what's going on everybody welcome back to stacking slabs this is your hobby content alternative i am brett hope you are all having a great week in life and in collecting there is a lot of great momentum in the sports card hobby it is fun to see collectors sharing their cards winning auctions participating creating content providing insights and showing up and showing out each and every day there's so much energy right now in the hobby and it's infectious it'll gives me motivation each day to get up here and to deliver flagship episodes to deliver any content here on stacking slabs we're in show season there's so many different shows going on and i'm having a whole lot of fun building stacking slabs and appreciate all of you for tuning in and telling a damn friend each and every week the best way you can show your support for what we're doing over here is hit the follow button of course tell a damn friend got the patreon group a lot going on what i wanna talk about today is monster sales in the psychology of category repricing and this is something that is top of mind for me on the other side of the randy orton wrestlemania patch autograph sale that went down and it wasn't just any sale that went down it was fun because it got a lot of attention and the individual who now owns the card announced it on the stacking slabs network and that's ryan bannister owner at rbi cruise seven and also host of the book to last podcast and it was so fun being behind the scenes and texting ryan getting his perspective and him holding it close to the vest until sharing it on this week's or this past week's episode of book to last and as i saw all the media saw all the narratives saw all the conversation it was really inspiration for putting today's episode together so we're gonna dive into not just that sale but the big sales in general and this isn't exclusive to wrestling cards it can be any category you collect when we see these sales go down what does it mean for us as collectors and how we absorb that before we get into it gotta shout out inferno red technology the sponsor of the flagship episode they are 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 there are sales there are moments and in wrestling cards we certainly got that moment with the randy orton wrestlemania forty one patch autograph one of one out of twenty twenty five tops royalty when it sold for forty two thousand one hundred dollars publicly that card sits as the second highest wwe modern card ever behind only the twenty twenty two prism the rock black one of one that sold for a hundred and twenty six thousand in twenty twenty three sports illustrated pointed out that the orton sale doubled the previous number two sale in twenty two which was the stone cold steve austin black one of one which sold for twenty one thousand so this was not a little move this was a category shaking data point and also because when i dug into cardladder shout out cardladder official data provider of the stacking slabs network and after the sale i put a tweet out i got a lot of feedback on the tweet regarding the rankings and so wanna make one precision point right away because if we're going to talk about this stuff seriously we need to make sure the language is right if we're talking about modern wrestling cards yes the orton is now basically sitting behind the rock but if we're talking about wrestling cards in general the overall record would be the hulk hogan nineteen eighty two wrestling all stars psa nine which sold for a hundred and thirty two thousand in december of twenty twenty four i'm not saying that to nitpick i'm saying it because i think accuracy builds trust and trust matters if we're going to be talking about numbers and this kind of stuff now what makes this even more interesting is that this was not just a big number attached to a random card topps built twenty twenty five royalty wwe to be a premium architecture their own product materials describe royalty as a high end wwe release built around rarity exclusivity autographs relics and prestige and they made the wrestlemania patch autographs the headline chase fifty one of one patch autos tied to wrestlers who competed at wrestlemania forty one i was at wrestlemania forty one which makes it even more special to see these go off the board think of debut patches in other sports and this is what the equivalent is more or less for wrestling cards topps framed royalty as a product meant to position wwe alongside more traditional premium categories in the hobby in other words the sale is the market validating what the product was built to do and on the human side of the story that matters too randy orton publicly reacted to the sale by saying the buyer should get the throwback gear he wore at wrestlemania karl anthony towns new york knick publicly admitted he bid forty thousand and lost and then topps later posted that towns put up a sixty thousand dollar bounty on john cena's one of one wrestlemania forty one patch auto which then since that was put out we saw a couple other people put out even higher bounties so this is a chase it's got momentum it's got it exuberance just sit with that for a second one sale and now the conversation isn't just wow a nice this is a amazing moment a nice card it becomes a wrestler reaction a celebrity bidding adjacent card bounties category wide attention and this is how the market expands and for those of you who live in wrestling cards there's another layer here that makes this hit harder and i would encourage you if you haven't already and you're interested make sure you go back and listen to book to last this weekend ryan tells the story from a firsthand account as the new owner of the card but topps had an official rip night at ryan's store rbi crew seven in o'fallon missouri st louis area in february and orton was at the event stayed more than two hours signed for everybody answered questions took selfies and ryan even got a chance to show orton his personal collection and i think that matters because this sale is not detached from the wrestling card community it sits on top of a real collector story it sits on top of access energy presence and validation and if you collect in niche categories you know exactly how much that part matters so today i don't want to do the lazy content version of the story i don't want to get on here and say well randy sold for forty two grand so obviously all the wrestling cards are going to go up now that is junior varsity analysis that is how people get trapped what i want to do is use the sale to answer the real question collectors ask themselves every time a monster card sells in their lane what does a sale like this actually do to the minds of the people already in the category because the real action the real numbers matter but the psychological aftershock is where categories get repriced or mispriced the first thing you need to understand is that collectors do not react to these sales like detached analysts they react like people whose collections are wrapped up in identity we've talked about russell belk's extended self and it makes the point that possessions become part of how we define ourselves his work on collecting goes even further collecting is not just buying things it is a selective and passionate activity that usually gives the collector real personal benefit even if it can drift into dysfunction at the extreme so when a grail in a category sells for a number no one can ignore that does not just register as market information it registers as personal information it lands emotionally psychologists who've studied collecting make this even more explicit you have people like macintosh and schmechtold they describe collecting as a way people bolster their self through goals that are tangible attainable and measurable more recent research from cal brooks or reimann argue that collecting helps people structure affirm identity pursue meaning compare socially and even survive periods of chaos and rapid change because collections can provide comfort and order that matters because a monster sale creates uncertainty in a category and uncertainty makes people cling harder to the structures that help them make sense of what's happening that is why these sales trigger such an immediate internal dialogue what does this mean for my cards did i underestimate what i own am i supposed to buy more now did i miss my shot is the market telling me my grail is next those questions sound financial but underneath them are identity questions am i early or am i late am i right or am i wrong am i more of a legitimate as a collector than i was yesterday did my taste get validated publicly that is the stuff nobody says out loud but it's absolutely operating in the background then you layer in the behavioral financial side and things get even clearer tversky and kahneman showed that people use shortcuts when they make judgments under uncertainty a sale like orton becomes highly available because everyone saw it it becomes the easiest example to retrieve then it becomes an anchor the loud public number that people use to organize their beliefs once that happens every discussion in the category starts quietly orbiting that sale whether collectors admit to it or not prospect theory adds the next layer kahneman and tversky show that people evaluate outcomes relative to reference points not in some cold absolute vacuum and that losses hit harder than equivalent gains feel good that is why one headline sale can produce opposite reactions in different collectors at the same time holders feel potential gains and become more attached nonholders feel the pain of being left out and become more urgent buyers who passed on a similar type of card six months ago feel like they've lost the money and that they've never actually held sellers who moved too early feel sick and because people are reference dependent the old price memory starts dying and the second new public number becomes real then you get to the endowment effect kannerman thaler they describe the people often demand much more to give up the object than they would pay to acquire it in hobby terms that means the second a monster lands every collector with anything remotely adjacent starts seeing their cards through a more protective lens they're not just thinking what is this card worth they're thinking what would it cost me emotionally to let this go if the category is now just getting recognized and that is why listing prices explode faster than actual realized prices after a grail sale owners instantly become more stubborn the market doesn't instantly become more deeper there is a crowd effect and this is where the orton story gets interesting there are informational cascades situations where people follow the behavior of others because the actions become information themselves think about the wrestling card world when a public figure like karl anthony towns who's relevant playing basketball right now is bidding and then when topps is posting about it and when the wrestler himself reacts the sale stops being a private transaction and becomes a social signal it tells outsiders and insiders alike this category has real status now this is why i think the immediate aftermath matters more than the hammer price itself the price is the headline the signal is the story and the signal in this case was not subtle a premium tops design a one of one event rust worn wrestlemania patch a legend or legend killer i should say with deep collector appeal public celebrity bidding public wrestler reaction immediate bounty spillover into the another wrestlemania patch grail this is not normal hobby noise this is category level signaling now here's the part i want to save people from making dumb decisions a monster sale does not mean you're the whole category just got repriced equally what it means is that the very top of the pyramid just revealed what what one buyer was willing to pay for one elite object in a very public setting and that matters and we should recognize it but it does not mean every lesser parallel every sticker auto every base rookie every mid tier patch and every unrelated car with the same wrestler on it suddenly deserves a new number it's easy for people to look at their cards and look at their randy orton collection and share it and think that they're rich now but that's just not how it works that leap is exactly where sloppy thinking takes place and we have good hobby specific specific way to explain why cardladder's own methodology says a single first public sale of a unique ultra high end card can create a non representative index jump if you're not careful they literally explained that a kobe one of one recorded a first sale at a million dollars a player index could appear to jump fifty percent even if none of the other kobe cards changed in value that is why they used advisor adjustments and why they warn that in the indices and models are analytical tools not definitive declarations of true market value that is exact lessons collectors need here especially in a moment like this one huge comp is not a signal it's not a universal truth so what actually happens after a sale like this we're living in it now and that's why i think it's fun to talk about it i think first the closest neighbors move into people's minds same wrestler same product tier same level of card on prestige same event word significance same historical moment same one of one energy that is where anchoring has teeth the orton sale is most likely to affect elite ortons other wrestlemania patch autos and maybe the very best centerpiece wwe grails and royalty not someone's random modern base rainbow second the asks move faster than the bids this always happens owners see the headlines and think my card is worth much more buyers see the headline and think i only care if it is truly comparable that spread widens before it tightens so in the short term your ebay safe searches get uglier before the market gets cleaner lots of cards become priced with ambition far fewer become sold with proof and that's a huge distinction and collectors who miss it end up turning screenshots into fake confidence third participation expands before pricing settles this is where veldcamp's media frenzy work is useful she shows the more media attention can coincide with higher prices and heard like attention patterns because information itself changes behavior that is what i think you're watching here in wrestling the sale gets written up social clips get circulated towns becomes part of the story the wrestler becomes part of the story then nearby grails get more eyes the bounties get posted the category does not just get more expensive it gets crowded and that crowding matters a lot for niche categories because a niche category does not need the whole hobby to wake up it just needs incremental conviction from enough serious people to change liquidity at the top one new whale two new public chasers three new consignors five new premium listings that can material materially change the feel of a niche market not because every category is suddenly expensive but because the top of the category now starts behaving like it belongs in a different room that is why i think the most productive way to think about the orton sales this it repriced the conversation first and that matters more than i think a lot of collectors realize because categories do not go mainstream in one jump from cheap to expensive they go through a sequence first they get one sale that forces non believers to pay attention then they get a few more sales that make the first sale look less accidental then they get a broader product architecture that supports continued premium demand then they get social proof from people outside the niche then they get more supply more attempts more misses and more bounties more content and even more eventually more pricing depth that is how categories mature so if you're listening to this as a wrestling card collector here is what i want you to do with the sale like this and you don't need to listen to me this is just what i'm doing so this is what i do here i just share what i'm doing do not ask are all my cards worth more now ask better questions this can be for this example or just life in general we all need to ask better questions ask which of my cards are actually closest to the sale that just happened ask has the buyer pool for my lane actually widened or did one buyer just pay all the money ask are there repeat sales coming or only louder asks ask did a sale validate a tier a wrestler a product or really just one trophy ask am i reacting as a collector as a trader as a seller or somebody that is scared to miss out and if you're listening from the outside of wrestling the lesson is the same in whatever world you collect in it could be basketball it could be pokemon it could be football it could be autographs it could be watches it could be anything art it could be vintage posters when a monster sale hits the wrong response is to instantly mark up everything you own and pretend the market agrees with you the right response is to map hierarchy figure out where the sale sits in the category's prestige ladder and then decide which neighboring assets were actually made more important by the signal here's the truth most people don't want to say because it ruins the dopamine rush sometimes a monster sale is mostly about the specific card believe it or not sometimes it is mostly about the exact grail with one exact story and one exact window and one exact pair of bidders and if that is the case the right move is not to hallucinate a category boom the right move is to respect the sale without overgeneralizing it that discipline is what keeps collectors from turning headlines into bad inventory decisions but sometimes a monster sale is more than that sometimes it reveals a category crossing a threshold and i think the orton sale has a real argument here i think that because it checks more boxes than random comps usually check it came deliberately from a premium product it came from an event worn wrestlemania material it came with an on card autograph storytelling and inscription appeal it involved a wrestler with mainstream recognition and decades of gravity it drew public bidding from a major athlete collector it got public reaction from the wrestler itself and it caused an immediate spillover into another top card chase you gotta see the whole story and i think that combination matters it means that the sale is not just a number it's a proof of concept a proof of concept for premium wwe cardboard a proof of concept for wrestlemania patch autos as a true hobby centerpieces a proof of concept that wrestling cards can pull outside attention the way more established categories do and a proof of concept that identity storytelling scarcity and visibility can all compound in that space now let me give you the line i think best captures what all this means a monster sale does not instantly raise the value of every card in the category but it absolutely raises the stakes of interpretation for every collector in that category because once the signal is out there everybody has to decide what to do some people get more convicted some will be more greedy some will be more patient some people will become sellers because they think the spotlight is hot some people become buyers because they think it's just the beginning some people just list junk next to greatness and hope that no one can tell the difference and that to me is the real usefulness of talking through the sale carefully not to dunk on hype not to worship a number but to give collectors a way to think when their category suddenly gets loud because if you do not have a framework you will borrow the market's emotions and the market's emotions are usually late sloppy and expensive so as i close this episode out the randy orton wrestlemania forty one patch auto sale matters it matters because the number is real it matters because the ranking is real it matters because the reaction was real it matters because tops built the product to create exactly this kind of premium event and the market actually answered the call and it matters because sales like this can pull a niche category into a new level of seriousness if the category has enough follow through afterwards but what it should not do is make collectors stupid it should not make you price every lesser card like it just got knighted it should not make you chase weak substitutes because you're scared of the real grail it should not make you confuse attention with liquidity and it should not make you forget that one sale is one sale until nearby comms start confirming the move the disciplined takeaway is better than the emotional one treat monster sales as signals study what they validate trace the spillover carefully watch the next few sales not just the first big one and remember that the best collectors are not the ones who react the fastest they are the ones who interpret the clearest and in wrestling cards the orton just gave everybody something to interpret a premium product got its statement sale a grail got its benchmark a collector base got public validation a category got a lot louder now the real question is not whether the sale mattered the real question is who in the category is going to think clearly enough to use that moment well appreciate all of your support for stacking slabs your hobby content alternative make sure you hit the follow button tell a damn friend really appreciate the support you all take care a whole lot more coming from the stacking slabs network this week we'll talk to you soon