what's going on everybody welcome back to another episode flagship episode of stacking slabs your hobby content alternative i'm brett here on the stacking slabs network excited to be here excited to show up excited to continue to consistently deliver collector focused content to you the sports card collector in the hobby a lot happening behind the scenes at stacking slabs lot of good things happening by the way i haven't promoted it on the flagship but i i'm going to because maybe we'll grab some people outside of some of the other shows we're throwing a damn party at the national for wrestling card collectors so we have wrestling card takeover happening july thirty first at the nbc suites it is going to be a banger i'm having a lot of fun conversations with sponsors getting people involved shout out adam ryan my partners in crime putting this party together but if you are going to be at the national and you like wrestling cards make sure you're there you can rsvp at book to last podcast at gmail dot com also if you're not already check out what we're doing on substack weekly rip comes out every sunday every tuesday hobby jobs i'm having a lot of fun putting those together link is in the show notes it is free we are going to continue to explore this idea of independence and collecting and after i got done with the episode from last week i got a ton of feedback and as i was going over the feedback i was left with a question and that question was can collectors truly separate personal tastes from social influence in the hobby built around visibility and market validation and there is so much to explore and unpack in that question and that's what i want to do today in the episode before i do that gotta shout out my good friends at 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 hobby leagues and fans and for everyone in between see what they can build for you at inferno red dot com new episode of built for the hobby out on the stacking slabs network that dropped yesterday make sure you go check it out really enjoying those conversations so today we are continuing the conversation around independent taste and how it is earned in collecting sports cards and centering in on the separation from personal taste to social influence and we'll start by asking you the audience member here at stacking slabs something that sounds simple until you sit with it do you collect what you like because we hear this all the time collect what you like collect what you like do you collect what you like or do you like what the hobby already has taught you to collect i know it sounds a bit like a cheap philosoph philosoph philosophical that sounds like a cheap philosophical trick but i do not think it is i think it is one of the hardest questions in the entire hobby because nobody wants to believe that their taste might be less independent than they think nobody wants to believe the room has been in their head longer than they've realized nobody wants to believe that what feels personal might also be socially engineered and i want to be clear out of the gates here this is not me saying personal taste is fake it's not it's real it matters it is the whole reason this hobby can be beautiful but i think many of us underestimate just how much pressure personal taste is under inside a hobby built around visibility legibility and market validation and that's what i want to do in today's episode so last time we talked i talked about independent taste i talked about conviction i talked about consensus i talked about how consensus can inform judgment but can't replace judgment i talked about how validation is not immediate agreement not likes not applause not the room nodding along in approval validation is your case surviving scrutiny validation is your thesis getting stronger when the facts get more specific but not weaker that was the frame but after i put that episode down was left with the question and i can't shake and i'll say it again can collectors truly separate personal taste from social influence in a hobby built on visibility and market validation my answer today is no not fully and i think pretending otherwise is a fast path to delusion but i also think that answer needs a second half while you can't fully separate your tastes from social influence you can become disciplined enough to recognize when the crowd is helping you see and when the crowd is doing the same for you and that difference is everything so the thesis in today's episode is pure independence is fantasy reflective independence is possible you are never going to become some collector floating above culture untouched by shows untouched by sales history untouched by the opinions of smart people untouched by design trends untouched by what the room has crowned that is not real life taste is learned taste is trained taste is social long before it becomes self aware the real work is not to become pure the real work is to become honest honest enough to ask did i choose this or did the environment choose it for me honest enough to ask am i studying the card or am i reacting to its public reputation honest enough to ask do i admire the object or do i admire how safe it feels to own that is not a small distinction that is the whole damn thing it's everything and before i go any further i need to make something pretty clear this and this is becoming a little bit of a bit for each of these episodes where i feel like i need to put in a disclaimer i do i just i feel as i put these things together just feel a need to put a little disclaimer up and this disclaimer i want to put up in today's episode is we're not anti community we're not anti market i'm not saying ignore other collectors or ignore pricing or history or hierarchy that's silly the crowd matters you need people to buy sell trade you need people to learn from you need insights community matters other collectors teach you things they introduce you to sets players eras relic content release context significance all that stuff without other collectors most of us would not even know what exists let alone what to compare and the research is actually more nuanced than the usual doom and gloom social media sermon that we get quite regularly maybe even daily a lot of it is centered around the upward comparison and envy on social platforms and how they're linked to lower well-being but newer reviews show that the effects are mixed conditional and very person specific sometimes comparison distorts and sometimes it sharpens and sometimes it educates sometimes it inspires so the enemy isn't exposure the enemy is dependence you do not examine and that is why i like to say open your eyes take a couple steps back don't just get sucked in so to make it useful i want to call out five forces that i think compete against personal taste in the hobby you could call them five ghost writers of a collection you've got the crowd the scoreboard the stage the machine and the security blanket if you understand those five forces you understand why this hobby can feel personal and social intellectual and compulsive beautiful and distorted all at the same time so let's start with the crowd i think sometimes we follow others because we assume they know something we do not that is informational influence sometimes we follow others because we do not want to look stupid isolated unserious that is normative influence in real life those two things can get braided together so tightly that they can be hard to pull apart think about the hobby you see a card being praised by smart collectors you see dealers highlighting it you see a big sale you see screenshots you hear people you respect discussing it like it seems obvious now ask yourself what is exactly happening inside your head i think when you have these moments where you it's very introspective you ask questions and i think it can be right questions which help you unlock doors questions like did you conclude the card mattered because the evidence was overwhelming i love looking for evidence i love looking for narrative i love looking to piece together all of these things to help validate my own purchases i do it all the time most so you can conclude with the card that mattered because the evidence was so strong or you can also ask like did you conclude the card mattered because the social costs of disagreement started to rise and that might sound crazy but it's real most of the time i think it's both and that is why consensus matters and why it's so powerful it does not just promise information it tells you maybe wisely maybe lazily that if this thing goes wrong at least you were wrong with everyone else this is where collectors fool themselves they say they are doing research but what are they often doing is borrowing certainty just doing research is not a transactional tactic although i think some people might think it is it's hard you have to love it you have to dig in you have to source thinking borrowed certainty feels incredible a card gets easier to buy when other people have already supplied the language you don't just get the object you get the the narrative the story the responses the comps the approval the built in defense all of these things it can be useful and to a point but the same mechanism that protects you from the obvious errors can also keep you from ever discovering what you actually value because the more a collector needs the room the less likely he is to build taste altogether not curating but receiving instructions now let's move to the scoreboard because this is where the sports card hobby especially gets dangerous a lot of hobbies have opinion the hobby has opinion with infrastructure sold history filters real time pop reports serial numbers grades auction archives price trackers ranking screenshots social media public records one big marketplace openly framed the trading card world as serving collectors flippers investors and one leading grading platform literally gives you the exact count of how many examples exist in each grade and update updated daily that's not neutral context that is a public scoreboard wrapped around every object and scoreboards are powerful because they convert mystery into numbers the problem is that once the number is visible people start treating it like a summary of truth instead of what it really is one kind of information useful but incomplete price can tell you something it can tell you demand it can tell you liquidity it can tell you visibility it can tell you what the market has rewarded but price can't tell you what should matter to you in the minute a collector starts confusing public scorekeeping with private meaning taste starts giving its ground here's what the scoreboards interrupt it interrupts patients because data is always moving it interrupts intimacy because the object is constantly being translated into external terms it interrupts specificity because the easiest arguments become market arguments you feel that i know i feel that all the time when i open up apps it interrupts courage because public disagreement with the scoreboard feels like stepping in front of traffic that is why so many collectors sound like mini portfolio managers when they're supposedly talking about objects that they love the language of the market is so available so respected so instantly legible that it can quietly eat the language of taste you stop saying this image devastates me it sucks or this is the cleanest expression of the player in this era or this relic auto integration actually tells the story better than the alternatives and you start saying easy card to move one of those is curation the other is public risk mitigation now there's a stage sports cards are public goods in a very particular way not public in the sense that everyone owns them although maybe fanatics would have something different to say about that or their mission is different than that but public in the sense that they are made to be seen they are shown in cases slabs tables feeds they're shown in stories mail days trade nights they're shown to strangers who immediately know what they mean products function as signals they communicate identity relevant information and status to observers that matters because cards are not only personal objects in a visible hobby they are also readable performances so you can ask yourself the tough question when you are drawn to a card are you drawn to the card or are you drawn to the clarity of what owning it communicates those aren't always the same sometimes the card is special because it's meaningful sometimes it's special because it's legible sometimes it's special because the room instantly understands the signal and that signal can start to outrun the object itself i've been there it's happened to me in reflection i understand that that is where status seekers where this is where status sneaks into the driver's seat without really introducing itself this is where a lot of collectors from my observations get twisted they think they're following tace but they're partly following displaylogic displaylogic asks what shows well what reads fast what gets recognized what carries cultural relevance what proves i know matters taste asks something a little bit more private and more difficult what do i keep returning to even when the room is quiet those questions sometimes overlap but not always and if you want to know whether you're operating from taste or display here's a simple tell if the imagined audience is doing too much work inside your decision that is not pure admiration that's performance pressure and again i am not saying performance is always fake in every hobby part of collecting is social communication but the more visible the object the more likely it is to become a badge and badges are dangerous because they can be purchased long before they're understood the fourth force is the machine the feedback loop social reward and social media shows that self relevant approval engages reward systems and studies on likes show similar responses in the brain there's also work connecting fear of missing out informational overload and the need to belong to greater engagement that matters in collecting because the hobby is no longer just a room or a show or a shop it is now a digital environment built on immediate responses and for many of us we spend a whole lot of time in this digital environment i have to pull myself out of the digital environment because i'm in it all day almost every day i recognize this it is the nature of how i work and what i do for a living but it's not normal it's actually quite unique and understanding its dynamics is really important think about what happens in a high intensity hobby moment big card gets posted comments roll in screenshots fly somebody says it's undervalued other people say it's a steal a sale gets referenced people start comparing the room tightens urgency rises and suddenly your desire does not feel like social influence it feels like personal realization but maybe it's not realization maybe it's synchronization synchronization maybe you do not want the card more because you studied it harder maybe you want it more because the social reward environment turned the volume up on it that's a machine it's not just teaching you what to chase it's teaching you how fast to feel and there is a live side of the hobby which deserves special attention there's been a lot of conversation around life shopping breaks this format can be socially wonderful it can also be psychologically combustible the more the hobby becomes synchronous the more emotional carry gets transferred from the room to the object that is why some purchases feel electric in the moment and oddly hollow later object didn't change environment changed noise dropped room dispersed the event ended and what you're left with is not an atmosphere around the card but the card itself that is the brutal but useful reveal you're left with is not the atmosphere on the card but the card itself because sometimes you want what you wanted was the card sometimes you wanted the event of wanting it with other people the fifth fourth force is one i think most collectors underestimate because it feels the most private the security blanket collections create structure the structure can feel attractive under uncertainty collecting can provide comfort but can also tip towards excessive spending that should make every serious collector pause for a second because it means some part of collecting is not just aesthetic and not social it's regulatory it helps you create order it helps narrow chaos it helps you reduce uncertainty by building a world that feels sortable completable and coherent again i'm not saying it's bad i think it's part of why collecting can be beautiful but if you do not recognize it you can start mistaking emotional relief for strong judgment you start thinking this buy feels right when what it really happening is this buy makes me feel like i'm in more control those are not the same and completion deserves its own moment because it's sneaky the closer you get to finishing a run the more the missing piece starts to glow i've been there i'm i'm always there not necessarily because they're the best cards not necessarily because they're the most meaningful cards but because incompletion starts to itch the research is useful because it says motivational force of control gets stronger when the collection is near a more complete structure this means the collector has the extra careful late in the chase the final pieces do not just carry object level appeal they carry psychological leverage that is how smart collectors end up buying cards they would have passed on earlier in the run they aren't selecting anymore they are settling in the name of closure a closure is a terrible curator it will tell you that the hole in your run matters more than quality of what it fills it will tell you the movement equals progress it will tell you that finishing equals meaning sometimes it does and sometimes it absolutely doesn't then there's one more psychological hit that matters to this conversation and it's one we all know all too well and that's ownership bias behavioral economics have shown for a long time that people tend to value things they own more highly than they would if they didn't owe them again another entry point of the endowment effect the one of the key themes of the flagship this year you translate that into hobby language and it becomes very practical once you have chased the card talked yourself into it won the auction stared at the listing imagine that card in your case or maybe even visualize the story of ownership walking away starts to feel like a loss that matters because your conviction might not be conviction it might be pre ownership it might be the pain of giving up an imagined future and if you've never caught yourself defending a card harder after you won it than you did before you bought it that's not random that's bias doing its job so let me try to define wrong activity as cleanly as i can wrong activity in the hobby behavior is any hobby behavior where the object becomes secondary to the feedback loop you're not primary collecting for design image era player set all the things you are collecting to feel safe to feel seen to feel right to feel in control to finish to join the right side of the room to reduce uncertainty to catch social reward to win the moment that can still look like collecting on the outside there are cards changing hands there are mail days there are cases filling up there are screenshots slabs and purchases moved but internally something has changed the object is no longer the center the loop is and there's warning signs if you spend more time refreshing comps than studying the object it's a warning sign if you need a room to understand the purchase immediately warning sign if the relief after buying it is stronger than the admiration after receiving it warning sign if you feel urgency mostly when everyone else feels urgency it's a warning sign if your favorite part of ownership is the post not the possession big time warning sign if completion starts outranking quality warning sign if you keep telling yourself the card is important but you cannot explain why liquidity and consensus that is a warning sign none of the signs mean the purchase is automatically bad they mean your motives are mixed and mixed motives are normal the problem begins when you refuse to admit that they are mixed so what are you supposed to do with all of this you do not become anti market or anti community you do become some fake monk of collecting who acts like price doesn't matter and other people have nothing to teach you you build friction you build process you build enough distance between stimulus and spend that you can hear your own judgment again the first thing i think i'd tell any collector to do is to rank the card privately before the public case before you check the price history the pop reports before you ask the group chat answer a private question what does this object do for me what does it do for my attention does it beat the substitutes does it deepen the collection does it sharpen the point of view would i still care if i had to live with it quietly this is what i talk about a lot on the judgment day side but it doesn't need to be judgment day it's just reflection reflection of your collection and asking the right questions if you do not answer the first the public data will answer it for you the second thing i would do is run a no audience test if nobody could see the card if you could not post it if you could not if no one would compliment it if you just sat with it quietly for years would you still chase it that question is brutal because it cuts right through display logic and look not every great card has to pass this test sometimes part of the fun is absolutely social part of the joy in collecting is sharing i'm not trying to erase that i'm trying to expose when the imagined audience is too much of the evaluation because once this happens you are not choosing the card you're choosing the performance and the performance matters more than the object the object will disappoint you every time when the room goes silent the third thing i would do is impose delay after public spikes if a card just set a new huge sale the feed's full of it if the room suddenly feels hot just wait give yourself time delay is not hesitation because you're weak delay is discipline because the environment can distort your appetite it interrupts conformity it interrupts fomo it interrupts fake ownership that starts the second you picture the card in your case what would prove this wrong which adjacent card beats it what are you overrating if you can't write the losing case you are not building conviction you are protecting a future purchase from scrutiny those are very different things the fourth thing is one i think more collectors need to hear separate collection from speculation not morally operationally use different language use different goals use different expectations if you're collecting then meaning fit coherence and enjoyment need to be allowed to matter more than short term price action if you're speculating then just admit you're speculating and evaluate the move like speculation the confusion happens when people run a speculative process and call it taste or run a taste driven purchase and then panic when the market does not immediately validate it those are different games and the hobby gets messy when people pretend they're the same and yes there's overlap of course a great collector can care about liquidity and of course a speculator can still admire an object real life is messy but if you never separate frames in your head the market will always win because the market speaks louder faster and more publicly than taste does the fifth thing is maybe the hardest but it requires emotional honesty because before a purchase you ask yourself am i buying meaning or am i buying relief am i responding to the object or am i trying to reduce uncertainty am i deepening a body of work or am i stabilizing a mood am i selecting or am i soothing that is not a comfortable set of questions but it can be made clear that structure and control matter collecting can absolutely provide comfort that is part of the value it's part of the risk because when life feels chaotic and my life is absolute chaos all the time having three daughters four and a half and younger and trying to grow this business my life is chaos but when life feels chaotic a collection can become a little world you can order and i like that about collecting man and there's nothing wrong with it until you start paying for order with cards you don't actually respect when that happens the collection fills up but it doesn't deepen it gets denser without getting clear and that is one of the saddest outcomes of the hobby a collection with activity but no point of view so can collectors truly separate personal taste from social influence again no not fully and honestly i think it is wrong fantasy it's a wrong fantasy anyways tastes do not come from nowhere it's educated socialized trained through exposure comparison language status history repetition the hobby absolutely helps shape what you notice and what you value but that does not mean you are helpless it means your real job is to become untouched your real job is to become aware aware when the crowd is teaching you something real aware when market validation is useful data aware when visibility is turning a card into a status signal aware when urgency is social not personal aware when completion is running ahead of selectivity aware when the buy is calming you down more than it is calling you in so maybe the real collector question is not can i become immune to social influence maybe the real question is can i tell when i'm being influenced and can i choose with integrity it's a much humbler question it's a much more powerful one because once you accept the room is always there the market is always there the scoreboard's always there the stage is there the reward loop is there then you can stop pretending independence is some natural state you can start treating it like practice discipline a skill a responsibility and that is where taste becomes real again not because it came from nowhere but because you examine what you're acting on and chose it anyway that to me is the next level of consensus not anti or next level of collecting it's not anti consensus it's not anti market not lonely contrarianism for its own sake just disciplined authorship and in a hobby this visible that might be the closest thing we have to freedom appreciate you being along for the ride i really enjoy putting these episodes together and sharing them with you the feedback's even better it's so good to hear from you it's so good to see the episode or parts of the episode being shared via social it means a lot my mantra is tell a damn friend really if you're enjoying what i'm doing here tell a damn friend whether it's online at a show in a hobby shop it doesn't matter that's the best thing you can do for me and this brand and what i'm building i love sports cards i know you love sports cards too it's fun to talk about it you all take care talk to you soon