welcome back to stacking slabs this is your hobby content alternative flagship episode time i'm brett i wanna thank everyone for supporting the stacking slabs network all of the content that's coming your way each and every damn day we are excited to continue to explore topics to continue to deliver collector driven episodes to you the easiest way you can show your support is to hit the follow button and get all of the content coming your way whatever platform you're listening telling a damn friend are you digging what we're doing here are you enjoying it do you have friends who need to know about stacking slabs and the stacking slabs network make sure you tell a damn friend and if you want even more if you're a sicko and you want more new and exclusive content in the patreon group go run on over to that today excited to talk about this topic of holding sports cards think it's underserved before we dive into it shout out inferno red technology the sponsor of the flagship episode of stacking slabs they are the engineering team behind some of the biggest names in sports 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 when i was getting organized this week around the content that i wanted to produce wanted to deliver a theme came in my brain and i started to piece together different instances from my own personal collecting experience feedback from other collectors and just conversations that we're hosting here on the stacking slabs network and this topic of holding holding our sports cards entered my brain and i thought about how underserved that is we are in this hobby that is all about motion it's all about movement it's all about selling buying card at card show selling it on a platform flipping cards big sales all of these cards and these things get posted and proliferated through social media what doesn't are the cards that just get buried in collections and stay in those collections forever or for a very long time and i'm fascinated by that i'm fascinated by the mindset mentality of collectors who are able to not succumb to the market conditions not succumb to the big offers not succumb to all of the other factors that get all of us to sell our sports cards man we are here for the sports cards we are here for the collection building process to buy cards that mean something to us that are powerful that help us escape from a moment in time when we really need it and i in a recent episode mentioned best collectors or best collections and really define that as individuals who have been able to have an eye for opportunity and buy cards and sell cards and do well and then also toggle that with their own collection and maintain their position on their own collection i don't think we appreciate collectors enough who say no who get offers who just continue to stick to their guns about what they have what they possess and why they love it i wanna start here before we get into all of this and say like i'll share some stuff today that are systems for me this is how i think about it and how i'm processing things i'll also say before you consider long term holds having to kinda deflect other things that are coming your way when to buy sell trade i would say make sure you have clear definition in your collection of how it is organized why you're here what's the structure what are the lanes what are you willing to part with what is nonnegotiable because it's part of a broader collection we all have individualized rules and those rules that we set for our collection are really important before we consider when or when not we should take an opportunity of someone sliding in our dms and giving us an offer we can't refuse i think collectors first fell in love with the hobby for the thrill of the chase and the personal meaning in each card not the money that's a that is a a line in the sand i think i'm not i never wanna say that we don't appreciate the value and the money we do but there are so many other things in the world we could spend our time with trying to make money there's something about this process of building the collection which i don't think we as collectors give ourselves enough credit for and the sacrifice we make both in time and financial to do that and i think that's why there's a lot of conflict between different groups in the hobby those that are out to profit financially which it's free market that is something that is more than acceptable but then you have a competing mentality and mindset which i would imagine are many a majority of the listeners here on sacking slabs where we're trying to build collections we're we're trying to play the long game and there is a little bit of rub in between those two philosophies although those two personas have to work with each other in order to achieve their goals of either more money or better cards and so that is interesting to me but i would the way i'm going to communicate in this episode is directly to the individuals who are here for the cards and here for this personal meeting i think a lot of people observe that most people aren't collecting primarily for financial return a card often represents memories and passions and it can provide us with a lot of intangible benefits i have been outspoken and i have talked about the fact that my reentry into collecting came at a really important time in my life where i was giving up a lot of bad habits that weren't great for my physical or mental health and there was a void like time i would go out maybe to the bar all night or on a saturday during the day i needed to replace that time with something and this was pre kid so there was a lot of time on my hand and i made the decision based on my passion for collecting and for my interest in sports cards at the time to fill that space that i had empty with cards and my life is a lot better for it obviously not only is collecting what i do and i'm passionate and i'm interested in it but it's also become my career so cards are important to me i know cards are important to a lot of you for your own personal reasons but i think that there's an emotional attachment we have to our cards and it's natural this these treasured cards that we have in our collections are tangible links to our favorite players or to happy memories and collectors even see we see ourselves as custodians of history by preserving these cards and it can be history of sports and it can also be history of the hobby i think we as collectors and content creators have a very important role to preserve the history of the hobby as it continues to move forward i have spoken out about that especially when documenting kind of the panini era in this run we're on i don't want us to just brush over it i think we are in an era of content we are in an era of documentation and so i'm going to try to play my role in that process there is deep connection that help explain why it can feel strange or uncomfortable to part with cards and over time we always value what we own and what our possessions are more than the market does i mean think about the time where you've sent a card up for auction and you earmarked okay this card is gonna sell for four hundred dollars and it ends up selling for two hundred fifty dollars that's probably because you as a collector appreciated that more and i continue to bring this up but it's the endowment effect which it means we often irrationally hold items that we own i think as i dig into this i've began to understand that owning an asset makes us overvalue it and loss aversion makes selling feel painful people become strongly susceptible to holding cards longer than they should but in a lot of instances from a collector point of view we don't think about the money once we have it because the card itself plays such a pivotal role in that collection we're building i mean we heard from josh adams last week who made mention like i don't really worry about the the value and the price after i own a card because i own the card now and i thought that was really interesting and telling and it was a very good illustration of how collectors think about cards and how they think about cards in in at when when you pair it with money i think it's really important to set intentions upfront you know before buying decide what role this card will play in your collection will it be a long term anchor or will it just be a piece that you're unsure of because it looked cool at the time or maybe you saw a deal i think by assigning a purpose immediately before you buy the card it can help avoid confusion later having clear strategies and having potential exit plans make this process easier i have as before i'm making a purchase because the purchases that i'm making feels like more and more than ever before are continuing to increase in price and i'm feeling more comfortable in that so as i feel more comfortable spending more money in the hobby i have to begin to create a system in place for the cards that i buy to make sure that i don't make mistakes and regret spending a lot of money on a card so simply for me i put cards that i'm buying in three different buckets this or these are the three types of examples that like come to my mind long term keeps these are like the cornerstones of my collection these these are cards that attach back to a broader collection that i have these are the cards that i'm willing to be patient with i want to keep for the long term these are the cards that even are are the most expensive probably in my collection and i have the most confidence not only in the card in that moment but future value and they also are the cards that like i'm i i have to be patient with because they're likely cards other people want i'm likely willing to consider offers on those but they're cards that i try not to let those offers interfere with the long term nature of those cards in my collection there's cards that you know i enjoy and i see them they're cards that i love in the moment maybe cards i haven't seen in a while fun opportunities parallels they can be sentimental they cannot be but i appreciate them in the moment they are cards where i see the listing and i decide you know what like this seems like a a good value play i love i like this card this seems like good value let's see what happens and then there's other cards which this is happens less but maybe flip or trade prospects where some cards that i'll buy don't necessarily fit directly into my pc or maybe are duplicates of cards in my pc but i pick them up for the the value maybe i think that they're cheap and in the heat of a bull market it's really tempting to flip anything to for quick gains or flip anything that's going to help us get to that next card that we want that we don't even know about that hasn't popped up yet so the classification of the card that i'm about to buy into one of these buckets before i buy it is very very helpful and they help me answer the question should i sell if the opportunity presents itself and so i think that for me there are this episode's about holding it's not about selling but inevitably selling is a part of the process so i don't think although hats off to you if you're one of these collectors who just never sells and just continues to amass and accumulate like for me that's not realistic like it's not realistic for me to just continue to bring on more without selling so if i have to sell a card i want to make sure i'm understanding the reason why and so there's three things that i look at when i have to make a decision the the first is the easiest and they're the most glaring but it's like it's a bad fit the card no longer matches the collection or theme or the preferences in my collection maybe i once chased a player or a type of card or set but it just didn't go anywhere and so those cards are easy to get rid of right because they don't align with the north star they don't align with the collection that i'm building and so whenever there's a moment or someone wants those cards on it's easy to get rid of them because they're not a fit and you could have bought those cards you could have bought those cards and they could have been a fit at the time but based on the way your collection has evolved they're no longer a fit and that's something we should all understand as collectors another instance the offer you can't refuse this is something that happens more and more as you continue to be in the hobby and as you continue to move up the ladder like you are going to you are going to buy cards that naturally increase in value you are going to buy cards that are typically more expensive than you bought them for and so when you get an offer you can't refuse i think it's something that you need to recognize right the market lines up with some jaw dropping price if a card suddenly commands a huge premium perhaps due to a player performance or the card itself going nuts then it's time to sell because you can go then put that money into another card and i think that's important and this has happened to me this happened to me last year with some peyton manning cards the twenty ten and twenty eleven mosaic finest refractors out of ten they're gorgeous cards i've i talk about the mosaics on the football card podcast and how good they look but i got approached by a collector and the offer on both those cards was an offer that i couldn't refuse and those are the moments where you know okay it's time to move on there's also consolidation which is probably the most common but sometimes you amass a bunch of cards in your collection or a card or two to go get another card that's available and i think consolidation is naturally a part of the hobby workflow and it's becoming even more popular but i think about the an instance of consolidation so consolidation i let go of a card that i didn't think i'd let go of and was the longest standing card in my collection at the time and that was the two thousand and two finest x factor peyton manning out of twenty that card i had no intention of selling and i love that card but the twenty twelve reggie wayne black finite came up and i love the reggie wayne black finite way more than the peyton manning so in order to cover the cost of that card i had to get rid of a big card and so that was an example of that now none of the reasons contradict the idea of holding they simply they are simply part of a considered strategy i think by contrast selling for no good reason certainly leads to regrets this is something that's happened to me quite some time i think with all of the movement right now in the hobby with flips upgrades auctions every ending every night the culture of this space we are collecting in rewards velocity it rewards action it rewards the next move and i think if you're not careful you start to believe that movement equals pro progress but we gotta continue to remind ourselves like we're here because of the cards not because of the transactions i had someone in a private conversation last year in person we were talking about cards philosophy and everything and he said to me do whatever you can to hold your cards that's why we're here and it wasn't a command it wasn't anti selling it was just a reminder it was a reminder that the foundation of this hobby is attachment not arbitrage i think this arbitrage angle that gets promoted and where people are going through all this work to make fifty bucks here or there which more power to you i'm forty years old and i've got three kids and i'm on the microphone all day every day and i'm trying to build a business like i don't give a shit about fifty dollars here and there like i don't have the time or energy to go through that i don't care about the arbitrage i don't care like my audience here not everyone but my audience here like core of you all like you're busy professionals your parents your your your lovers of cards like i don't think you care too much about the arbitrage i think you care more about the cards or at least the feedback i get from you i think research supports this most people don't collect primarily for financial return they collect because it connects to memory identity and story and a card often represents who you were when you fell in love with that player and i think collecting provides so many ancillary benefits where it's relaxing dude i love going through my case of cards and putting all the cards on the floor it gives me a sense of purpose and i think that matters i think because we're talking about holding we can we're not and we're not talking about being stubborn we're talking about meaning there's a psychological element to this and we need to consider ownership and how ownership increases the way we look at cards i think there's a tension with this and the tension is something important that we should identify where holding can be powerful but holding without intention can be irrational and selling without intention can certainly be destructive and the like i mentioned this but the goal is not to never sell the goal is to build alignment and i'm on this hunt for alignment all the time i'm on this hunt to evolve define my collection set my own rules be able to be in the position when that card pops up that is the perfect fit for my collection i don't even blink i just take action and what i've learned through this is refinement increases conviction and conviction increases my own personal holding power when you don't know what your collection stand for stands for you sell under pressure when you know you hold calmly i'll explain how i think about selling now because i do sell and i shared those reasons bad fit big offer consolidation outside of those reasons based on why i'm here what i'm doing feedback i've gotten from other collectors i'm really not trying to move my key cards this year now i can't say it's not gonna happen because i can't predict the environment and the situations that are at play in my personal life or in the card market and cards that present in present itself but i'm trying to do whatever i can to be mindful of holding cards and be mindful of not giving up cards that i truly love think our long term holds are our anchors these are the cards that define our collection if the market shut down for five years these are the cards that we would all be proud to still own these are the cards that tell the story and they accumulate this narrative weight those are the cards that are our core and we should all make sure that we're evaluating what those cards are in our collection there is the topic of one of ones too because we're in an interesting time scarcity is more complicated than it used to be there are more one of ones than ever not every one of one is sacred manufactured hype doesn't equal long term personal significance a one of one only deserve a long time hold status if it layers into the significance player era set personal connection and i think we are in such an interesting time where we're having to make these decisions we're having to consider some of our cases might be just one of ones but we still need to but another card presents and we have to make a decision what stays or what goes i think the grounding exercise that i use and i want maybe you to sit with is if the market shut down tomorrow and didn't reopen for five years which cards in your collection would you still feel proud to own that question i think is really important the answer will reveal your real collection everything else is flexible we're not gotta remember we're not here for the velocity we're here for the connection we're here because these cards preserve something moments fade players retire seasons end but when the dust settles the cards are what remain i think holding the right cards over time doesn't just preserve value it compounds identity it shapes your own reputation as a collector it tells your story without you having to explain it buy with intention we can assign status at entry sell with discipline hold with conviction and that's not anti market again it's alignment and i am on a hunt to continue to find alignment and alignment is what protects meaning in a hobby that rewards so much damn noise appreciate you supporting stacking slabs network we're here we're sharing content we're doing whatever we can to continue to evolve to speak and communicate to you the collector that would rather have the cards in your case than the cash in your pockets i'm brett this is stacking slabs take care we'll talk to you soon