what's going on everybody welcome to another flagship episode of stacking slabs your hobby content alternative i'm brett i run a lot of podcasts around here i think deeply about sports cards i like to dig into collector psychology i like to connect with entrepreneurs in this space i like to build a lot happening in this industry a lot happening with the stacking slabs network hopefully you're enjoying all the other programming that's happening here great people joining the party to deliver collector focused content in specific categories for all of you make sure you get a chance to let all the other hosts on this network know that they're doing a good job i would not be able to do all of this myself and appreciate their support and certainly your support getting out when you're at a card show and telling a damn friend that you're enjoying the stacking slabs podcast sharing the fact that you're listening to or something from stacking slabs has inspired you on social media telling a damn friend is a rallying cry we have been saying around here from the jump and just wanna take a moment to say thank you for telling somebody that you are digging what we're doing over here there is a lot of sales as i'm recording this i just got the six hundred and five million dollar march number of online sales according to cardlider that number by the time this gets released might tick up but that's what i'm staring at right now there's a lot happening a lot of urges to go by to go chase wanna take a couple steps back in this episode talk more about patience we talked about patience as a primary theme in the latest episode of card ladder confidential with chris and josh that is on the feed make sure you check out that episode always enjoy my time talking cards with them but we organically just started talking about patience and everything that we talked about just continue to point back at patience and patience might not be the sexiest topic in the arsenal here at stacking slabs but i think it's very valuable especially at a time where we are hitting record record breaking sales numbers across the industry we're going to get into patients in a big way in this episode it's my primary focus when topics come up that i find value in and that i might benefit from exploring and sharing with you i tend to just continue to explore those and i'm that's what we're gonna do here before we get into it first make sure you you hit the follow button tell a damn friend of course and run on over to the patreon group new and exclusive content coming from stacking slabs each and every day and shout out to our good friends at inferno red technology for being the flagship sponsor 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 i'm in the middle of planning sessions with scott and the inferno red team build for the hobby will return we're gonna be dropping new episodes shortly so just have to shout out and say thank you to inferno red if you're building something with tech in the hobby go have a conversation with them they're very intelligent they will they're collectors they're going to help you out in a big way alright so we're starting here with this question postcard letter confidential that i just can't escape and the question i am wrestling with right now is can patients sustain engagement in an environment built on constant stimulation because when i look at the hobby right now i'm looking at how we buy how we talk how we track how we post it feels like we're swimming in an ocean that never stops moving and that ocean is not neutral it has a current it wants to pull you somewhere it wants you to transact and if we're being honest it doesn't just want you to transact it wants you to transact fast and the uncomfortable part of this is if your engagement in collecting is fueled by mostly by stimulation then patience doesn't feel like wisdom patience feels like starvation so today i want to slow down and i look at what's actually happening around us the conditions the psychology the incentives and then i want to rebuild a version of collecting that is deeply engaging but not dependent on that next hit because if patients can't sustain engagement then what we're calling collecting is just a nicer word for compulsive chasing let me paint a picture here you've probably had this happen to you you've got a save search running you check it like it's your morning cup of coffee you don't even notice what you're doing you're washing your hands you open your phone you're standing in line and when you open your phone you're watching a game a commercial break open your phone and then one day it hits it's the card maybe not your grail but it's something that matters something you'd been waiting on and before you even think your heart rate jumps you click you zoom you check the price you do the mental math then comes that sentence i need to decide right now that urgency that's not always market logic a lot of the time that urgency is an environment doing what it's designed to do and it only gets worse when the auctions get going because auctions don't just sell you a card auctions sell you a contest and those that dig in deep with auctions understand that there is some sort of competitive arousal and that's why we run our cards at auction the idea is that competition heats up people emotionally get activated and then they start bidding past their limits they overbid not because it's rational but because the contest hijacks the brain i thought it was very notable in my conversation with max at card cards max last week when he talked about his bidding process how he just loads up his sniper tool and he does not let emotion get involved he's got a price he sticks to it i think that is a very mature way of buying cards if you've ever lost an auction by one bid and felt like you got punched in the stomach you already know this isn't just money it's psychology so before we even talk about patience we need to talk about the game we're playing because there are two games in the hobby game one is collecting game two is stimulation and the scary thing is the second game can look exactly like the first game from the outside here's the first truth that i want to lay down it is undeniable we are living in an intention economy back in nineteen seventy one the economist and cognitive scientist herbert simon said that in an information rich world the wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and we have to allocate attention efficiently this is in nineteen seventy one i know i'm an old guy but this is way before i was born now think about where we're at today we've got infinite feeds infinite inventory infinite comps infinite takes infinite opinions infinite last sold infinite watch this infinite you need this and we're pretending we can just be patient on top of all of that i don't think so patience isn't a motivational quote it's an allocation strategy because your attention is finite your budget is finite your energy is finite and when those are spent quickly you don't just lose money you lose the ability to stay in the hobby with joy so what are we actually up against i wanna name three forces first is infrastructure most of the modern hobby is built around transactions marketplaces get paid when things move content gets rewarded when it keeps getting watched product cycles are constant everything is designed for turnover second the design a lot of platforms remove stopping cues infinite scroll is not just a feature it's a behavioral design choice that encourages prolonged engagement sometimes longer than people intend no natural stopping points means fewer natural moments to reflect which means fewer chances to say do i actually want this or am i just stimulated third the reward system is a big one behavioral psychology has long shown the variable rewards the kind that come unpredictably they create extremely persistent behavior this is why variable ratio reinforcement is the classic model for gambling behavior and i wanna be really clear i'm not calling collecting gambling i'm saying the environment borrows the same mechanics unpredictable hits unpredictable auctions unpredictable listings unpredictable dms unpredictable wins you check because of the maybe and neuroscience has shown that dopamine systems are heavily involved in learning from reward prediction errors the gap between what you expected and what you got uncertainty lights up pursuit so the system doesn't just reward you when you win it motivates you when you might win and then there's the near miss this is one of the most underrated psychological traps in collecting and gambling research near misses outcomes that losses but feel really close and they can recruit reward related systems and increase motivation to keep playing in collecting a near miss is losing a card at the buzzer or seeing it sell while you're thinking or having your offer get ignored than watching someone else post a card near miss doesn't just disappoint you it could hook you in deeper so if you've ever felt yourself wanting to make it back by buying something else right after a loss that's not random that's the loop trying to keep you in motion now here's where i think people get it wrong they think the solution is to be stronger they think patience is willpower but if you look into delayed gratification it begins to tell a different story i think one of the most important insights from research on delayed gratification is that waiting partly shaped by whether the environment is reliable in a study where children were given evidence that the experimenter was reliable they were willing to wait longer in unreliable conditions they didn't wait as long what does that mean for us as collectors i think it means sometimes impatience is rational and sometimes the environment trains you not to wait and the hobby is plenty of these conditions to train impatience scarcity is real hype cycles are real price gaps the card can disappear so if we want to be patient so if we want patients to work we have to stop treating patients like passive waiting patience is active patience is strategy patience is building a system that lets you wait without losing engagement so let's define what we're actually building i'm gonna give you my definitions of definition of patience in collecting i think patience is a skill of allocating your attention money and actions towards what you care about despite immediate temptations trying to pull you off course it's not doing nothing it's doing the right thing slowly and on purpose and here's the only way patience sustains engagement you replace transaction based engagement with meaning based engagement because transaction engagement is stimulation dependent meaning based engagement is identity based and when and that's where we get into the heart of this episode why do people stay in the hobby for decades it's not because they are constantly buying it's because collecting becomes a part of who they are they become collectors they become curators and to get there you have to rebuild motivation around something deeper than the hit that's a psychological framework i love for this talked a lot about self determination theory in recent episodes and it says that human motivation and sustained engagement are supported with when they're when three needs are satisfied autonomy competence and relatedness i talked about this last week so let's dig talk about this in terms of collecting autonomy ceo of my pc i choose my lane and i'm my pace competence i'm getting better at this better taste better research better negotiating better relationships relateness i'm connected real community real friendships real mutual respect there's a problem though constant stimulation environments often sabotage those needs they replace autonomy with urgency they replace competence with chasing they replace relateness with comparison so patients won't sustain engagement until you build an environment your environment that restores those needs now i want to get practical i'm going to lay out a patient first operating system that you can run if you so choose it's three moves move one map the conditions you have to know what season you're in is the market hot it certainly is right now is it cold is your player hot is it cold are you personally flushed with cash are you personally constrained because pretending you're in the same conditions year round is how collectors blow up their own journey mapping the conditions is how you stop being surprised by that the practical application of this is when you open your apps you don't just ask what's for sale you ask what is the platform incentivized to make me do because if you don't ask the question the platform answers it for you move to understand intentions and i want to say this clean dealers aren't required to want what you want marketplaces aren't required to want what you want content businesses aren't required to want what you want some are great some are predatory some are mixed both incentives matter most intermediaries get paid on turnover you get paid enjoy by meaning so your job isn't to get cynical your job is to get clear move three align the conditions with your personal collecting operations this is the part a lot of people skip they consume content and they think they built a strategy no you have to decide what game you're playing i wanna give you a model i use there's three horizons horizon one is today what do i do this week research sorting documenting budget budgeting relationship building horizon two is the season what am i building this year a run a set a player collection a theme horizon three is legacy what does my collection mean what story does it tell if someone walked through my collection like a museum what would they say the museum idea came up in a conversation inspired by this topic and it's one of the healthiest frames i've heard in a long time because it shifts you from a trader to a curator and curators don't need constant stimulation they have a mission and they operate off of it now let's talk about tools because if we stop here it's just inspirational and not operational here are the tools to make patients sustainable i think the first is pre commitment people with present bias often need commitment devices because the future you is not trustworthy under temptation people will impose deadlines or penalties or on themselves to improve outcomes even when it costs them to do it the collector translation to this is make rules that protect you from auction fever you can say things like any purchase over x dollars requires twenty four to forty eight hours before the action you do not bid when you're tired stressed angry you don't bid live you set a max bid all those things they sound really boring that's the point boring is how you beat the environment designed to spike your adrenaline tool two the if then planning implementation intentions they're simple if situation why happens then i will do z rules have a strong evidence based on improving your goal attainment some examples if i feel urgency then i write the card down and walk away for a day if i lose an auction then i don't go buy a card immediately tool three make process visible if you want patients to stay engaging you must create non purchase wins this is really important small wins research shows that even minor progress can boost your motivation collector translation build your collecting like a quest not a slot machine this is where you can get into checklists completions years covered research parallels found all of this stuff earning knowledge if you do this right patience stops feeling like waiting patience becomes building now let me give everyone here a ruthless gut check because i have to do this with myself if your engagement disappears the moment you stop buying then you were never engaged with collecting i know it might sound controversial but i believe it you're engaged with stimulation and that's not a moral failure that's a design outcome but it's also the crossroads because stimulation engagement burns out it always does let's bring it home here this has been a fun episode this has been fun to think about i deliver these and i'm trying not to talk at you but i'm trying to share with you what i'm reflecting on as i think about my own collecting process the question is can patients sustain engagement in an environment built on constant simulation my answer is yes but only if patients stops being a vibe and becomes an operating system because the environment will always offer you stimulation it always will and you can't out willpower a system that's engineered around intermediate rewards urgency competitive arousal social comparison but you can outdesign it you can build your own rules that keep your brain cool when the hobby runs hot you can build progress loops that reward you for building not just buying you can build motivation around autonomy competence and community so engagement isn't dependent on the next hit and when you do that something amazing happens patient stops feeling like deprivation and patience starts feeling like control it starts feeling like maturity and honestly it starts feeling like peace here's a reflection as we round this out the hobby will always have a current it will always tell you this is the last one prices are running you'll regret it everyone else is in it but you get to decide what kind of collector you are remember you're the ceo of your pc are you a reactor are you a builder because builders don't need constant stimulation to stay engaged builders stay engaged because they are building something they respect and that's the version of collecting that last that's the version that can survive any conditions that's the version that turns patience into fuel if you want one practical leave behind after this episode it's this for the next week don't change what you collect change how you notice every time you feel urgency every time you feel right now feeling write it down and what triggered it was it a timer a post a comp price graph a message fear because the moment you can see the trigger clearly you stop being controlled by it and this is where patience begins appreciate your engagement i appreciate your feedback your thoughts your passion for what we're doing over here at stacking slabs your hobby content alternative we are going to continue to put out episodes like this to help support collectors we are going to continue to have conversations that inspire that share in the same passion as as we all do it's cards man it's a lot of fun there's a lot to think about a lot of money involved and i think the more we think about patients the better off we are appreciate your support take care we'll talk to you soon