What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Stacking Slabs.

This is your hobby content alternative. I am your host, Brett. We're nearing the holiday season. We're here. Snow on the ground. It's freezing outside in most parts of the country, and 'tis the season to talk about sports cards.

You know, I had a memory of searching for presents when I was a little kid, and I vividly remember finding Grant Hill's rookie refractor from Finest tucked away in my parents' closet.

And I remember acting like I was supposed to act surprised when it came, but I knew that it was coming. And I always felt so guilty that I discovered this present, a Grand Hill refractor rookie at that.

And maybe we'll call it therapeutic, but this is an opportunity for me to get some of that guilt off the chest, off my chest. You know, I wish I still had that copy to, remind me of that time, but we've moved on.

And, hopefully, you all have some of your children out there, maybe when you're listening to Stacking Slabs, searching for those presents in your house, and perhaps they'll stumble across their version of that and tell it on a podcast decades later.

Excited to be here. We're going to talk about why spending time with your cards matters. I'm fired up for this episode.

This is something that I've wanted to dedicate a full length episode to for a while. I've got a lot of thoughts, and we're gonna get into it. But first, gotta thank my good friends at Inferno Red Technology.

Inferno Red Technology is the sponsor of the flagship episode of Stacking Slides, and they're 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 start ups 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 infernored. com.

Great partners. Great people. If you got some tech things happening and you're in this industry, give them a shout. They do awesome work. So I have been thinking about this topic for a while, and it's come up in episodes here and there.

There isn't another hobby on the planet where people spend more money on something they spend less time with than on sports cards. It's wild when you say it out loud. We buy these things, these cards.

We love them. We chase them. Think about all the blood, sweat, and tears that goes into the chase. We talk about them, and I talk about them for a living, but we talk about them. We watch and listen to content about it.

It's what you're doing here. We track auctions, comps, buy it now, purchases across the hobby every day. Most of us barely spend any time with the actual cards that we already own, and that might be an absolute statement.

But I just think the way the hobby is organized and the way collecting is organized right now, it's not focused around the cards in our hands in building out this collection and spending time.

These cards sit in boxes. They sit in slabs. They sit in vaults across the country, and some of them haven't even been touched or looked at since the day they showed up in the mail, or maybe they never showed up at all.

They just showed up at the vault. Think about that. We care about these cards enough to spend our hard earned money on them, and we fight for them in auctions, and we do whatever we can to win, and we consume our minds with these cards.

We negotiate for them in DMs. We plan our budgets around them, and we never see them again. What other hobby looks like that? Come on. Are we weirdos? You don't see golfers buying clubs, leaving them in storage units.

You don't see musicians buying guitars to never pick them up or play them. You don't see sneakerheads locking away every pair without ever wearing them or comic book collectors not flipping a page.

Yes. In cards, it's just normal. In cards, we accept this idea that ownership is enough, that holding the asset is what matters, that if the card is safe, graded, vaulted, insured, then we've accomplished something.

But the truth of the matter is, and this has hit me, the more time I've spent with my collection is that you miss the entire point of collecting when you don't spend time with your cards. The utility value isn't in the sale price.

It's not in the pop report. It's not in the market chart. It's in the moment you sit down, you open the case, and you reconnect with what you have built. Because when you spend time with your cards, everything changes.

You see the what lights you up, what no longer fits, connections you never noticed. You see the work that you've already done. You begin to see yourself in your collection.

That's the heartbeat of this episode. Slowing down, blocking out the noise, getting back to the simple act of being with your cards. Because if you don't spend time with your collection, you never get the value that matters most.

And as we enter this turn of the clock or heading into the new year, I think it's a shift then if you're needing to be reinvigorated that many of us need.

So I had this moment more recently, and it was a Saturday night. Kids were down. And I sat on my couch, and I just took out my cases.

And I I don't know what inspired it. I just part of the reason why I like subbing my own cards and grading my own cards is because it gives me the opportunity to, you know, enjoy the utility value of the cards.

But this wasn't one of those times. It was just like I felt inspired. It was like, let me go get this collection, and it was incredible. And I so much enjoyed it.

And my normal living room, which I spend my evenings in kinda decompressing from the day, it transformed from this normal living room that I try to turn my brain off and watch TV or mess around on my phone to this, like, explorer's den, and I spread them all out on the floor and started connecting players and sets and teams and, like, it was a moment where I just felt excited.

Fireworks started to go off in my brain. The patterns and connections emerged. Started to understand what I really was missing and what I really wanted to prioritize.

Studies show that when collectors immerse themselves in their collections like this, they enter this flow state. It's a deep focus, stress melts away, and we're focused on one task at hand.

In other words, it was like taking a break, a mental vacation. The stress went down, and I felt happy. I felt like a kid. That thing, that piece of cardboard was lighting me up.

That night I spent with my cards on the floor reminded me of being a kid in my bedroom. I rediscovered a crucial truth that our cards aren't just investments. They're vessels of excitement and reflection.

Just as walking in a quiet park can wash away tension, stress, handling familiar cards can diminish stress. We lose ourselves in this activity when we get immersed in looking at stuff that we appreciate, admire, and love.

I'm someone who is constantly thinking about things that already happened and constantly looking ahead, and I'm trying to get more focused around being present.

And I will tell you all of this. If you struggle and you're trying to figure out how to get more focused and how to be more in the moment, spend time with cards, man. It is the ultimate escape.

Spending time with your collection is an idol. It's therapeutic. It can reduce stress and help you ground yourself. It's easy to forget the peaceful side of collecting. Everywhere you turn, the hobby is framed up as a marketplace.

When I tell people that I work in sports cards, their eyes light up, and all they wanna talk about is the million dollar sales that they see on the news or in the mainstream. So these cards, how much are they worth?

Any of you who have had conversations with friends or family members who know you're into cards ask the same questions. It's we're used to it. It's integrated in TV, social media, big auctions, price tickers dominate.

You've got the monster sales. You've got so much of that. It always starts with the money. All those things are great, but I never wanna get lost in the shuffle. Or what I don't wanna get lost in the shuffle is why we're here.

In a bull market, it's tempting to treat cards purely as assets, stashing them away in vaults and cataloging them for a profit. But that mindset makes it easy to skip the fun part, actually enjoying the process of collecting.

When we are constantly worrying about what it's worth or who will buy it, we miss the simple joy of discovery. In our rush to the next transaction, we lose sight of the moments that make collecting meaningful.

So as a studier of human behavior, as a studier of psychology, I always try to dig into themes, topics, and try to figure out how do we blend these worlds of psychology and collecting.

And in this instant on instance, understand the emotional benefits of spending time with our cards.

We've talked about stress and relief. I know the typical profile of the individual who listens to my podcast, and I know that a lot of you, not all, but a lot of you are busy professionals.

A lot of you have kids, a lot of priorities in place. Your time is consumed, and that's why I'm always so grateful that you spend time here listening to Sacking Styles.

But I know you deal with stress, and handling your cards can be surprisingly meditative. The focused attention required to examine and organize your cards creates that flow state that so many of us are after.

It is a blocker from anxiety. And in this state, people with experience, because you're spending time with something you love, lower stress, and it's that mental vacation, that escape. It helps us be where we want to be.

Beyond the stress, spending time with your cards hones concentration. Carefully inspecting a card's details, and there are so many details about cards. And I might do an episode on details. I think about this a lot.

Think about all the attributes. Think about all the details. But anyways, I'll sidetrack there if I do spend too much time talking about it. Inspecting a card's details or deciding where it fits in your collection keeps you present.

It's similarly similar to a mental or, yeah, a mental exercise we might go through where we're fully engaged with the sight, feel, or story of card.

This break in the mental chatter can refresh your thinking and give you energy to tackle other tasks.

Collections are scrapbooks of our lives. We've talked about the nostalgia, and many of us have collected as kids. And to be in anything, whether it's a movie, a mute music, whatever it is, I see Home Alone around the holidays.

I wanna hit wonder from the nineties on the radio. It it brings me back into this simpler time in my life, this time that I feel excitement and joy, a time that escaped me so past. And during that time, I was collecting cards.

And so in my next chapter of collecting cards, it's nice to be back in that state of nostalgia. The next time I I do this, I might throw the boombox out on the floor and grab my case of CDs, get get crazy with it.

Collecting isn't passive either. I think we know that it stimulates our brain. We constantly compare details and recall facts and plan how to get the next piece.

Organizing our cards exercises our memory and decision making. There's this research loop of looking up prices, reading catalogs, strategizing about the hunts and all the things that go into our collecting experience.

We can think of the hobby that something that sharpens our mind, a puzzle or a chess game.

Over time, we as collectors often develop better skills to group things together and better budgeting habits, and so there's an evolution to the way we approach the hobby.

Every card that we add to our collection is a is a small victory.

Collectors chase goals. Right? We're finishing a team set. We're acquiring a rookie card. We're assembling a collection of past MVPs. Hitting these milestones makes us feel good.

It makes us feel satisfying. Psychologically, we are hitting our self efficacy. Each acquisition is proof that what we are doing and why we're here is paying off. Sorting out cards and spending time with my cards is very solitary.

But I think the collections that we're building can connect us to others. You've got card shows. You've got the online formats. You've got all of these things that drive the community factor.

We associate with other collectors who collect similar adjacent stuff to us. It gives us a sense of belonging or camaraderie, and I think that's special. Cards also help us remind remind us of our story.

The more time we spend with our cards, it reminds us of the different eras of life. Whatever phase you are collecting in, inevitably, cards can bring you back to those time. The hobby is fast. Things are moving quickly.

Stuff changes quickly. But I always find that spending cards, time with my card slows everything down. There's always something new to chase. Any opportunity I have to take a pause is an opportunity in this space that I'm going to.

We are in this right now culture, and it's stressful. But by pausing, you get an opportunity to enjoy what you already have, and to be patient, and to be appreciative of those roads that led you to the cards that are in your collection.

I think that's really important. The reflection can help guide our future collecting in a meaningful direction.

When you put your cards out on the floor and put them all together, you start to be able to pick up on themes and start to be able to pick up on players or parallels that stand out.

You might reorient goals that you thought you had or were set in stone.

And I know that when I went through this process, I began to understand not only where are the gaps in my collection, but identifying cards and looking at the cards and feeling a sense of joy and an excitement and pride of ownership.

I think we also shouldn't underestimate how much well-being is tied up in this hobby.

Collecting improves our mental health. And I think for me as a collector, that is something that I've observed in, something that I certainly enjoy. I I've heard collectors talk about how much better their life is because of collecting.

I couldn't agree. Before I got back into the hobby, my life was just not great. I just was not in a good state of mind, but collecting has been my compass to a better mental state of mind.

And I it would be without spending time with my cards, but spending time with my cards is like that drug that causes all the other problems to go away.

I think some tips just to embrace your collection is find time. What's a time when your kids are in bed or your kids aren't around or you don't have your priorities are are aren't really there and you're just free?

For me, it's those evenings when everyone's asleep. That's time where I wanna spend with my card. Put on some music, put on the TV, but let your cards be the source of entertainment.

Put your phone down. Just dig your cards. I think what comes of this too is you can begin to create challenges for yourself. And I I would recommend anybody do this.

It's like, if you haven't spent time with your cards for a while, before the end of the year, spend time with them. And I promise you, just by spending thirty minutes with your cards, you'll begin to set new goals for yourself.

Also, you'll find opportunities based on your collection of what you know that probably no one else knows because you have the cards, and where are there opportunities for you to share content on social to begin to educate.

I I think it's also cool, and if you wanna do this, this is what I'm planning on doing, is documenting.

The last time I spend my with my cards this year documenting some things I'm seeing and and look at it and see where it's at this time next year.

Also, it's okay to buy new cards, but I think we need to balance some of that with reflection.

And the best way to balance that time with reflection is spending time with your cards. The hobby's crazy. It's a whirlwind. It's only gonna continue to get crazier.

But our collections hold these intangible riches that no market chart can capture. The experiences, the joy, the calm, the meaning you get from being with your cards far outweigh anything else. It's new time.

It's a new year. It's an opportunity for a spark. So if you're looking for a gift for yourself, maybe a Grand Hill refractor from Finest Rookie. If you don't want a Grand Hill Finest refractor, maybe just spend some time with your card.

Reconnect with the, pleasures of the hobby while you're here. It's a great reminder, and it's got me motivated and it's got me excited about this space in more ways than I can describe. Thank you so much for listening to Stacking Slabs.

Make sure you hit the follow button wherever you're listening to get more stacking slab. Write a review. Tell a damn friend. Let's help spread awareness for collector focused content. Appreciate all you. We'll talk to you soon.