what's going on everybody welcome back to stacking slabs this is your hobby content alternative excited to be here excited you're here shout out to you for taking some time to support a creator in this space who loves to collect and talk about sports cards we're gonna be talking about the power of narrative in the hobby i love stories i think you love stories everybody loves stories i spent my career before this in technology it was commodities it was people talking about how fast how quick all the features and functionality functionality of their products and the edge i always got as a marketer in this space was to drop all the stuff that was jargon and focus in on the story how can i connect with the person who we're trying to get in front of stories are powerful people don't remember features people don't remember functionality especially of commodities but people remember stories storytelling is a art and the more we tell stories the more engaged of an audience we will have i'm a big believer in this i'm a big believer in the power of stories in the hobby i see it i see stories i see stories used well i see stories used maybe not so well or fall flat i think stories need to be able to take the individual on the other side to a journey that not only makes them think makes them curious but also stretches the imagination and i think we are in an era in the hobby where storytelling is critical as we have this sea of sports cards this endless supply of sports cards it's only going to continue to grow so how do specific cards continue to elevate over time and that happens through great storytelling before we get into the art of storytelling and the power of narrative in the hobby i wanna thank inferno red technology for supporting the dam program 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 make sure you're following stacking slabs wherever you're listening to get all of the content we're putting out each and every day tell a damn friend and run on over to the patreon group if you're a sicko and you want more content from yours truly this flagship episode argues one core thesis in the hobby the card is the object but the story is the asset narrative is an extra credit it's the mechanism that changes where collectors notice remember defend and pay for the psychology is uncomfortably direct when people are transported by a story belief shift in story consistent direction and scrutiny drops high transport audience even detect fewer false notes memory then locks in value in place retrospective evolution outweighs the peak in the ending of an experience while duration often matters far less in hobby terms the chase the hit the grade reveal and the final story you tell become remembered value economically narrative behaves like a contagion stories go viral steer attention and can shape real market outcomes the providence functions as narrative premium because it reduces uncertainty and increases meaning you can look through empirical work in antique auctions and find stronger providence and it can increase price in measurable ways i know i've sat there and watched the antique roadshow and you you watch those shows they're just telling stories and the stories are what is helping provide value to those items what i wanna do in this episode is dig into the psychology share some cards i want to offer a positioning playbook maybe also share like some ethical things that we should think about when we're telling stories and hopefully deliver an episode to you that no one else is getting and no one else is digging into because we obsess over the psychology of collecting and stories are a part of it and so we're gonna do a deep dive here and wanna just thank you for digging into this with me okay so narrative works on collectors because it bundles attention emotion belief and memory into a single delivery system in in transportation research absorption into narrative increases story consistent beliefs and fair favorable evaluations and it can reduce detection of errors or false notes this matters because the hobby is saturated with high arousal stories think about the headlines the big hits the chase record breaking sales and the high arousal is the exact condition under which narrative becomes persuasive while your internal auditor goes quiet persuasion is powerful if you haven't and you got some time read cialdini's influence you you might learn a thing or two memory mechanisms then turn moments into meaning and work on retrospective evaluation duration neglect shows people's global evaluations can correlate weekly with how long an experience lasted instead peak effect and in effect are disproportionately influential in collecting this maps almost too cleanly the peak is the hit the offer accepted the trade you won the grade that popped the end is the slab reveal or the story you post the remembered self keeps score using those moments you dig in and you start to understand why online narratives can feel true when they're just vivid the hobby is available is an availability machine a few viral sales and the card is exploding posts become mentally frequent and even when they're rare at the identity layer narrative is not merely persuasion it's self construction narrative identity work describes identity as internalized involving life story that integrates the reconstructed past with the imagined future to provide unity and purpose there's been a lot of consumer research on the extended self and this shows possessions can become part of identity and memory i've talked about it on this podcast and objects become objects matter because they store continuity not because they have features that is collector psychology in a single sentence people don't only buy cards they buy coherence if you look at things economically narratives in the economy they frame stories as contagious social forces that spread and can drive macro behavior in collectibles provenance is concrete narrative premium in auction data the presence and quality of provenance can measurably change the realized price ownership history also alters valuation valuation increases with duration of ownership and even past ownership can increase valuation after loss meaning my story with this object can convert into someone else's willingness to pay finally narrative creates demand shocks a trading card death effect paper documents large persistent price increases following death events for legendary players every time you see someone pass away the first thing you see is a bunch of cards that are listed on ebay i think there's a lot of case studies specifically with cards that we can turn to and i always tend to think about stories maybe it's because it's recency bias with media and network shows where in the first card that i think of is the t two zero six honus wagner the wagner's card scarcity is strongly associated with the reports that the american tobacco company pulled it from production at wagner's request smithsonian's coverage describes the coarse scarcity story and notes persistent with folklore and the interpretation around it in february twenty twenty six espn reported newly discovered a newly discovered wagner which was kept in a family for over a century which sold through golden for five point two million dollars it was this card was pulled from production there's extreme rarity there is the mona lisa framing there's the long hidden family stewardship there's the modern media tie in with netflix you look at narrative perception of value this object becomes a vessel for the hobby's most repeatable myth scarcity plus legend plus rediscovery the rediscovery angle makes it feel alive not just historical production pull is widely asserted but motivations are debated the twenty twenty six sale price and the one that was kept in the family claim was directly reported on espn we're talking about sports cards on major platforms you've also got the fifty two topps mantle the baseball hall of fame describes the hobby lore the topps executive by cy burger dumped unsold nineteen fifty two cards into the atlantic ocean inadvertently creating future scarcity you've seen reports of these sales over the course of the the time the myth continues to grow people are buying these cards wherever they can get their hands on them people don't care about the grades but there is a lot of story with it you look at the story elements you've got an ocean dump you've got a holy grail status you've got attic fines you've got chain of custody you've got decades of hidden ownership the provenance is elevated from a footnote to a price component the story makes the card feel larger than condition like a cultural artifact with an origin saga the ocean dump story is celebrated but contested by retellings and this is what happens with stories people continue to tell stories they evolve over time and the evolution of the stories even when stuff might or might not be factually correct makes things more interesting look at the nineteen eighty nine upper deck griffey number one this card is known as the card to really set the industry to the next level i remember being very young and being a kid and everywhere you went it was like this is the card this is the card you want card number one eighty nine upper deck griffey it's the first of the first there's innovation on this you have foil hologram there's no gum griffey is the future that was the framing and this is nostalgia for era it changed the hobby this is a master class in origin narrative collectors pay to touch the beginning of a modern premium the card is a time machine into the hobby's transformational moments the product had features that no other card saw saw before think about the billy ripken card there has been a lot about that card where there has been original printed there was cover up and the fact that there was an error in production or the per production didn't catch the the words on the bat and they had to change it causes people to want it the card's value is inseparable from the story the object is basically a punch line it demonstrates how attention can be converted into liquidity you've got the jordan and kobe logo man massive sale two thousand and seven two thousand eight sold for two or twelve point nine three million dollars and setting a sports card record at the time surpassing mantle there was a lot of story elements to this there will only be one two icons fused into one artifact game worn logoman relics public sale as proof holy grail language the narrative economics is in one slab uniqueness plus celebrity plus public validation creates a story so repeatable that it becomes a category defining reference point card sold for a lot so it's only going to continue to hang on to its positioning when you're thinking about storytelling and the hobby there's typically or just storytelling in general but how it might do apply to the hobby there's certain components narrative positioning is not telling stories it's choosing which story the object is allowed to mean and proving it you have the origin why the card exists this is the creation myth designed intent production quirk set context cultural moment upper deck's griffey number one is the origin positioning as product narrative premium features and deliberate centerpiece selection this card exists because fill in the blank if you only remember one thing the card marker is fill in the blank there's verification moves manufacturer details reporting over time catalog auction descriptions grading company write ups you've got journey or the provenance provenance in narrative is narrative with with receipts it demonstrates how the chain of custody becomes part of the value not an afterthought in other collectibles markets imperial empirical work finds provenance can measurably affect auction prices i've heard other industries talk about collectibles talking about art and talking about the documentation of the chain of custody and how that is important you've got transformation or identity what owning it makes you it's the status it's this layer of identity the card as an extension of self not we've talked about belk belk's extended self work supports the idea that possessions can become part of identity and memory narrative identity work frames identity as an internalized life story that supports unity and purpose collecting fits it like a glove stories are complicated stories are complex and i always appreciate really great storytellers i find i learn the most about specific card sets over time when they're wrapped in a story i think what you see in this space is great storytelling and you can also see very questionable storytelling and although this industry is not regulated i think we all believe that there is specific ethics or some sort of unwritten code we should follow when we're talking about cards because you know when you're talking about cards in a way that might be verbose might be a little bit pie in the sky might be a little self serving people are going to start calling you a pumper and do you wanna be labeled a pumper i don't think so so i think there's ethics that go along with it ethical storytelling in the hobby means treating narrative like power because it is power there's a checklist that we can follow that is helps give us some sort of framework in order to make sure that we're not veering off into one direction or the other number one separate verifiable facts from interpretation label speculation as speculation if you are going to speculate which many of us do in this space make sure you're telling people that don't manufacture false scarcity avoid misleading with like last chance framing when supply or liquidity contradicts it i think any of us can hop into a live selling stream and hear people framing up junk as rare and scarce and trying to get one over on their unsuspected audience don't do that that's bad don't use selective comps to create available traps show base rates or admit uncertainty never launder rumor into prominence prominence is documented chain of custody custody not vibes disclosing incentives when you're selling pumping or benefiting from attention narrative economics warns competitive environments reward manipulation there is a little bit of an exercise and i was going through this myself this is this is a way to stress test it maybe a five stepper here you've got pick one card you love and write a story you tell about it write the facts you can prove dates population sales chain of custody identify the peak and ending moments that shaped your memory and ask if you're confusing remembered value with market value run an availability audit how many of your beliefs come from vivid post verse base rates upgrade the story ethically keep what's meaningful remove what's untrue and decide if you're buying the object or buying the narrative if you think you buy cards because of features like chrome color match grade serial number i'm going to say something that might annoy you you might buy because of story and if you're already thinking no that's not me i'm disciplined then congratulations you're the exact person that this conversation is for because the easiest person to influence is the person who doesn't realize they're being influenced in the hobby the card is the object but the story is the asset as this hobby continues to grow continues to expand there's going to be individuals that are going to continue to try to make money off of stories are these stories measured are these stories factually correct are people just using stories to position their cards in a way that's going to get an individual to buy them we should be cynical we should question stories we should be in the mode where we're trying to understand is this a story that is self serving or is this a story that's trying to educate us trying to get us to open our mind to a specific card category or segment you can weaponize stories in a way to take advantage of others we've seen it before in this hobby we're going to see it again you can use stories to open up collectors' minds to engage to incite some sort of emotion and feeling in others i tend to wanna lean in that direction i tend to wanna be the type of collector that doesn't just talk about cards in the surface level data that is at our fingertips i wanna dig in i'm curious i wanna understand the reasons i wanna understand the motivations i wanna understand the desires i want other collectors who are doing content who are talking about their collections to not just show a card but tell the damn story tell me why it matters why it matters to you give me any information you can that connects it with its past and helps me understand not only why you love it but historically why this card matters companies in this space that tell stories stories the right way will win collectors in this space that embrace storytelling and use storytelling to describe what they're building will win stories are powerful you must be responsible when telling stories in a space like the hobby that's unregulated there is always going to be a lot of irresponsible storytellers and it is on us as we're collecting in this space where we have everything at our disposal and we've got information coming at us all of the time we've got platforms feeding us stuff constantly nonstop it's on us to understand what's real and what's not it's also on us to understand the game for many storytellers or pseudo storytellers is to get the algorithms to understand the power of the story so that message could spread through the social media landscape this is the game people are playing not all storytellers are manipulators storytellers are great they're great for the hobby and they're educators they're educating us and giving us reason and giving us purpose all of our cards in our collection have some sort of story what's that story for you what's the story of your collection what's the story of your cards do you think about narrative do you think about stories i know this when i read stories or read copy from big cards that are being sold on the auction block oftentimes i wonder could this story be told better is this just a boilerplate is this just someone trying to create something to sell something well sure that's that's certainly true but there's much more we can offer there's much more we can give as a industry stories matter they'll forever matter they'll matter right now as we're collecting they'll matter when we're all gone and our collections are somewhere else stories will never stop i wanted to do this episode because i wanted to make sure we all understood stories and their position in this space i hope if this episode hits you you'll tell a damn friend about it you'll tell a damn friend about stacking slabs i think it's interesting to run through some of these exercises that i've going through myself you don't win by telling more stories you win by telling truer stories better the truth matters it matters more now than ever before especially in this crazy world we're living in i hope you enjoyed this episode hopefully it gets you to think for a second gets you to understand the power of narrative in the hobby and in the industry really appreciate you supporting stacking slabs your hobby content alternative we'll be back with more soon take care talk to you soon