What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to Stacking Slabs, your hobby content alternative.

I'm Brett. This is not the flagship, although we did drop a flagship this week. Go check it out. The last, few weeks or so, we've been dropping a couple episodes on the Prizm brand.

Hope you have enjoyed those. I know I have received a ton of feedback, so many messages about the structure of the episodes, the idea, the concepts, the angles, the spotlight, a ton.

And I have heard enough to know that this form of content where it's just focusing in on one product and just going ham is attractive to many of you out there.

And this was a little bit of a test for me, and I usually run these tests in my Patreon.

If you're not a part of the Patreon, go check it out. Come on. Free trial. I'm working hard out here. But I I run a lot of these tests in the Patreon to see if things stick or don't stick.

I have not run many of them publicly, although as we are rounding the corner of this year and I'm setting up for 2026 and setting up for the shows that we do, I felt like there was an opportunity, especially just in looking at the calendar and seeing some gaps in scheduling that we could test this out if we wanted to.

And I'll tell you this.

From my point of view, it it when I am super excited or passionate about a content topic, about a potential series, about a potential opportunity for a show that gets created that other brands could help support, I'm I'm I'm all in.

And so I want you to know that over the last three episodes or the trilogy, the this Prizm trilogy, I've been all in, and I've been very fired up, very motivated to deliver excellent content to you and content that I believe will help, provide some sort of artifact around Prizm that if, you know, it's like a time capsule.

If, like, five years from now, people wanted to know what was happening as a license was changing from panini to tops, they could go back to these stacking slabs episodes and learn a thing or two.

This is a trilogy. There is a punctuation point. I've been, ominous in saying what we are gonna do here, and frankly, most of the reason for that is I had no idea.

A lot of this is flying by the seat of my pants. I say that, and it sounds like I'm just getting up here and talking, but there is some method to the madness, as I especially after the last episode, and I'll just say this.

Like, the last episode was a ton of fun for me to do. It was more fun for me to see your cards. The response on Instagram and the sharing of cards was outstanding.

Like, I saw some of the coolest Prizm cards in your collection, and I wanna say thank you for sharing cards. To be able to tie your cards to these episodes, it it really makes them complete.

It's like a companion piece, your cards, your sharing. And if you have not been following along, the fortunate thing about what I do in creating content and creating podcast episodes is that they don't they don't disappear.

They're they're in existence for eternity or at least until the Internet wants to keep them alive.

So a recap for you if you're coming into this conversation for the first time. The first episode we did was called Prizm forever. It was a tribute to the of a generation. In that conversation, we got into a, a chat about Prizm.

And during this change in manufacturer, how I wanted to based on the impact that that product has had on me as a collector, why I wanted to make sure we spotlight it. From there, we moved over to kind of the full story.

Last episode was a beast. We ran the gamut. Tried to really put as many details as possible into that episode from my knowledge, from previous conversations, got a ton of good feedback.

And one of those pieces of feedback that I got was from my good friend Sean at Victory Investments who went to Instagram and, you know, shared the episode publicly and made mention that he wished there was more, content around, gold vinyl.

And I as a part of that episode and I agree. Like, I I love gold vinyl, and I think 2015 was about refining the formula and introducing something new.

Like, I could get really nerdy, and maybe we will sidetrack before we get into this because I this is how much I love this product. But I just look at 2015 always as the year of experimentation.

If you're looking at the football set too, it's like in football, it's like we we don't have a black finite. We decide to enter and create a black polsters instead, which I don't know. Say what you want to about that decision.

Not one of my favorites. Although, I do accept, Colt's 2015 black polosaurus in my finite collection based on the circumstances. But, like, you look at that and you got that decision, then you've got a decision.

Okay. We're we're introducing white sparkle. We're introducing this one and done parallel, which is the violet mosaics out of 50, which I call the poor man's Prizm.

But then also, most importantly, in my opinion, based on all the changes in the year of experimentation of 2015, which is the most professional looking Prizm set of all time, I freaking love the way those cards look, man.

They hit just right. But it was the introduction of the gold vinyl Prizm. Now if you look at this, and I am completely side barring, but I'm fired up. So, Sean, this is for you, pal.

If you if you look at the 2015 set, to me, the standout moment is the creation of the Prizm gold parallel because in 2015, it was created and it it it was a part of the rest of the lineage and legacy of that that brand and really became a parallel that a lot of collectors got, like myself, got really excited about.

I collect gold vinyl. What happened in that moment was the adoption of the super fractors gold swirls and pattern into the Prizm product, which then would then be parlayed into, products like optic.

Optic came out a year later, 2016, and you've got the one of one as the optic gold vinyl, which is one of the premier parallels of the Prizm era.

But I also think the out of five nature of it in the and pair that with a brand like Prizm is something special too.

That's why I've been a maniac at not only collecting the golds, not only collecting the black finites, but also collecting the gold vinyl. Let's see here.

I actually won this is why I love it too, and I'm gonna say this in real time. And I am sidebaring, and we're gonna get to the objective of this episode pretty pretty quickly. But, just to give you an example that makes me really happy.

So I bought a card this week that cost me $22. 50. And you would like, the excitement I had at winning this auction, it was almost the same as buying a card that was, you know, 250 or $300.

And that was the 2019 Malik Hooker gold vinyl out of five. Now I I wanted this card. I had the gold. I wanted as a part of my Kolts Prizm collection, and it cost me $22. 50. And I'm gonna get that card.

I'm gonna send it for grading. I don't care what whatever the chart fees or whatever. I don't care. I'm doing that because this is how I'm building my collection, and that card was a gap in my collection, and now I get to fill it.

Not only do I get to fill it in the gold vinyl wing of the Colts prison PC, but I get to pair it with the the gold, the 2019 Malik Hooker gold. Now Malik Hooker might not mean a lot to you, but Malik Hooker means a lot to me.

You know, he did play for the Ohio State Buckeyes, which, you know, not necessarily a fan fan of, although there are a couple Colts player, Taekwon Lewis, Buckeye.

So, if you're wearing Colts blue, I'm gonna support you. But I remember being so excited about that draft pick.

I bought a Hooker jersey, and it's like nostalgia for me to not only collect these players that have, come and gone, but then also to be able to do it in a, parallel form that I really enjoy.

And there's only five. Like, five is five is not one of one, but five is a really rare and scarce number when we're entering Prizm land.

So, I don't know how we got there and how we started to talk about it, but maybe it's because I the feedback thing, and I appreciate all of you. If you're enjoying these, like, share, tell a damn friend, but thank you, Sean.

There's a little Prizm gold vinyl talk for you. As we get into this, I think it is really important to think about how things make us feel and to think about how cards make us feel.

And it's like, if you ever hold a card under a light and you move it in the palm of your hand a little bit one way, a little bit the other way, and it and it and it makes you feel something?

Like, have you experienced that? I I'm guessing you probably have. There's this quick flash when color hits, and it's not just the shine.

It's moments. It's memory. And that's what I've wanted this trilogy to be about. You you've heard me say prices, although I don't wanna leave lean in on prices. We all know Prizm's in demand. We all know Prizm's expensive.

But I wanted to talk what I wanna talk about is just connection and and why I feel compelled to spend so much time. Like, this this series is unsponsored. There's Stacking Slabs is making no money off of this, which is completely fine.

Like, this is a pro bono project. This is a passion project. This this makes me, doing this is like it it really, like, reminds me of, like, the early days of Stacking Slabs, because there's there's a connection there.

And I'm not being I don't I'm not I'm not I'm doing this because I just I think there is something to talk about, and that's it. And it's something that I wanna explore.

You know, when I when I kick this off a few weeks ago, I didn't plan to make it a trilogy. It started as one episode, and it was just a way to say thank you to a product for shaped for helping shape the way I think about my collecting.

But it was it's really the response, the messages, the stories that told me that the brand meant something to a whole lot of people out there as well. So I just kept going.

The first episode was really hard. It was personal about what Prizm made us feel and why we fell for it. And the second was about head. Right? There were some more numbers, data, more proof of how it became a flagship of a generation.

And this one this one's gonna be about soul. It's the final piece of the story, the product, the people, the psychology that made it all matter. The things we never say out out loud, but I think we all understand.

It's the chase. It's the ritual. It's the satisfaction of sliding a card into a new slot and knowing it fits perfectly just like the Malik Hooker example that I talked about. It's not a good buy.

It's a reflection because before or as license changes, before or as the new boxes show up, I wanna spend some time with the brand that build a generation of collectors and one that helped bring us all back together as a community.

I wanna talk about the details, the colors, the feelings that turned the Prizm brand from cardboard into culture. This conversation is gonna be a lot about legacy. So we know that Prizm started in 2012.

We know that Panini took a swing on a new chromium set called Prizm. Basketball dropped, clean design, thick stock, refractor surface that popped up under the light. You've got silvers, greens, gold out of 10, no one of ones.

Football's introduced, and you're introducing not only the black finite one of one, which is arguably my favorite card of this era, but you've also got the prison pylon one of one, the first true grails in this lineage and legacy of prison.

But I have from all the conversations that I've had here, and I've had a lot of conversations with a lot of collectors.

I was not collecting back then, but I've heard enough. And back then, I don't think anyone could have said this is part of history.

I think a lot of people would say it felt more like a test run. Boxes would sit. Collectors who still were holding onto the tops, chromat of all of it all hesitated, but the foundation was being poured.

You've got a consistent color system that anyone could understand. Silver shine, gold grail, black myth. Whether we realize it or not, this was the beginning of a shared language.

Prizm became a way for collectors to communicate value, rarity, and belonging. And psychologically, that consistency mattered. Humans crave patterns. Collectors crave order.

I'm a very routine individual. My kids, very routine oriented individual. My wife, very routine oriented individual. I'd I'd like to think myself as adaptable. Like, if something breaks the routine, I'm gonna be able to deal with it.

Although, I'm not great at it because I want things to be a certain way. And I think in my own reflection, part of the reason why I've loved or fallen in love with Prizm is because it's been very routine.

There's been an order, Ted, the way things happen. We want systems we can learn, rules we can follow, and cards that make sense.

Prizm offered that, and I don't think that should be understated. Stated. It's a framework, a a map for modern collectors. Now within that map, we try new things. We add additions.

We do things, and some of it's for us, and some of it's not for us. And that's just a part of it. I think when '20 it was during 2013 when Prizm really turned up the volume, more colors, more exclusives, more ways to chase.

You've got the the hobby product that we're you know, you're adding new parallels, whether it's oranges or purples. Retail has a component. You've got Walmart blue or Target red parallels.

You've got the red, white, and blues of the cello packs, that still exist today as they did a decade ago. And so you added to the foundation in the first year, and collectors really started learning the rhythm.

Every color had a home. Every box had a purpose. Black one of ones were introduced in basketball, which, you wanna talk about a conversation I wanna have?

I wanna have a conversation with someone who was there deciding the early parallels and why football got a black fine and why basketball got a black and why that wasn't a part of 2012.

When you add and and I think when you add that in 2012, when you or '13, when you add the one of one to basketball, that's when you can really start thinking about an official chase in legitimizing a rainbow, which football already had.

Like, you look at 2014 and you've got, it's it's you you got, like, a tie dye parallel. Right? That pattern's so loud that you could see it from across the room. Okay?

You still when I see those things on eBay, I've owned them. I've gotten rid of them. Not really for me. But there's something to be said about the experimentation of a new parallel and something that's going to be so attention grabbing.

And then, like, 2014 kinda sits by itself anyways, just like the full bleed, the up close and personal shots. This is the type of stuff that gets me excited. I think each experiment that we saw was risky in some hit and others didn't.

But psychologically, they did something important, and they made the product more personal. And, like, like, the tie dye didn't just stand out visually. It gave collectors a chance to choose identity through design.

And thinking about that and thinking about just that decision to add a tie dye parallel, that decision infiltrated future decisions and future parallels and future products across the whole spectrum.

And when you can isolate its origin to one product and that product is is influential as Prizm, it makes you think about this entire era of collecting indecisions a little different, or at least that's what it does for me.

You could be a tie dye guy. You could be a camo guy. You could be a mojo guy, and, of course, girl with all of those.

That's how culture forms in those small distinctions that me that mean everything to those of us who are deep in the weeds. I led by talking about 2015. Right? Gold vinyl, new pattern, new chase, new but old.

Right? You've got a connection point with a gold in a new form, and you've got something that's so familiar from another manufacturer. And to me, that's true influence. And I think the design mattered. It created emotional tension.

Collectors could now dream of something almost impossible. Not one of one impossible, but close enough to keep it alive, and that's what collecting is. That's what collecting is to me. It's this balancing act of fantasy and possibility.

Do you ever think about that? Do you ever think about, like, the things that at least I'm the most attracted to from a card perspective are the cards that I I know exist but seem almost almost mythical in a way?

And I think that zone, being in that zone between fantasy and possibility is so great.

And Prizm, because of its its its evolution, its lineage, and legacy, and because of the possibilities it gave us as collectors, helped create so many of those moments no matter who we are collecting or what we are collecting.

I talked about the black pulsars example.

Who knows why that was a decision? The finite was perfect. Some loved it, others didn't. But I think for me, it showed Panini had this ability to be adaptable, to to to tweak, to test, to learn, to listen.

And by the end of the 2015 product release, Prizm taught us something very fundamental. Scarcity only works when it's beautiful, and repetition only works when it's reliable.

That formula was locked in and existed the rest of the run. You you look at 2016, and I'll say this, maybe my least favorite design of all of the Prizma eras, but it wasn't a new product then.

It was the product. Silver started becoming the benchmark for any rookie cards much like, Topps Chrome refractor.

Golds held their ground. Black finite continued to establish. You've got first of the off the line being a configuration that entered with different shimmer parallels that dropped before the actual hobby release happened.

This was the first sign that FOMO had officially arrived in the hobby. 2017, again, the Mahomes year. 2018, Luka. You've got Prizm Choice introduced.

How about the fact that Prizm Choice with the new one of one parallel, the nebula parallel in Prizm Basketball was introduced the same time Luka Doncic, who's on my Mount Rushmore of Prizm athletes, in that example.

I'm I've talked about this in the past, but there's the video. I think it was Leighton, Breaks where the you can see it's captured as an artifact in our hobby's history.

You can see the Luka Doncic, Nebula one of one pulled for the first time now. I was not this is right before I came back into the hobby and started collecting again.

And so I found out about this from people who'd been here during that time, but then also you hear when that card sold, which I think in card ladder, it it it went to whoever won the break, and then they sold it.

And I think they sold it for $40,000. Now can you imagine that card being available for $40,000 today?

It it's going for multiples of that. So what's fun about this is that a lot of times in collecting and in the hobby, people say, don't buy into the new thing. Don't buy into what's first, and I've been guilty of that.

However, if you decided during that moment in time that Luca Doncic was your guy and you love the way these one of one nebulas looked and they were the first year and you decided to pay $40,000 for it, you'd be in a pretty great shape right now.

That's the psychology that drives the entire brand. Scarcity isn't always math. Sometimes it's myth. Collectors trust their eyes and their community more than a checklist. By this point, the ritual was set.

Prizm release day meant through scrolling through eBay, setting up saved searches, watching your feed light up with color. And we didn't we didn't we don't need Panini's marketing as this product dropped.

The community was the marketing, and that's when Prizm stopped being a product and really became a culture. What's wild about Prizm is how far it's reached. Basketball and football led the way, but it spread everywhere.

You've got unlicensed baseball. In Yance, unlicensed, but the Mike Trout's, Bryce Harper, cards without even logos, the gold trout out of 10 became one of the most desirable unlicensed cards of this modern era.

The twenty fourteen World Cup product, you have a global sport in World Cup format coming together.

And those cards, man, those cards, those twenty fourteen World Cup cards have become, in this ultra modern era, some of the most highly desirable cards.

There's these little tweaks and these little moments that as I'm even talking about this in real time, I realized that in football in 2015, you've got the gold vinyl introduction, but it was already introduced in the twenty fourteen World Cup product.

In twenty fourteen World Cup, you had the gold power, which is the exact same equivalent of the gold vinyl.

It's the introduction of the super fracker fracker gold swirlies in Prizm, but it's coming by way of soccer. It was the first global Prizm product. It made soccer collectors believers.

Golds of Messi Ronaldo turned into cultural artifacts. The hobby found that the Prizm rainbow in the color can work in any language. You've got NASCAR that came in. You've got UFC in '21, WWE in '22, WNBA.

Obviously, if you're listener of Stacking Slabs, I have a whole podcast called the WNBA card podcast, and seemingly, it's hard to do an episode without talking about Prizm in one way, shape, form, or the other.

Every new license Panini acquired started with Prizm because they knew Prizm isn't just a product.

It's a launchpad. It teaches collectors how to dream in color. And underneath all the expansion, the psychology stayed the same. We chase because we recognize the system. Silver means potential.

Gold means conviction. Black means obsession. It doesn't matter the sport. The emotion is identical. Here's where I wanna slow down a little bit because beyond the data and the parallels, Prizm revealed a lot about us.

It showed collectors. It showed how collectors behave when given structure and scarcity. It showed how aesthetics influence desire.

It showed how consistency builds trust. There's a science in this. Repetition creates attachment. Each year when new Prizm release dropped, our brains are fired the same signals, anticipation, curiosity, dopamine.

It became a ritualized reward. Sidebar, personally, I have already started preparing for the final installment of Prizm Football because Prizm is such an influential part of the way I collect, and I wanna be prepared.

I sent a box of cards away to sell because I had this conversation. Do I want the new parallels that are gonna come out of my football team, the Indianapolis Colts? Go Colts. What a freaking year.

Do I wanna be in the game for those, or do I wanna sit with some of these other cards? Cards? It was an easy decision for me because Prizm has shaped so much of what I'm doing. That's why even when prices fall, people still chase.

The process was the payoff. Then there's a nostalgia factor for a lot of us who came back in the hobbies and adults, and I've talked about this. Prizm was the bridge between who we were and who we became.

It looked like refractors. We loved as a kid, but it felt like something entirely new. That emotional blend, nostalgia plus novelty is one of the most powerful motivators in collecting psychology. It's what keeps us coming back.

It's why I decided to do this series, and that's what makes Prizm different from any other set of this era. It didn't just capture moments on cardboard. It captured feelings. Now here we are. Topps and fanatics will take the wheel.

The logos will change. The boxes will look different, But that doesn't erase what's happened here because legacy isn't about licensing. It's about impact, and Prizm taught the modern hobby how to see it.

It gave us a color coded hierarchy. It gave us shared reference points. It gave a structure in a market that was anything but structured, and it gave us stories. The stories are what endure.

The collector who drove three hours to meet someone in a parking lot for a gold vinyl, the Facebook message that led to a new friendship, the DMs where you trade scans like baseball cards used to be traded in the schoolyard.

That's the part we keep. So when people say Prizm's over, I don't agree. I've had a lot of people say to me, hey.

Aren't you excited for Topps Football? Aren't you what are you gonna be chasing? How are you gonna be chasing it? And I'm not saying I'm not gonna chase it, but I have other business to take care of in my Prizm collection.

That's my focus, and it will always be my focus. Because every time we line up our cards by how we collect sets, rainbows, colors, every time we chase the next gold, every time we land a black or a black finite, the legacy continues.

Before I wrap this up, I wanna ask you to do something.

Go pull out your favorite Prizm card. Doesn't need to have to be the biggest one, just the one that means the most to you, and this could be a card that you already shared last week. But hold it up to the light.

Watch the color move across the surface. Think about where you were when you got it, who you were collecting with, what it meant to you then, and what it means to you now. That's the whole point. Prizm isn't about panini.

It's about the moments it created for us, the conversations, the friendships, the hours lost scrolling eBay at midnight, the joy of finally landing that one card you never thought you'd find. That's the legacy we built together.

Licenses change. They're gonna change again. Markets shift. They go up. They go down. But every time a collector flips that card under the light, Prizm lives on. I wanna say thank you to everyone out there so engaged with this series.

If this story reminded you of why you collect, share it with a damn friend because that's how we in the hobby stay alive, through these types of stories, through connections, and through the shine that pulls us back in.

My name is Brett. I collect Prizm. I collect a lot of different sports cards, and this has been a series on Prizm. Thank you so much for your feedback. Talk to you soon.