what's going on everybody welcome back to another flagship episode of stacking slabs your hobby content alternative here on the stacking slabs network hope you're off to a good start this week enjoying your collection landing some personal grails doing what you got to do to make the most of your own hobby experience i got to tell you i am feeling in peak hobby mode right now it has been so much fun discovering exploring interacting engaging with other members of the community and also a big shout out to you the loyal listener of the stacking slabs podcast i got so much great feedback on the content that was put out last week specifically talking about your collection your hierarchy apex cards conversations with chris and josh during card ladder confidential and so much more it is awesome to get feedback it is the fuel to the fire make sure you continue to tune in and if you're enjoying what you're hearing tell a damn friend in the process that is all i can ask from you today we are going to continue this momentum and conversation around independent thinking and thought and how it impacts collecting and we're specifically going to focus in on independent taste in card collecting before we do that you know we gotta shout out our flagship sponsor inferno red technology they're the engineering team behind some of the biggest names in sports and collectibles like dc sports eighty seven commsi 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 these episodes are becoming my favorite episodes to deliver most episodes involve research and own personal reflection and it is really fun to continue to dig into the core of collecting and try to understand what motivates me and what motivates so many other collectors in this space and i think i've struck a nerve and this nerve revolves around the independent thinking the independent mindset battling existing narratives existing structure existing hierarchy this tension between the two groups has been a lot of fun to explore and i know is something that is resonating with many of you so instead of digging into a net new topic i wanted to continue to build off of what we have talked about and last week we talked about apex cards we talked about how certain cards become apex not just because they're great objects but because the hobby collectively decides they are great objects and that distinction i think really matters sometimes we just brush by it but that matters because the moment you realize apex status is at least part of a social outcome rather than a divine truth baked into the cardboard itself you start asking more interesting questions and one of those questions is if the crowd is not the final authority then how do you validate your own thesis how do you know your taste is real if the consensus has not stamped it yet and that is where i wanna go today in this episode because this is where collecting gets really honest anybody can buy the card that arty won anybody can scroll the market find the thing that already has how do they say aura the liquidity the respect the group chat approval and then convince themselves that they are making some deeply personal decision maybe you are but a lot of time you are not making a judgment you are accepting one and there's a huge difference between collecting from conviction and collecting from inherited hierarchy and to be clear this is not an anti consensus rant consensus is certainly useful the crowd can teach you what matters historically it can teach you what the market has rewarded over time it can teach you what has broad legibility but the crowd is supposed to be a source of information not a substitute for thought the issue is not that consensus exists the issue is that too many collectors let consensus do all the same for them so the question for this episode is simple how can collectors validate an independent thesis without relying on consensus and my answer is this you validate it by pressure testing it against reality harder than the market has pressured it yet not by waiting for everyone else to agree not by confusing low pop with insight not by mistaking solitude for originality you validate it by doing the work i think consensus is seductive because it solves two problems at once first it solves the information problem if a lot of smart people want the same card you assume they know something that is informational influence second it solves the social problem if everybody already agrees that the card matters then buying it protects you from looking stupid that is normative influence in the real world these two motives get braided together all the time and the psychology is pretty clear that social feedback can be incredibly powerful in pushing people towards conformity you translate that into collecting and you see the trap immediately a card is easier to buy when you can point to sales history and card ladder dealer enthusiasm big graphics social posts auction headlines and the nod of the room the social layer does not just make the purchase feel smarter it makes the purchase feel safer you're no longer standing alone on your own judgment you're standing in formation and it feels good and it feels safe but it's not the same thing as thinking clearly and here is where i really want to dig in some collectors do not actually want conviction they want insulation they do not want to author their own hierarchy they want to rent one because renting a hierarchy means you never have to defend yourself if the market turns on you you can always say well everyone thought that was the card that is not thesis building that is liability management the uncomfortable truth in all of this is that independent taste requires you to take ownership of air accountability if you are going to build your own thesis you have to accept that you might be early you might be misunderstood and yes you might be wrong and that's the price of authorship if you cannot stomach that just say you want social proof and move on but do not pretend that is independent collecting because it's not so i think it's important to define validation the right way validation is not immediate agreement validation is not other people bought it too validation is not a pile of likes under your mail they post validation when your case for the card survives scrutiny that's what validation is validation is when the thesis gets stronger as you learn more instead of collapsing at the moment the facts get more specific validation is when the card still makes sense even after you beat up and attack your own logic i think another way to say it is consensus validates popularity it does not necessarily validate judgment judgment is validated by evidence coherence by distinction by falsification and by durability evidence means the claims are true coherence means the pieces fit together distinction means you know why the card beats the alternatives falsification means you know what would prove you wrong durability means you still want the card when the room gets quiet i think the last one matters more than people want to admit because a lot of hobby conviction is just borrowed enthusiasm it disappears the second the algorithm moves on real taste is quieter than that real taste survives silence real taste survives a dead week real taste survives a bad comp real taste survives the absence of applause because it was not built on applause in the first place i often find when i post cards that get the fewest amount of likes typically it makes me feel something a little bit different and it's not why did i collect this why did i post this it's man no one really understands this yet and to me that's attractive and that is why i keep coming back to the line time and time again you are the ceo of your pc if that means anything it means you can't outsource strategic thinking you can listen to analysts you can study the market you can read the room but at the end of the day the decision has to be yours and the standard has to be yours too so the framework i would use and honestly if you do not do some version of this you are not necessarily running your collection you're just making purchases and the first question is what is the card exactly not what do people call it not what does the listing title say what is it precisely is it an on card or sticker what does the back say about the relic what is the actual serial structure is the scarcity practical or just theoretical what release does it come from where does it sit inside of that product if your thesis falls apart when somebody asks specifics it was never thesis it was marketing copy you just repeated for yourself the second question why does it matter in its lane i'm not asking whether it's rare i'm asking whether it matters and there's a big difference there does it capture a meaningful moment in the license does the design elevate the player is the image strong is the marriage of ink relic photography superior to neighboring examples is this a card that teaches you something about a player a set or an era scarcity without meaning is storage you need significance the third question of this framework what are the real substitutes and why do they lose this is where most people get exposed because the minute you ask them to stack the card against adjacent alternatives they start to get foggy if you love a specific card what is it about that card attraction isn't enough selection is the job there's so much momentum in the hobby right now especially on the card show front do you have your show lined up for this summer i've got one for you a thousand vendor tables three days this summer the biggest card show in the northeast comes to marlboro massachusetts the northeast sports card expo is happening june twenty sixth through the twenty eighth at the four kicks sports complex three full days inside a hundred and fifty thousand square feet you know what a thousand tables means all kinds of sports cards from vintage to modern plus pokemon and other tcg and more you've got on-site grading all weekend plus autograph authentication and more meet over forty autograph guests plus every paid admission includes one free autograph from select guests there's a lot more than just cards raffles mascots food trucks it's a full weekend they'll have three different commemorative posters each day free for the first two hundred attendees general admission is twenty dollars early entry and super early entry options are available kids under twelve are free if you're buying selling trading or just hunting this is the show you don't wanna miss that's the northeast sports card expo june twenty sixth through the twenty eighth in marlboro massachusetts a thousand vendor tables see you there for tickets and vendor information visit northeast card expo dot com the fourth question who could care about this besides me eventually notice i did not say who cares today i said who could care eventually because an independent thesis does not need immediate consensus but they do need some imaginable audience maybe it's a player collector maybe it's a set collector maybe it's a premium relic collector maybe it's people who care about on card autographs iconic images or a specific manufacturer era if the only possible admirer of the card is you that does not make the thesis wrong but it does not mean you should stop pretending it has broader legibility right now and you have to be honest about that the next question i think this is five what would prove me wrong this is the killer question this is where you allow your thesis to be exposed to get beat up to get killed and i think this is the most important what if the relic wording is weaker than you thought what if the first claim you say was false what if another release captures the same idea but better what if you're overvaluing the serial number and undervaluing the image what if you're responding to the pleasure of being contrarian more than the quality of the card if you cannot articulate the failure conditions you're not doing the thesis work you are doing self affirmation and let me add one more because this one is underrated am i drawn to this because it expresses my taste or because it gives me a feeling of control i think that question suggests that collecting can be driven by identity and by desire for control especially when collecting gives life a sense of structure this means that some buys feel right not because the judgment is sound but because the acquisition calms you down again that doesn't mean it's a bad buy but if you do not know the difference you can start mistaking compulsion for insight i've learned this about myself i'm addicted to this process because it feels good when it's real if you've ever worked through a thesis from scratch and felt almost electrically alive doing it there's a reason for that it just hits different go back to self determination theory people are more engaged deeply and persist more strongly when they have autonomy competence and relatedness when those are present that's exactly what a real collecting thesis can activate autonomy because the hierarchy is yours competence because you are learning the category relateness because you can still discuss it with the hobby without handing it the steering wheel this is why building a real thesis feels invigorating it's not just acquisition it's authorship it is pattern recognition it is choice with consequences it is i studied this enough to arrive somewhere i actually believe that is a totally different emotional experience from this is a card i was told that matters taste matters for the same reason taste is not some fluffy thing that sits on the surface of everything we're doing with collecting taste is the engine that determines what you notice what you ignore what you rank and what you return to over and over again taste gets sharpened by looking harder comparing more thinking longer and because taste is learned it can deepen and that is huge this is why i constantly say your collection can evolve because your taste change you do not have to be born with some perfectly formed eye you can train it you can learn what kinds of images actually hold your attention you can learn what kind of autograph formats feel dead versus alive you can learn what kind of relic integrations feel cheap and which ones feel essential you can learn what kind of sets really tell the story of a license and which one are just shiny packaging taste is not a gift it is practice that is why taste keeps you in the hobby longer than consensus does consensus can get you in the room taste gives you a reason to stay once the room changes if you build only on consensus then your attachment rises and falls with everybody else's attention if you build partly on your own eye your own standards your own hierarchy then collection starts to have a spine and once it has a spine it can survive trend cycles i can give you a perfect example of how this has impacted me recently i have been re exploring the twenty twenty two immaculate wwe set from my own collection and recently i bought a couple cards i bought the roman reigns premium memorabilia autographs number two five and number to twenty five shout out brian thc sports cards for those deals super easy really good dude to deal with i had previously owned the out of ten and what i love about that run is not just the serial ladder it is that the card sits in a really interesting intersection premium brand on card autograph superstar worn relic integration strong image and the debut of the immaculate wwe release as a piece of cardboard it has a real presence as a collecting decision it has real intentionality but this is exactly where the difference is between conviction and storytelling discipline matters the version of the story says this is the first event used or superstar worn on card auto set in the panini era i think that line does not survive contact with the broader history there's early wwe products with on card autograph relic content you've got twenty twenty tops fully loaded you've got an undisputed set twenty nineteen i believe even within panini's wwe run you've got twenty twenty two impeccable it came out i believe it was released earlier you've got hand signed you've got some memorabilia included so i think this type of example of me talking through it is exactly what i'm talking about with taste the most important element of all of this is what this says about my own personal taste i love the image of roman reigns on the card i love that it's an on card autograph i love that the materials that are being used in this card are superstar worn i'm not saying everybody loves this so i followed the crowd i'm saying i revisited this set looked across the release thought about panini's wwe run and thought about where premium wrestling card design is headed and landed on this card because it genuinely fits my standards also i feel like a set like this is the bridge towards where we're going with wrestling cards towards luxury memorabilia forward approach that we see with the new topps royalty wwe set which topps is positioning around on card autographs relic content and event driven patch autos that is much more of a holistic picture of how i landed where my tastes impacted and how i feel comfortable buying cards as a collector i think the hardest truth about this whole conversation is that most collectors say they want independent taste but what they really want is consensus to reward that taste that they already had those are not the same thing independent taste means you may be correct before the cards you're thinking about are popular it means you may have to sit with the card while the room shrugs it means your reward is not always immediate market confirmation and if the possibility makes you feel uncomfortable then i think that's really good it should because that is where you find out whether the conviction is genuine or not i also think that this is where the hobby gets more joy because once you stop demanding that the market validate every emotion emotional instinct in real time you give yourself permission to collect more honestly you still care about liquidity you still care about hierarchy but you can still care about what the market honors but you no longer feel trapped in this constant referendum you're building you're choosing you're editing you're becoming more specific and that specificity is where collections start to get memorable so if you take one thing from this episode let it be this consensus can alert you but it can't absolve you it can inform your judgment but it can't replace it the crowd can show you what currently matters it cannot tell you what should matter to you unless you let it in if you let it then you're not really collecting you're complying the move isn't to reject consensus like some hobby edge lord the move is to graduate beyond needing it to be your validator build the case verify the facts compare the alternatives run the test be honest with your audience be honest with your motives and then if the card still makes sense buy it with your head and your heart this is author collecting this is what it means to be a ceo of your pc and maybe that is the deeper point taste is not an ornament taste is what keeps collecting human taste is what prevents the hobby from turning into a giant synchronized spreadsheet taste is what lets your collection feel like a body of work instead of an index fund with top loaders few people talk about that because it's harder to quantify than consensus but if you want to be here for the long haul you need something deeper than agreement you need a point of view so the next time you feel yourself getting pulled towards the thing in the hobby that's already been crowned stop yourself and ask do i actually believe in this or is this something that i like because other people do and the next time you feel drawn towards something that the crowd has not fully priced in ask yourself a follow-up question have i really built the case or am i just romanticizing about being different if you can answer both questions honestly you are in a much better place than most collectors because independent thinking is not rebellion for its own sake it's disciplined self trust thank you so much for tuning in to stacking slabs your hobby content alternative make sure you hit the follow button tell a damn friend really appreciate your support we've got so much great stuff happening here on the stacking slabs network check out another show if you haven't already really appreciate it take care we'll talk to you soon