what's going on everybody welcome back to stacking slabs remember this is your hobby content alternative excited for you to be here appreciate all the support if you're not already hit the follow button tell a damn friend run on over to patreon group do all the things that we do each week there's so many options there's a lot of content across the digital landscape and i do appreciate you spending some time here with me today and this is an open slot had an opening pop up and i thought to myself you know what i gotta keep this streak running of putting out shows each and every day on the stacking slabs network it has been a fun build in twenty twenty six we've been dedicated to making sure we have collector and operator content coming at you every day of the week and when this opportunity popped up i thought to myself man what could we dig into and the thought hit me like a ton of bricks because the catalyst was something that i experienced last week with my own collection and as i got down the rabbit hole i thought you know what i think this could be an entire episode and let's just get into it and what we're gonna be talking about today is something that doesn't get talked about enough and that is spending time with your cards pack and myself joked last week on the football card podcast how we have ten fifteen minutes in between meetings and sometimes instead of doom scrolling on your favorite social app the better use of time can be spending that time with your collection that's something i've been doing and after that episode i made sure i spent some time with my cards and i think it's a good place to start this conversation because it reminded me of something that i don't think we spend enough time talking about in the hobby i walked upstairs looked at my case opened my cards and i just was thumbing through and i so happened to pull out my twenty twelve andrew luck prism pylon one of one rookie card for those of you who aren't familiar with this card it's from the first year of prism football it's the orange pylon parallel panini created back in twenty twelve that has an interesting history they never did it again panini didn't put them into packs they created three hundred pylon one of ones and sold them through individual auctions on the panini authentic website in the spring of twenty thirteen ten cards a day thirty days of auctions it's a parallel that has its own history within one of the most important football card products of this era and i've got the luck and i gotta shout out my man gunther at gunther's cards i tagged him in a little social post thanking the magical man for finding this card for me i would not have been able to have this card in my collection without gunther and i think another thought that came to my mind was the fact that gunther came to me with this card because i post andrew luck cards and he knows i luck in like andrew luck so it gave me that app at which was great this card is luck's from his rookie year he is one of my favorite athletes of all time a player who means an enormous amount to me as a colts fan and there are so many things about this card that connect with what i love about collecting but last week i pulled it out of the case and decided to take a little stroll outside you ever do that i do it all the time if you follow my instagram at stacking slabs you'll often see cards posted from the outdoors i wanted to see what it looked like in sunlight again it had been a while and i'm telling you man when the sun hits this card something happened the way the orange reflected the light the way the surface looked all the details that make this card what it is it sent fireworks off in my brain i sat there looking at this thing and i fell in love with it all over again and here's what i think is interesting i already owned the card i wasn't getting a package in the mail i wasn't opening a box i wasn't negotiating with somebody i wasn't searching for a deal i wasn't looking at an auction i was spending time with a card that was already mine and i got an enormous amount of enjoyment out of that experience i didn't have to buy anything nothing about the card had changed i had changed the way i was looking at it and i started thinking about how many experiences like that are available to us collectors how many times can we fall in love with a card that we already own how much do we really understand about the cards sitting in our collections and what would happen if we gave those cards more of our attention because i think there's something worth exploring here and this is why i'm doing the episode we spend an incredible amount of time thinking about the cards we don't have but how much time do we spend with the cards that we do have that's what i wanna talk about today when pac and i were joking about the fifteen or twenty minutes in between meetings a day we started joking about what we do at that time one of the things that came up was getting your cards out taking them out of whatever box or vault or case or whatever you have and putting them on the floor laying them on your bed sitting there looking at them nothing more complicated than that and we were laughing about it but the more i thought about it the more i realized how much i love that idea because this is something that you remember doing a lot when you're younger get your cards out get your binders out put them all over the floor you'd organize them look at the picture look at backs oh i even had a notebook where i wrote down stats i don't know if anyone else did that but you'd separate them by player or team you go through them sometimes looking at the same card over and over again there wasn't necessarily a reason for doing any of it we weren't preparing to sell them we weren't trying to determine value or maybe we had a beckett there where we were looking at values but it wasn't the reason why we were there we weren't necessarily doing research on our next purchase we were collecting and we were enjoying our cards and that's something i've been thinking about a lot as adults we've gotten really good at participating in parts of the hobby that lead to something we research cards because we're trying to buy them we check sales because we're trying to understand value we negotiate deals we track auctions shake trees looking for opportunities share our mail days we participate in conversations about what's happening in the market and i love all of that those are important parts of the experience but somewhere along the way i think it's easy to overlook the experience of owning the cards think about what happens when you buy something you've been working towards you might spend weeks researching talking to the seller thinking about the price where the card fits in your collection and then you finally get the deal done you wait for it to arrive you follow the tracking the package shows up at your house you sign for it you open it you look at the card you might take a picture you might share it with a few friends and then what happens for a lot of us the card gets put away and our attention moves to something else the next card and there's nothing wrong with wanting more cards i want more cards i have cards i'm working towards right now but i think there's a question that's worth asking did we give ourselves enough time to enjoy the card we spent so much time trying to acquire did we ever really get to know it or did we move on before the relationship had a chance to develop because i think there's an entire part of collecting that begins after the mail day and i think it's one of the best parts one of the things i've learned as i've spent more years in the hobby is the relationship with the card isn't fixed it changes there are cards i've owned that i appreciated much more after having them for a while there are cards that didn't fully register with me until i went back and spend time with them and there are cards that i thought i would love forever but over time my feelings changed that's part of collecting and it's something i think we as collectors should embrace there's a concept in psychology called savoring it's this idea of deliberately paying attention to something positive so that you can fully appreciate the experience and when i came across the concept i kept thinking about collecting because we have so many opportunities to do this we have these physical objects that mean something to us things we chose things we work to acquire things that connect us back to athletes teams memories different points of our lives and we have the ability to return to them whenever we want think about that for a second you have an incredible experience with a card on the day it arrives and six months later you can pull that same card out and have another incredible experience i just did that with my luck two years later you might notice something about it that you've never noticed before five years later it might mean something entirely different to you the card hasn't necessarily changed but your life has your understanding of the hobby has your appreciation for the player has your taste in cards has and all of those things influence what happens when you sit down and spend time with it that's one of the things i love about the luck card when i bought it i had a set of reasons for wanting it understood the player understood the product understood the significance of the parallel but spending time with it has given me an appreciation that goes beyond any of those individual things it's become more personal i know how i feel when i look at it and that feeling matters to me you know we spend a lot of time in this hobby talking about value market value historical value relative value and there's a place for all of those conversations but there's another type of value that becomes more apparent when you spend time with something it's the personal enjoyment you get from owning it nobody has to validate that no sales history can determine it and it's not something you can fully understand by looking at a picture on your phone you have to experience it you have to give the card some time something else happens when you spend time looking through your cards you begin to understand your own history as a collector and i've been thinking about this quite a bit because my collecting has changed so much over the years specifically this year started as a player collector there were individual athletes i was drawn to in one of their cards then i found myself moving towards team collecting i wanted to collect cards that represented my relationship with the teams i cared about and now i'm moving back towards player collecting in a lot of ways it's not fully formed yet but i can feel the movement happening i'm more focused on individual athletes in the cards that mean the most to me and i don't view any of those changes as a mistake i think they're part of the process the more time you spend in this hobby the more you learn about yourself your your interests develop your tastes change you learn about products you didn't know existed you experience different types of collecting you buy things you sell things you make decisions that you feel great about and you make decisions you look back on and question that's how you develop as a collector and here's what i think is most important when you take your collection out and look at it you get to see all of those different versions of yourself i can look at a card and understand why i wanted it at a particular point in my life and i can recognize that a person who bought that card was thinking about collecting it differently than i am today and that doesn't mean that the card no longer has a place in my collection sometimes it means the exact opposite sometimes a card becomes more meaningful because it represents a different period of your own collecting life you remember your interest you remember the people you're talking about you remember the excitement of learning just think about your last five years in the hobby think about all the people you interacted with five years ago think about your collection five years ago and think about what is happening in your collection now sometimes you recognize that your taste will move on you realize that a certain type of card doesn't interest you that the way it once did or that the player you're collecting doesn't resonate anymore or that you have more examples of something that you'd want to own and all of this is very useful information but i don't think we always give ourself the chance to learn it because understand how you've changed you have to spend time with the things you chose before that's what makes collecting interesting to me we're not the same people we were when we bought every card in our collection and we shouldn't expect to be i don't wanna feel obligated to collect something today because that's how i collected five years ago i want to be honest about where i'm at right now and spending time with my cards helps me understand that now i wanna get to something that's a little harder to explain and i'm interested to hear whether other collectors have experienced this because this is a feeling i have when i'm spending time with certain cards in my collection i pull out a card i hold it i look at it and i get this feeling deep down in my stomach it's difficult to describe but i know when it happens it's the sense that the card belongs with me this is my card not because of the name attached to it not because of the price i paid for it not because i have the right to sell it or trade it but because i have a connection with it that feels different i look at it and think about the years ahead i think about the role the card is going to have in my collection for the foreseeable future and i have absolutely no desire to move on from it there isn't another card i'm thinking about getting in its place it's like part of this group within the collection that's almost untouchable i'm not wondering what somebody would pay me for it i am happy to own it and that's the feeling i had with the luck pylon and i'll tell you something else not every card in my collection gives me that feeling i want to be clear about that i think it's very hard to get that find that feeling i own cards i like own cards that i appreciate respect for their significance but they don't all give me that feeling and that is okay in fact i think recognizing the difference is one of the most important things i've learned about myself as a collector because what i'm aspiring to do is find more of the cards that give me that feeling not necessarily more cards overall more cards that i have a connection with and the only way i've learned how to recognize that feeling is through experience it took collecting a lot of different things it took buying cards that i thought were important to me it took owning cards that i realized i didn't feel that way i expected to feel and it took spending time with cards that became more meaningful than i anticipated i don't think there's a shortcut to any of that this whole collecting landscape is quick hits overnight do it fast that's not how collecting works it takes time gotta have patience you can't know everything about your relationship with the card before it arrives you can do all the research you want you can understand the player all this stuff but there's still something you learn through ownership and i think that's what makes it so personal two collectors can own different copies of the same card they can understand all the same information and they can have two entirely different relationships with it one person might think it's a card they love the other person might say you know what this isn't for me and neither of them are wrong we don't have to feel the same way about the same things and i think that's the beauty of collecting i also think we need to be careful about putting pressure on ourselves to feel that way about every card not every card is a forever card some cards can just be there for a moment in time but when you find one of those cards that feels like it's going to be with you for a long time i think that's worth recognizing because that's a special feeling and the more often i experience it the more i understand what i want out of this hobby another benefit of spending time with their collection is that it creates an opportunity to learn and that is something that i think gets overlooked when we tend to associate research with acquiring cards we research what we buy we study checklists look at product history sales compare different cards but why should the research stop when we own the card why shouldn't we continue learning about the things we already have take the andrew luck pylon one of one for example there's the visual appeal of the card and then there's the story behind it first year prism luck was a rookie panini created this special one of one parallel that was distributed through a separate auction program that's interesting to me because now when i look at the card i'm not only thinking about luck i'm thinking about that period football cards i'm thinking about what prism was at that time i'm thinking about what panini was trying to do with this product i'm thinking about the fact that these pylon cards had a different path into collector's hands and every time i learn something about that history i have another reason to appreciate the card and this can happen with any type of collection you might pull out a card and start researching who took the image of the card you might learn about a particular set and why collectors were drawn to it when it came out or you might learn something from another collector who had spent more years in front of you studying the product and here's something i find interesting a card that you've owned for years can become the starting point for an entirely new collecting interest you learn about the product you become interested in how it was produced you start studying other cards you learn about the history and suddenly that card means more to you because you understand it better there's something satisfying about that you are continuing to develop as a collector without having to acquire anything your collection is giving you new things to learn and i think that changes the way we look at research research doesn't always have to end with the purchase sometimes research should end with a greater appreciation for something that we already have there's another part of this conversation that means a lot to me and that's a relationship between our cards and our memories because i don't think we collect those things in isolation from the rest of our lives our cards are connected to the experiences they become connected to people they become connected to certain periods of our lives and sometimes we don't realize how meaningful those connections are until we spend time with the cards think about a card in your collection that reminds you of being a kid maybe it's not even an expensive card maybe it's a player you watch with your dad maybe it's a card that from a set that you remember opening when you were younger maybe it's something you bought at your first card show or a friend gave to you those things matter and they matter in ways that had very little to do with what the card is worth for me i think about my relationship with the colts and the pacers the notre dame and the fever i have so many memories tied to those teams and the athletes that played for them and when i look at certain cards those memories come back to me i'm not only looking at the player i'm thinking about how i experienced the player's career i'm thinking about what it felt like to be a fan at that particular time that's part of what makes a card personal and as we get older i think some of the connections become more meaningful because we're gaining perspective on our own lives we're understanding how much certain experiences mean to us and sometimes those experiences are connected to the cards we've chosen to keep there's research around how people use possessions to preserve and revisit memories and i think collectors understand this without needing someone to explain it to them we've all had that moment when we look at something and it takes us back to a specific time you remember where you were you remember who you're with you remember how you felt that's one of the reasons i believe cards can become more meaningful over time because the value of those memories can grow and the card gives you a reason to revisit them i also think cards will be part of our lives moving forward the cards we own today the ones sitting in our collections right now what are those cards going to mean to us in ten years will they be there what we remember during the period we acquired them who are we talking with what was happening in our lives we don't have answers to those questions yet and that's okay i think a lot about my return to the hobby i needed to fill a void i had a lot going on in my life that wasn't great and i jumped into cards and i can remember all of those memories of jumping in and the cards i got and the way they make me feel now part of what makes collecting meaningful is that we continue to develop relationships with these objects over time we add experiences we add memory we add knowledge and sometimes those cards that mean the most to us are the ones we've spent the most time living with now gotta address the other side of this because i don't want this episode to make it sound like every time you sit down with your collection you're going to fall in love with everything all over again that's not how it works sometimes spending time with your cards is going to lead to a realization that you don't expect you're going to pull something out you're gonna look at it you're going to wonder why you still own it and i think that's important too i spend a lot of time consolidating my collection i'm gonna say this consolidation is not for everyone it is for me based on the evolution that i'm taking as a collector and my own financial situation there are collectors who love having large collections you're out there listening and i support that there are collectors who want complete sets you're out there i support that some of you like to build rainbows i get it there are collectors who have thousands of cards that all serve a purpose in a way they collect and i love that what i am talking about is learning what works for you and in my experience spending time with my cards has helped me understand what i value sometimes i'll pull out a card and realize that i don't feel the same way about it anymore i still respect the card i might still think it's a great example of a particular player but i don't have the same connection to it and that forces me to think why did i just buy this what interests me about it what has changed was it i was more interested in the opportunity to own it than i'm owning it today or was it something else i think we get ourselves into trouble when we feel like every realization has to lead to action you look at a card you're not feeling it and suddenly you think you need to sell it i don't think that's necessary sometimes you need more time sometimes you need to learn more and sometimes you need to revisit it in six months sometimes you come to the realization that you're ready for the card to become part of someone else's collection but the point is that you're learning you're becoming more aware of your own preferences and you're giving yourself an opportunity to be honest about what you enjoy and i think this is where the feeling i described earlier becomes important that feeling deep down in my stomach when i look at a card and know that it belongs with me i want to understand what creates that feeling is it the player is it the team design product the history is it the fact that i worked years to acquire it or is it a combination of all those things and the more time i spend with my cards the more i begin to recognize those patterns i noticed the types of cards i keep returning to i noticed which ones i want to have out where i can see them i noticed which cards i enjoy talking about and i noticed which cards i think about very often none of those observations has led to an immediate decision but together they teach me something about the collector i'm becoming and i find that valuable there's another thought i wanna bring to this conversation and it has to do with the relationship between collecting and being a part of the online community because so much of our collecting experience now takes place in public we share what we buy what we sell what we're chasing our opinions we have conversations with people all over the world and i think that's one of the great things about the current state of the hobby some of the relationships i've developed through collecting mean an enormous amount to me and i love the fact that i can connect with people who understand why particular cards matter but i also think there's something to be said for the experiences that don't involve anybody else think about the moment i described the andrew luck pylon i wasn't doing that for content although i did take a picture i put it on my instagram because the experience was so strong for me that i wanted to share with other people i wasn't thinking about how the card would be received online i just wanted to look at it and enjoy it i wanted to experience what it meant to me and that was enough because when we spend so much time participating on the public side of collecting we can begin to confuse other people's appreciation for our own card have gets a lot of attention people love it they talk about how important it is and that attention can influence how we feel and that's normal i think that's part of being a human but when you're sitting by yourself looking at your cards there's nobody else there to influence that experience you get to decide how you feel you get to spend time with something without having to explain why it matters we need experiences in the hobby that are entirely our own experiences that help us remember why we're there as collectors something i've come to appreciate is that collecting isn't only about the decisions we make it's also about the attention we give to those things we own and i think those are two different skills you can become an experienced buyer you can understand markets you can understand rarity you can be a master at negotiation you can have great relationships and all of those are valuable but none of them automatically means you have a deep understanding of your own collection that requires a different kind of attention it requires spending time with your cards when you're not trying to accomplish anything and i think that experience helps us develop something that's difficult to measure our own taste our own sense of what belongs our own understanding of what we value as individual collectors and i think about how many cards i've had to own to understand what i want today how many different approaches i've tried how many cards i've appreciated for a period of time and then moved on from and i wouldn't want to eliminate any of those experiences because they taught me something they helped me understand what i love and i'm still learning there's something important about that i don't think there's a point when we graduate as collectors and know everything about what we want i think the opportunity to continue to learn is part of what makes this hobby so enjoyable so i wanna bring it back to the conversation that we were having last week on the football card podcast finding those extra fifteen or twenty minutes because i think there's something we can all take away from this and i'm including myself in this i wanna spend more time with my cards not looking them on my phone not looking at pictures as inventory not checking values i want to physically get them out and spend time with them have your own little card show imagine people are walking in and you get to show your cards off think it's a funny topic and i'm not gonna get into it too deep but it's always funny and we've joked about this but just imagining that at some point you have all these cards and you're someone's gonna walk into your house and you get to go kinda tell stories about these cards and explain it it's like the preparation for that moment i think is really fun to consider and really fun to think about i think it's important to spend time with your cards hell i've done a whole episode on it right now and i feel stronger right now about it than i did before but i wanna finish where we started with that andrew luck pylon because i keep coming back to the experience i had with that card last week walked over to my case pulled it out took it outside spent some time looking at it and that's it i didn't do anything that required money i didn't add anything to my collection i didn't need to find something new and yet i came away from that experience feeling better about that card in my collection and i felt more connected to the card and i understood another reason why it meant so much to me and i feel grateful for that experience and i want more of those experiences i'm chasing that i want to have cards in my collection that i keep coming back to and i know that's not gonna happen with every card i know my tastes are gonna continue to change and i know i'm going to learn things about my collection that caused me to look at certain cards differently and that's part of the process but i think the more time i spend with my collection the better i understand what i'm looking for and the more i appreciate those cards that are already there i think we spend so much time talking about what we're going to collect next that we forget to talk about what it's like to live with the things we've collected and there's an entire world of experiences available to us enjoyment curiosity learning nostalgia there's a better understanding of our own taste and there's the opportunity to feel the connection to those things that matter to us so spend some time with your cards it can be fifteen minutes just spend some time i promise you you'll learn something new and hopefully you pull out a card or two or maybe ten that give you that feeling deep inside your stomach it's a good feeling i'm chasing that i hope you'll give yourself the opportunity to do that this week because i think there's more enjoyment sitting in our collections than we realize at least that's what i'm realizing as i go through this wacky world of collecting appreciate you listening to stacking slabs your hobby content alternative we've got shows going out each and every day if you do me a favor if you like this episode make sure you're following this feed and share this out tag stacking slabs i appreciate the support tell a damn friend happy collecting talk to you soon