes your collection i think a lot about collector behavior collector decision making and when we buy cards a lot of the time it is because it was available we have access to it it's right front and center and i think that's interesting and i'm sure there are things within the availability of a card that get you to think or that you have thought about in the past or maybe when i talk through some of these things that i'm thinking about they'll trigger thoughts or emotion from you and that's the objective the objective is to understand how availability shapes your own collecting and that is what we're going to do here in today's flagship you know before you open up the app there was no card that you needed to buy you were having your normal day you had your list of things to do take the kids order groceries do your job cook dinner take out the trash all these things and your collection was just sitting where you left it then you saw a listing you you saw it on ebay it's a player you collect a parallel that you appreciate a card that you haven't seen come up for sale before open up the pictures check the price look at the seller you start thinking about an offer but five minutes ago that card wasn't a part of your day now you're trying to figure out how to own it before someone else does what changed what changes in that moment the card existed before you open up the app your collection existed your budget existed what changed was your access to it and that access brought a decision into your life that wasn't there before and i've been thinking about availability about seeing a card for sale that changes the way we feel about it about how a card we weren't pursuing earns our attention our money because somebody else decided to list it we talk about what we collect we talk about why we collect and i wanna spend time on how the cards in front of us influence both because your collection reflects your taste it also reflects which owners decided to sell which listings you encountered and which opportunities arrived when you had money to spend i wanna understand how much of that process that we're directing as collectors there's a question underneath this that has been sticking with me is that card if that card had never been listed would i have wanted it i don't think every answer to that question leads to passing on a purchase some of the cards we love begin as something we didn't know we were even looking for but i do think the question gives us a chance to examine what happens between seeing a card and deciding that it belongs to us and by the end of this chat i want you i want to i by the end of this chat i want you to have a way to recognize when availability is helping you learn about your taste and when it's moving you away from what you want to build let's start with the moment before the purchase before the offer even before the price check which cards get considered say you're a team collector you open up a marketplace and twenty cards that fit your searches pop up you can play you compare the players designs products prices and you decide which one you like most that feels like you're choosing what you want and you are choosing but you're choosing among the things that have appeared there are other cards sitting in collections cards and boxes that nobody has photographed cards in sold archives that don't show up when you search active listings cards you don't have the vocabulary to search for yet those cards aren't getting the same consideration in nineteen ninety researcher preikash nadeungati published work on what researchers call consideration sets these are the options that enter a person's decisions his experiments examined how making a brand easier to retrieve from memory affected consideration and choice without necessarily changing how the person evaluated the brand that research was about memory and brands here's the connection that i see in regards to collecting a card doesn't have to become a better card to become more likely to receive your money sometimes it has to become a card you are considering that gives a listing influence before you've made any judgment about value take a collector who loves a particular era of football in over a month they buy four cards from that era each purchase makes sense to them on their own and each card fits something that they like but what if there were two other cards they would have preferred to all four they never compared them because neither was for sale that the collector hasn't necessarily made a mistake they have made decisions inside the options they encountered and i think that deserves our attention because we can spend hours comparing prices within a group of listings without asking whether the group contains the cards that we want we become informed about what's available our knowledge of what's possible stays where it was before before your next search try thinking about a card and naming it that you'd like to own without looking at any listings then name a part of collecting you wanna learn about it even if you don't buy anything from it i think those answers give us something to bring to the marketplace they give the cards outside your search results a chance to enter your thinking we use the word available as though it describes one condition it covers several a card can exist in large numbers and still be hard to find for sale a one of one can sit in a public view for years and a card can be listed at a price you'll never pay and a card can be sitting in a dealer's case while you have no idea it's even there so when i say a card is available i want to ask a few things can i see it is the owner willing to sell it can we agree on terms does buying it fit the money i have set aside those are all different questions seeing something doesn't mean you can obtain it a listing with a price beyond your limit doesn't become your opportunity because it's it has a buy button and not seeing something doesn't tell you how many copies exist or how many others are willing to sell sometimes it tells you something about where you've been looking this matters when we talk about rarity if you haven't seen a card in six months that's an observation about your experience it's information but it's not a count of everything that has changed hands during those six months private deals an auction on a site that you don't use a listing under a title you didn't search there are ways for cards to move without entering your view for me this separates a useful statement from a claim that i haven't earned i haven't seen another copy for sale is useful no one will ever have another chance to buy one ask for evidence we often don't have it works the other way too you might see the same copy relisted across several places and start to feel like the card is everywhere repeated visibility doesn't manufacture additional copies the card's production its visibility and your access to it tells you something combining them into one feeling can make a buying decision harder to understand we can love scarcity it's part of collecting i want us to be precise about what is scarce before we pay for it there's also the reason a card appears when it does an owner decides to sell because their interest change they need money for another purchase they're reducing a collection they have a reason that has nothing to do with your collecting priorities then their timing becomes a decision on your calendar that can work out someone letting go of a card creates the chance you've been waiting for the seller's timing and your interest meet but think about how often we let that timing establish our next project you weren't building a run until someone offered you the first piece you weren't collecting the set until several copies appeared together now you've committed money and started looking for the rest an opportunity has shaped more than one purchase it has shaped what you will spend the next several months pursuing i don't think that's wrong i think it's worth naming before you begin though do you wanna pursue the rest of the project have you looked at what completing it requires would owning the first piece satisfy you if the others never came available those are the questions that help you understand the commitment that starts with a listing sometimes the answer is yes sometimes the listing has offered you a project you don't wanna take on think here's where availability gets complicated the card appears at the same time you recognize that it can disappear you gain an option and start anticipating losing that option in the same moment you know what i'm talking about you felt that we've all felt that before that is my interpretation of what a listing can do to a collector the invitation to buy arrives with the possibility that someone else might buy it first think about that sentence for a second i don't know when i'll see another one it can be a reason to act it can also become the entire reason to act a twenty twenty two research review by belinda barton and colleagues brought together a hundred and thirty one studies on product scarcity and purchase intentions the findings support the idea that scarcity cues can increase desire and intention to buy with results depending on the type of scarcity and the product involved that doesn't tell us what particular collector should buy it tells us to take the context around desire seriously the card's attributes haven't changed with another buyer sending an offer but your experience of the opportunity has changed now there's competition now there's a chance you won't get to make another decision later and you start asking how will i feel if i miss it i've asked myself myself this question i'm sure you have too i want to put another question beside that one how will i feel owning it after the competition is over i think that question might be more important and after the auction ends after the seller accepts after the package arrives and nobody's left to beat me to the purchase does that card still hold your attention then we can't know our future enjoyment with certainty but we can spend some time thinking about ownership rather than spending every minute anticipating a missed opportunity there's also a difference between a card that you've wanted for years becoming available and a card becoming something you want because it's available for an hour both can lead to purchases you enjoy i want to know which situation i'm in if i can explain why i want the card using its history the player the design or the way it fits my collection i have something to evaluate if every sentence comes back to somebody else buying it i need to examine that somebody else's interest can tell me there's competition for access it doesn't settle the question of whether i want to live with a card or not research on urgency gives us another way to examine this in a twenty eighteen paper meng zhu yang yang and christopher heise described the mere urgency effect across five experiments participants sometimes chose tasks with lower payoffs when those tasks carried a sense of urgency even when the urgency didn't provide a sound reason to choose them a replication published in september of twenty twenty six tested this with two thousand three hundred and seventy four participants the effect persisted across the researchers' tests although controls reduced its size these were task decisions and experiments they weren't auctions for sports cards the application i see is the question about priority does the thing with a deadline become the thing that matters most you've been setting money aside for a card you know the version of the card you want you've done your research you've you're just waiting for the opportunity then a different card comes up for auction ending tonight the card you've been planning for has no deadline the auction does you spend that evening working on the auction checking comps doing research asking a friend what they think calculating your max bid the auction has acquired hours of your attention the card you wanted before today hasn't changed but it's no longer getting that attention that's where i wanna pause what did the deadline establish it established when you must decide about the auction it didn't establish where the card should rank in your collection and i wanna acknowledge something that collectors already know some deadlines are real some chances do disappear if the only copy you want sells to someone who keeps it for twenty years waiting has major consequences you don't resolve that by pretending every card comes back around you resolve it by deciding what you're willing to give up for this opportunity if the answer is you preferred this card to the one you've been saving for that's a decision you can own but if the answer is that you still prefer the other card and feel unable to let the auction in without you the deadline is doing a lot of the work try this question before this moment happens to you inevitably in the coming weeks if both cards were available tonight which would receive my money it doesn't need to predict predict the future supply it helps you hear your preferences while a deadline is asking for your attention there is a cost to buying what's in front of you that doesn't appear on the listing what else would that money support that is something i'm asking myself a lot i've got a lot of priorities i've got a collection i've got a business i've got a family i've got bills there's a lot going on in my world this is a question i've been asking myself in two thousand nine there was a study led by shane frederick students considering a hypothetical dvd purchase priced at fourteen ninety nine yes we're talking dvds here in one version declining meant not buying in another version declining explicitly meant keeping the money for other purchases willingness to buy fell seventy five percent to fifty five percent with that reminder in twenty twenty three meta analysis found a smaller average effect than the earlier research suggested while still finding evidence of opportunity cost neglect so the lesson isn't that one reminder will transform everyone's spending it's the alternatives deserve a place in that decision now let's bring this into collecting because that's what we do here suppose you have twelve hundred dollars set aside over several weeks you buy three cards for four hundred dollars each these are example numbers you liked all three you paid prices you felt good about none of those purchases looked like a problem then the card you've been waiting for becomes available at twelve hundred dollars you can say the timing didn't work out that's true but the earlier purchases also shaped what was possible when it arrived every one of those four hundred dollar decisions involve the card on the screen and the opportunity to keep money available the second option didn't have a purchase and i think that makes it easier to overlook money set aside can feel inactive when listings keep giving you things to do with it but it serves a purpose it lets you act on a preference that hasn't found a seller yet you don't have to preserve every dollar for a hypothetical card there's no guarantee it appears or that you'll still want it when it does the point is to give waiting an honest evaluation alongside buying and when you consider something or selling something to fund another purchase include the work that that requires finding a buyer negotiating paying fees where they apply shipping waiting for your money all those things your ability to sell is part of the decision it isn't the same as already having cash available before buying name what the purchase delays it might delay another card it might reduce what you can take to a show it might use the room you keep for something you haven't learned about yet you can decide the purchase the value of the purchase and if it's worth it at least now the other use of your money has entered the conversation now let's turn this around cards outside the marketplace can take on a presence in our minds the one you've heard about but never seen the parallel a collector remembers owning the card that appears in the archive with a sale date from years ago you wonder where it's at you wonder who owns it you think about what it would mean to bring it home researcher michael lynn wrote about the psychology of unavailability and how limited access can increase desirability he also argued that status alone doesn't explain the appeal of things we cannot obtain so i don't want to replace reacting to every listing with assuming that everything is unavailable must be worth pursuing sometimes the absence has become part of the attraction ask yourself what you know about the card beyond the fact that you can't get it do you like the photo do you care about the release the product all those things if more copies appearing would erase your interest that's something to understand about your desire for some collectors exclusive exclusivity for some collectors exclusivity is a reason to collect you get to decide how much that matters but it helps to recognize when access is carrying more of the appeal than the card itself and there's another limit here you can't want a specific card you have no knowledge of what you can want is the experience of learning that something exists beyond what you already know that's a direction you as a collector can pursue you can study a player's checklist across years look through auction archive ask someone who has collected a set for a decade what people overlook about it when you do that the question changes from what's for sale to what exists that deserves my attention an answer might lead to a card that's been listed for months it might lead to a card whose owner you won't meet for years either way you've expanded what you're able to consider you've given your taste more information to work with and there's a limit to the question i asked at the beginning if the card has never been listed would i have wanted it sometimes the answer is no because the listing taught you something you saw a design you didn't know existed you read about the release you noticed the photograph all those things that isn't a failure of discipline learning changes preferences the want list you wrote last month reflects what you knew last month it deserves to change when you learn something that matters to you so how do you give the process room without accepting every surge of interest as a reason to buy start with what the listing added did it give you knowledge about the card or did it mainly add to a deadline there's research on visual attention that belongs here i'm gonna totally butcher this name but milica milosavacic and colleagues ran food choice experiments and found that visual salience influence decisions especially under rapid choice greater mental load and weaker preferences between the options that is evidence about those experimental conditions it doesn't prove how a card app affects your purchases it does give me a reason to ask what happens when we're making decisions without much time or clear preference if i haven't decided what matters to me the thing drawing my attention has more room to become my priority and here's an example a collector sees a card from a set that they've never collected they save the image read the checklist and look at other cards around the release over the next week they realize they like the set the original listing sells and they keep researching anyway that continuing interest tells them something the listing introduced a subject they wanna spend time with now take another collector same listing they keep refreshing until it sells feel for frustrated for a night then never think about that set again that doesn't prove the purchase would have disappointed them but those two experiences provide different information about what held their interest a useful question is what do i still want to know after i stop thinking about buying this copy if we spend less time responding to what appears what would we do with that time i think we'd have room to work on access let's stay with an example you collect a football player you want cards connected to a season you care about maybe it's an mvp year for that player you have a budget you know which features matter to you and which ones you're willing to compromise on instead of opening the app without a purpose you spend a session building your knowledge of that season's cards you find an insert and a checklist you locate a sold image you learn that a collector you follow has worked on the set you ask about that you you source them and ask them questions and that conversation is a part of collecting even if nobody offers you a card and you learn which variations confuse people you learn what the card looks like in hand you get a better understanding of the challenge before deciding to purchase it if you decide you want a copy you can make that interest known tell a dealer shake some trees do those things an owner is entitled to keep the card and a relationship isn't a claim on somebody's collection but the relationship can help you learn about opportunities that never reach the places you usually browse there's work involved with that and that work won't always lead to a purchase we need to understand that but i think it can still produce enjoyment because you're participating in a part of collecting that involves knowledge and people and this isn't reserved for people pursuing cards that cost thousands you can research a team set look for a photo remember them from a childhood event learn about an insert ask a shop owner and do all these things and that shift is that you bring a question into the hobby instead of waiting for a listing to supply one you're still open to a surprise but you're expanding the places that surprise can come from i wanna leave you with something you can try these are these are the things that i'm thinking about i've done episodes on buying less being more strategic trying to research more trying to find those cards that give me that special feeling inside before you open the marketplace up write down what you came to do one sentence is enough look for a copy of a card checking for sales of a set browsing because i wanna see if something's available browsing is an answer the value is knowing when browsing turns into a buying decision when a card interrupts a plan write down what changed did you learn something did was there a price that fits did the possibility of another buyer make it feel urgent you can give the purchase a comparison beyond the listing name the use of your money that you would delay ask whether you prefer owning the card to keeping that option open if the time allows come back to that decision after something doing something else there's no magic number of hours there's no formula but just when you have time time to breathe acknowledge that you're choosing with less time rather than feeling like you're under the gun just try this for a week make it a part of your workflow and just see what you think what have you learned i think the result doesn't need to be a fewer purchases it might be a purchase you feel more prepared to make it might be a direction you hadn't considered it might be a satisfaction with the cards you already have what i want is for availability to become something you notice in your decisions someone listing a card creates a chance to buy it you decide what that chance means for your collection the next time a card appears and you feel that pull spend a moment with it what about that card deserves your attention what changed when it became available and when this opportunity is over what do you still want to collect i i think availability is an interesting topic hopefully this got you thinking about how availability impacts your collecting i'm brett i build here on the stacking slabs network i collect cards too appreciate you supporting what i'm doing over here make sure you hit the follow button if you enjoyed this episode tag me and tell a damn friend happy collecting take care talk to you soon