What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another edition of the flagship here on stacking slabs, the episode that really started it all.

We dig into a topic each week that I think is interesting, and it can be influenced by so many things, people, trends, what we're seeing on the front page of the hobby news, the market, psychology. It just goes on and on and on.

And this is the space where I get to let it out, and I appreciate you all, coming here each week, letting me do that, engaging in the content, showing up, showing out, telling a damn friend about what we're doing here on Stacking Slabs.

I have so much excitement right now inside me about getting to talk about sports cards and collecting, right right now.

It's exciting. It's motivating. The intersection of content and collecting really feels like the space that I should be spending my time. This year has been unbelievable. The most rewarding year in my professional career by a mile.

I have so many lessons that I've learned, and at some point, maybe I'll recap some of that. But I just wanna let you know that coming down from the national, there was no comedown.

I've just been going up, up, up, and just feeling very fortunate that I get to get up here each week and talk about cards. And it is what I I'm doing. And I appreciate that, and we're really pushing stacking slabs hard right now.

We are working very, very hard in the background. You're seeing new shows created. Shout out the Football Card podcast. A lot of you are coming through, checking out that each and every day.

It got featured in the in a athletic article on the New York Times. It's it's crazy. It's picking up. It's football season. I'm fired up to be doing that show with John at Pack Nicholson.

Drop the book. Shout out for everyone who has given feedback. Told a damn friend. Collecting for keeps finding meaning in a hobby built on Hype. It's out now. Free digital. Link is in the show notes. Go check it out.

I'm in this creation mode, and I I'm not stopping, and I can't stop, and it's a ton of fun. I'm also working very diligently in the background on partners and who I wanna work with and who I believe in and how we can collaborate.

Just a lot going on. Outside of, doing this, I've got time for my kids and time for my family, and that's about it.

A lot of other priorities, have kind of been shelved, for the time being, because I've just got a lot of energy around, this and building stacking slabs. And we'll get into the episode, but I'll I'll leave you with one more comment.

I was having a conversation with someone, and they were asking me. They're like, well, how's it how's it been? How's it going? And I I took a step back, and I just said, you know what?

Like, I actively have to tell myself to not work because the most exciting outside of being with my family and spending that quality time with my family, Outside of that, like, this is the most fun I'm having.

And it I don't know. You get you get to age 40, and your work is what you really admire and what you appreciate, but that that's where I'm at.

Like, I just wanna be in this space. There's so much so many interesting topics, so many things to navigate, and, it's just what I love. So for me, my ambition is a 100. I can run myself into the ground.

I actively have to, like, at night, put the laptop away, put the, notepads away, get everything out, and just, like, veg out on the couch. Because if I don't do that, I'll just work, and we all need brakes.

Right? Well, there's no brakes in the flagship. We believe in consistency here. And one of the topics that has been addressed on a lot of different stacking slab shows has been the current state of the market that we're in.

We're in the charts era. Everyone's posting charts on their Instagram stories. Everyone is posting, cards and telling everyone how much their cards are going up. Everyone is and I'm saying everyone.

I don't mean you specifically. This is how it feels, I'm saying. Everyone seems to be when there's a big sale of a card, posting a card similar adjacent to that card to show everyone else, that their card is just as valuable.

It reminds me a lot of 2021. I will say there are a lot of different elements that I believe, make me more confident that we're in a era that's a little more stable than the last.

Most specifically, the cards that are going up and two x ing over a year or two year period of time are cards that are rare and scarce and aren't necessarily available.

You know, you've rewind the tape back to an era where many of us, including myself, reentered, and people were paying a premium for based PSA tens that have a population of 20,000.

And that that's not happening. And so I think if you're looking for signals to give you confidence confidence based on the current era, that's one specifically that I keep pointing to.

Now I'm not saying it's perfect, and I'm not saying we're going up forever. I can't predict the future nor do I want to, nor will I give you buying or investment advice.

But what I'm going to do in this episode is But what I'm going to do in this episode is talk a little bit about selling into a bull market without regret.

We're in the middle of a bull market, period. Prices are up. Demand is high. Excitement is everywhere.

And if you're like me, you feel it every time you're scrolling through an auction, an auction recap, an auction recap of the recap, an auction recap of the recap of the recap, and all of those sales that are going down.

You know, for me, I feel fortunate.

While I'm not necessarily publicizing big sales, there's plenty of other creators who do that. I will say I am regularly checking card ladder and seeing what happened the night before just out of curiosity.

But, you know, my thing is when the market is hot, it's really easy to get caught up in the hype and forget about why we're here in the first place, collecting for keeps.

It's also a time where selling might make sense, but selling never never is just about cashing out. I think it's in it's about making intentional moves that bring us closer to our long term vision or our North Star as a collector.

And I think that is one of the challenges that I am thinking a lot about as I'm in this market buying cards and thinking about selling cards is looking and evaluating my collection and asking the question, like, based on the market conditions right now and based on my future vision of my collection, does this card make sense to keep, or does it make sense to get rid of?

I think before we talk about this what to sell and when to sell, we need to really ground ourselves in, four factors that I'm always going back to when I'm evaluating this.

And these are my four factors, and this is my podcast. This is this might not be what you do, but this is a show of frameworks. Like, we're giving you frameworks from one collector to another, and this is what I always go back to.

I go back to value. I go back to personal significance. Go back to rarity. I go back to scarcity. So value is what the market says your card is worth.

Personal significance is what the card means to me or you. Your connection, your memories, your story. Rarity is how often it surfaces and how many chances you'll have to buy it again.

One of ones, obviously, that is if you have a valuable one of one that is personally significant to you, the chances are you getting that back as slim to none. So it's you're evaluating that context.

And scarcity, how much demand exists relative to that rarity? My belief is when you put those four together, you start to see the full picture, and that's what today's conversation is going to be about.

How we can use the bull market as collectors to make a smart market be intentional and be more intentional with our decisions.

We're going to talk about evaluating your collection, judgment day style, the psychology of letting go and the goals and intent behind selling, how to avoid regret, and what to do with the proceeds once a card leaves your PC.

This isn't about flipping. It's about collecting for keeps.

So let's get into it. I wanna start by talking about evaluating your collection. I believe this is one of the most important things we can do. I believe this is something we should all be doing regularly for a couple reasons.

Number one, it just makes sense to spend time with our cards. If you're not getting value out of, like, opening up that box and holding your cards, thinking about your cards, then you're missing out.

If you're doing that and a card isn't giving you excitement or joy is not connected back to another piece, maybe that's a card layering in the four factors on top of it that it's time to let go.

My collection is living. It's breathing, kind of, but it's just always evolving. I always am looking at it with a critical eye, much like and I've talked about this in the past, much like a GM.

The this is my squad. Who's starting? Who's sitting? Who's getting traded? Who's who's getting let go of? That's how I think about my collection, and I'm constantly doing it.

I'll tell you this right now. My collection right now is in a space where it is extremely challenging to let go of cards, and by letting go of one card or letting go of several cards.

I had a a converse I was DMing with a friend about, he sent me a Andrew Luck card that was available on eBay that I had previously owned, and it's a great card.

And I I said thanks, and then I messaged him back. And maybe it was, like, for me, it was, like, my own way of, like like, dealing with this transition.

But I made mention, like, hey. I'm actually, like, getting rid of several of my Andrew Luck cards because my collection is too bloated.

I had, like, a 150 cards. One of ones, Gold Prism, rookies, you you name it. Gold, everything, optic select, select, all the I had everything. And by having everything, it wasn't really satisfying for me anymore.

What was more interesting for me was to see if I could package up a lot of those pieces and go grab a bigger piece of my dreams. And that example happened when I picked up his twenty twelve prism pylon one of one.

And so that's how I think about evaluating collection. It's like, wow. I have all of these luck pieces, but how do I build a collection that is one of a kind?

And in order to acquire a piece like the one of one, you know, you gotta make moves and let go of some other cards that I really appreciate but moved on from.

And it maybe it's better, to, you know, let those cards end up in someone's else else's collection.

I think it's a fit versus friction thing, and it's asking which cards feel like they belong in your story, which feel like they were good buys but not great fits.

I'm gonna tie some of these this this thinking up to some concepts in psychology because that's what we do here. And I think it will help, maybe talk through some of these moments. So we're talking about evaluating your collection.

We're talking fit verse friction. Let's talk about the endowment effect. So the endowment effect, the definition of it is it's a cognitive bias where people assign more value to things they own simply because they own them.

And I think our application of this in the evaluating of our own personal collecting is just because you own the card doesn't mean it deserves a long term spot in your PC.

And so we can ask ourselves, if I didn't have this card today, would I pay current market prices to buy it back?

It's an easy way to evaluate the worth of a card in your PC in comparison to what the value, what the value what the market values it at.

We can talk about the psychology of letting go, and there's many different concepts within this. We, as collectors, are attached to cards.

If we buy them, if it's a player we like, if it's a set we like, it's really hard to let go. And so we think about loss aversion, and the definition around it is a bias where losses feel more painful than equivalent gains feel good.

I think collectors hold cards too long because they fear regret more than they enjoy the profit of those cards. And I think recognizing this bias before deciding is something really powerful that we can do.

There's plenty of cards in my collection that I let go of because I realized that I I enjoy I I don't enjoy the actual cards themselves more than I enjoy the profit from the cards that I can go apply to a card that I hope is a long term card.

But there's no loss aversion when you're looking at your collection and you're like, I don't care what this card's worth, whatever.

It's part of my long term vision. And so those are the types of things I'm thinking about constantly when making these decisions.

It's identity and attachment. So it's the objects tied to identity feel like extensions of ourselves, making them really hard to part with. These are players we love, teams we love.

They really connect. I have found with our fandom, it's way easier to move cards that you buy, that you found, and you're like, you know what? This seems like a good deal based on my knowledge, my belief in the player, all these things.

When it's just driven based on potential future monetary gain, if the market is a bull market and you've holding one of these cards, it's like a chip you're getting ready to cash in.

It's really easy, but it's really hard when you're you have identity attached to, a card or someone views you as a certain type of collector.

Think if a card feels tied to who you are, selling it may feel like selling a part of yourself. I think if you're trying to get over this, it's reframing it in your head.

Right? And I say this a lot, especially when I'm talking about my collection. My collection is evolving. I don't say my collection is changing. I always say it's evolving.

Evolving is a word that makes me feel better. But in this instance, it's for me, it's it's framing it from a a transition or a transformation. You're like, my Andrew Luck collection is going through a transformation.

It is no longer based on quantity. It is based on quality. And I'm not saying the quantity I had wasn't quality. It certainly certainly was, but it wasn't the highest of levels top tier, but I want the highest of levels in top tier.

Once you land a certain amount of black finance, once you land one of a kind cards, it gets you in this mode where you're like a psychopath.

It's like, I'm ready to move forward. I'm ready to go. I'm ready to do whatever I can to continue this just path of rage to land the biggest and best cards.

And all this other stuff, the golds, you know, the cards that you've built and amassed over time are are great, but they don't reach that level. So you talk to yourself, and that's what we do as collectors.

We talk to ourselves. We say, this is a transformation. It's not a loss. And I think that's really important. I think we need to, when we're making these decisions, especially in a bull market, have goals and intent behind selling.

Clarifying your intentions is really important, and it doesn't need to be clarifying your intentions with anybody else but yourself. Are you funding a grail? Are you consolidating to fewer or higher quality cards?

Are you pivoting completely away from that area that no longer exists? This is the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation comes from this internal satisfaction, this joy, meaning personal fit.

Extrinsic motivation comes from external rewards, profit, approval, hype. The selling decisions that are intrinsically motivated typically lead to long term satisfaction.

And I know when we're buying, we're thinking about our collection, it's really hard to dig into the depths of these different concepts that are at play.

And it's what I'm trying to do is just put a spotlight on them. It's like, hey. This is going on whether you like it or not. This is natural. This is part of collecting. And I'm just trying to make sure this light is shined on.

And if you felt these things as you're going through kinda your process, hopefully, this is a an emphasis on those. And that's the goal here. That's the goal we're doing with content. We're just bull market. It's busy.

People are spending a lot of money. We're attached to our cards. What things we should we be considering? We're always looking to avoid regret. There's a regret test. Right? If this card doubled in value tomorrow, would I sell it?

If yes, you're making the decision for the right reasons. There are cards in my collection that have quadrupled in value, since I've had them, but those cards too are cards I have no interest in selling.

And I'll here here is something I will share for all of you that I think is important, and this is not like a silver bullet or whatever, but this is just from my own personal experience.

The value in my collection and the cards that have increased in value are never related to the player.

They're always related to the set. So that's something that I think a lot about when I'm building my collection. Is the set matter to me?

Does it matter to others? Will this have long term value? Those are some things that I consider. I think our hobby is in this craze, and this happens mostly in the front end where we're evaluating players and values going up and down.

It's like, yeah, maybe in the immediate, the player matters. And, sure, like, the goats, they matter and no matter what. But how many goats really are there? And when I'm talking about goats.

I'm not necessarily talking about performance. Performance influenced the greatest of all time, obviously, but we're talking about collecting. And in order to talk about collecting goats, you need demand for those players.

And so I think that is something that I'm constantly thinking about. It's like, we've got this tier of these goats, and these goats are goats because people want to buy their cards regardless of the cards all the time.

But then you kinda think about it, and you're like, well, how many players actually are like that?

So if you're starting buying a player in the front end, you're thinking through all of the different, evolutions and eras that their cards are in and profiles, it's like, how many actually make it to that point where at the end of their career, doesn't matter the card.

People are going to want it because it's of the player. Like, that's that list, I think, is smaller than we like to admit.

But the sets matter, and the sets become the foundation, the parallels people want and chase. And so that's a little aside there, but that's something that I'm I think about it.

But I think having a regret test and evaluating that is important. There's anticipated regret. Right? A decision making bias where we, as collectors, try to minimize the chance that we'll regret this in the future.

We can anticipate how we'll feel six months after selling. Will we miss the card, or will we be thrilled at what it turned into?

There's a reversibility mindset. Most cards eventually circulate. One of ones and key grails may never return, and so I think we should treat those differently than more replaceable cards.

We can get into part of getting into intention is what happens with the proceeds. Reinvestment as progress is important, and I think about this a lot.

And I think selling should create momentum, not empty emptiness. Like, if you're selling stuff and you're taking the cash and purchasing something transactional that's not making you happy, like, maybe that's not the best idea.

But if you're selling something in this crazy bull market and you're getting four x what you paid for the card and you can't believe it, and that helps you go get into a card you never thought you could afford, now that's what I'm talking about.

There's opportunity cost. Right? It's the value of the best alternative you give up when you choose one option over the other.

I think selling isn't just about what you get for the card. It's about what new doors open for you. That is something I'm always thinking about.

And I think maybe as I'm talking through this at the end of the day, a lot of this just has to go with, are you playing the short game or are you playing the long game? This podcast has always been for long game players.

Not saying the short term transactional flipping mindset isn't one that's needed or fun to do in this hobby, but, like, the content that I'm building isn't for that. It's for the long term thinker.

And so a lot of these applications apply to you, the collector, who has that case of cards that makes you feel really happy, it adds to your identity, and you just can you you you it's a project you constantly wanna work on.

There are different ways we can take take the proceeds of sales in this market. We can think about that immediate reinvestment, putting funds directly into grails or upgrades.

We can reverse it can be reverse capital or hold the cash to stay patient and wait for that card to hit. And there's personal wins. We could use some proceeds for life expenses or peace of mind because it helps balance things out.

I think one of the themes I'm always gonna tie back to a lot of these episodes, because I just wrote a book on it, is collecting for keeps.

And, again, when I'm talking about collecting for keeps, I'm talking about not necessarily the cards you're holding, but just your status in the hobby.

Selling in a bull market isn't about timing the top. It's about aligning with your collecting intent. I believe every card you move should make your collection stronger, more meaningful, and more personal.

Collecting for keeps doesn't mean you never sell. It means when you do, it's with clarity, intention, and purpose. The market is hot. It's on fire. Think about these things as you're evaluating whether to sell our card or not.

I'm Brett. This is Stacking Slabs, your hobby content alternative. Appreciate you following the show, joining the Patreon, checking out the book, collecting for keeps, all the things.

Keep on listening. Keep on sharing your passion. This space is so much fun. Let's treat it as such. We'll talk to you soon.