what's going on everybody welcome back to another flagship episode of stacking slabs your hobby content alternative i am your host brett excited to be here excited to share the topic of you don't have a collection you have a reflection in today's episode this is a fun one i just wanna let you all know how much fun i have exploring these topics on the flagship and most of the time it comes from questions that i'm asking myself and experiences that i'm having and i get the opportunity to slow down reflect on those experiences or questions and organize an episode that i can play back to you now this certainly the intention of this is to be helpful but there's a side effect where it almost becomes therapeutic for me in a way i tend to have a lot of questions running through my brain all the time it's probably good because i ask questions for a living these questions are constantly in motion and i'm constantly seeking answers to them i'm a very curious person and that curiosity has led me on a path to find answers around why we do the things that we do in the hobby why do we spend so much time energy and resources collecting sports cards now we can just show up and we can hit buy it now and get our cards and be on with it but it's much more i think there's such a deeper meaning and i feel a strong opportunity for me to continue to challenge myself continually ask myself these questions i don't wanna just show up i want to have some sort of understanding for why i'm doing the things i'm doing in this space in this space that we love in this space that we share together so in this episode i want to give you some sort of understanding from my end why i think it's not just a collection but it's a reflection of who we are as people and as collectors before we get into today's episode you know i have to shout out my good friends at inferno red technology they sponsor the flagship and they are the engineering team behind some of the biggest names in sports and collectibles like dc sports eighty seven commsi collectors and upper deck in 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 also shout out hobby jobs if you're not already signed up substack link is in the show notes it's free that is the side of stacking slabs where i'm exploring the industry building a business and sharing some cool jobs that i find along the way always hit the follow button tell a damn friend patreon group you know all those things alright plugs are out of the way we're getting into the episode so i spend a lot of my time digging through research reports trying to understand who in this world is talking about collecting and not just collecting sports cards but collecting as a mindset collecting as an idea collecting as a way of life like why are we doing these so i'm constantly seeking out new data new research new information and i came across a journal article that has five different studies and it's called seeking structure in collections a desire for control motivates engagement in collecting and it's put together by c clark cow mary brooks and martin ryman now when i saw this title i saw the word structure collection control i'm like this speaks to me talk to me this is going to be something that i'm going to enjoy consuming because i would consider myself someone who loves structure in my collection i would also consider myself someone who loves control in my collecting i talk about being the ceo of my pc i left my corporate job to have more control over my destiny and so control is something that i appreciate it gives me comfort so let's we'll start here and just to give you a backdrop on the context for which this conversation is coming from it's coming from this article in these studies and so the abstract here that i'll read to you is across six studies we provide converging and robust lab and field evidence that the fundamental human desire for control motivates consumer engagement in collecting defined as the act of acquiring items that belong to an existing collection this is because consumers who desire control seek structure which is created when interconnected components form a holistic entity a collection can provide such structure as it comprises related items that together create a whole set hence as consumers add items to a collection they are also manifesting structure indeed we demonstrate that desire for controls motivating effect on engagement diminishes when structure seeking is hindered or when the collection is far from completion this work contributes to an extent consumer research for identifying desire for control as a fundamental motivation of collecting behavior explaining when and why consumers work towards completing their collections and explicating the structure nature of collecting of practical relevance we provide implications for enhancement of consumer well-being the design positioning and communication of collectible products and the creation of policies regulating the collectibles market so this was published in december fourteenth of twenty twenty four you can seek it out i will try to remember to put a link in the show notes if you wanna get nerdy and dig into the content there and when i was putting this together and i used the word reflection i wanted to use it not just as a hot take but wanted to align it with decades of consumer psychology and social psychology research that treats possessions as identity signals and and an identity building tools and so by looking at articles like seeking structure and collections it helped me validate some of what i was thinking by understanding the research from academics who are way deeper in this than me i mean i'm just a guy who's got a podcast who loves to collect cards and who challenges preconceived notions these are deep thinkers researchers who are spending their livelihood not just producing articles like this but trying to make sure they have the evidence to back up their claims and what they say which is very opposite of what we get regularly coming from creators like me who just have something that excites them and wants to talk about it or maybe furthermore social media where everyone's just saying what they want or what they believe in at all times and we as participants take things at at face value so wanted to give that context and that backdrop as we dig into this topic that i think is certainly important to the way we think about building our collections and if you're looking for a reason to understand or asking yourself why do i need to understand this well i think a great way to frame it up is you are spending a lot of money on the cards in your collection and at minimum you should ask yourselves why am i doing this and so i will not be able to illuminate this for everyone listening and that's not the intention but the intention is to get you to begin to think deeply about what you're doing and tie it back to who you are as not only a collector but as person most collectors think that they're just building a collection and i think that's the story we tell ourselves because it comes off very clean it sounds intentional it sounds respectable but i think there's an uncomfortable version of this and that's you don't have a collection you have a reflection and it's a reflection of you a reflection of your risk tolerance a reflection of what you crave from other people a reflection of your patience or your lack of it a reflection of the kind of control you need in your life and if that feels a little too accurate then that's good i'm on the right track and that's where this episode is going to live because the truth is the don't just sit there they pour they perform a specific job for us i'm going to prove it using my own collection because if i keep this at just a surface level i think this episode will fall flat and i'm not interested in just car talk that evaporates the second you hit stop i want what is being brought to the table here to resonate deeply with you and that's my intention with with all these episodes but specifically with this one i want you as a collector to be thinking about this after this episode is done i'm not saying collecting is bad i'm a collector of collections i've been collecting my entire life but when you've been collecting your entire life different subjects different ways different arenas of collecting like you get to and when you i i i i quit everything in my life to go all in on collecting it's what i think about all the time and i think what i have to tell myself is that collecting is human i think people collect for a lot of different reasons and part of the disputes that we get on online is that someone says something negative based on what they see from someone else because the way they're collecting doesn't quite fit in the box that they think collecting should fit in and i think that's very important to understand that you know we all are here for different reasons some people collect for achievement some for belonging others for memories some for legacy some like the competition a lot of people like the money often it's multiple reasons all at once and there's the research in consumer psychology that says our possessions don't just represent what we bought but they represent who we are so if you're listening right now and you're just saying bro they're just cards dude i agree with you on the material it's ink on cardboard but psychologically it's identity and i want to give you the mirror and i'm going to start with myself here's something i know about me as a collector i'm willing to sacrifice almost anything for cards that fit the principles that i love and that north star is to connect back to my city i'm from indianapolis i've lived here my entire life i love indianapolis and so the reflection in my collection if you were to look at it and open it up and be like this guy's probably from indianapolis let's talk about it and i could spend all day and all night talking about why i love the city why i love the athletes who have entertained me in this city and what it means to me and why it motivates me i think it means for me that i'm not optimizing for max liquidity i'm not optimizing for what the market says is the right buy i'm optimizing for alignment because some cards make me feel like i'm carrying my story like i'm buying meaning not just inventory i'll give you an example here i've been having a whole lot of fun over the last few months buying tyrese halliburton cards that fit the profile of the type of cards that i love it is a good time for me as a tyrese halliburton fan to buy tyrese halliburton cards out of sight out of mind you just rewind the tape a year ago and halliburton was on the cusp of having one of the best clutch playoff runs in nba history four game winners in a playoff run is is insanity so that being a part of that moment having that figure represent my city is an indication of this is somebody you should collect so recently i just i got lucky like maybe you can say you can say what you want about the price the value this and that but i got lucky i checked my saved searches and the perfect card popped up a card that can pair with another card i have and it was the twenty four select tyrese halliburton black finite one of one you know how i feel about black finites you know they're not as available in the on the basketball side as they are on the football side there's something in so deeply engaging and motivating about the aesthetics the way they show up when i pull the finites out of my case fireworks go off in my brain so when i saw the halliburton twenty four select black finite premier level i should add i knew i needed to jump i think it was fifteen hundred buy buy it now make an offer i just smashed ben i said that sounds good to me that's a good price to me this is a card if i didn't get it i would lose my mind if i just showed up in my card ladder save searches on cards sold and so i one of my favorite features is to just tag on the psa grading to the card and just i bought the card a while ago tag down the grading it got shipped to psa well the card popped hopefully it should be to me by the time this episode goes live but i was sitting a couple friday nights ago and got the email did the whole reveal and saw that i got a psa ten on this card so there was added bonus points the card cost me money there's trade offs right i'm gonna buy if i'm gonna buy that card that week it's not like i'm gonna go buy a bunch of other expensive cards there's an opportunity cost to it but i did it because i needed the card it spoke to me it reminded me of last season that that's not an investment thesis that that's an identity so when you look at the mirrors of the mirror and looking at the reflection you gotta understand what you're working with you can look at mirror one which we can talk about risk tolerance when we talk about risk tolerance because collectors think risk is only did the price go up and i don't think that's the full story risk in this hobby includes the risk of being early the risk of being wrong publicly the risk of holding something no one agrees with yet the risk of tying up money in something that isn't going to sell the risk of building around a belief that a belief instead of just the masses or fan consensus here's the simplest way i can say it some collectors buy certainty other collectors buy conviction and that's and and and there there's a trap we call it graded and popular safe we we we say that but sometimes there's that's fake safe safety because popularity can be crowded and crowded trades can get ugly the modern hobby learned this the hard way during the boom years when trading cards surged surged flipping went mainstream youtube channels went galore and a lot of people entered because it looked like an alternative asset now think about the difference between a card that's scarce because a history made it scarce versus a card that feels scarce because the hobby decided it's scarce this month doesn't mean that it needs to be a one size fits all i think the question that i have is when you buy cards are you buying certainty or are you buying conviction and what does that say about you outside the hobby i think independent thinking is really important and i consider myself an independent thinker and there's also early stage bias with it i think this one's personal for me i would consider myself an independent thinker in life i don't need consensus i don't need a political party to tell me what to think or believe and that doesn't stop when i collect if anything it becomes clear i've spent my entire career on early stage startups i'm building one now in the hobby so i'm comfortable with no traction yet i'm comfortable with being early that shows up in the cards i buy i'm drawn to early stage the unloved the underpriced because no one else is paying for it i think back to when i got back on the hobby and i was buying twenty fourteen topps chrome wrestling gold refractors i was paying nothing for them because i like shiny cards and i liked wrestling and it was it was weird because the masses weren't weren't collecting this stuff but it made sense to me and just because other people didn't like it didn't tell me that i shouldn't buy it i just went all in and that's not market behavior that's just a personality trait for me these are the things that i'm uncovering as i try to explore my collection as a reflection i think another mirror it's validation and status now let's talk about the one no one wants to admit and this is validation here's the reality we all compare i have to tell my four year old dot four and a half excuse me she turned her she had her half birthday this week and it was a a massive deal we celebrate we we don't really celebrate half birthdays but i felt like we needed to celebrate it once my wife told my daughter that she was four and a half now i constantly have to tell my daughter quit comparing yourself to other people and she's four and a half but we do this as grown ups as well when there isn't a clear objective scoreboard we look sideways that's a social comparison theory the hobby is basically one giant sideways glance what did you buy what did you grade what did you pay what did you sell for what's the pop who else has it so when your collection tilts towards what's approved what's flashy what's easy to post what gets you respect fast your cards might be doing the social work and there's a name for buying things because of the prestige they confer it's status consumption again there's no moral judgment it's just the mirror so the question you probably don't wanna answer is when you buy your biggest cards are you buying them for you or are you buying them for a version of you other people look at and to make this concrete think about your display behavior do you display the cards you love or the cards that prove something next mirror patience control and the kind of collector you are when no one's watching my collection also reveals something else i appreciate organization and routine if you want proof just look at my colts prism collection it feels comfortable to me why because structured collecting creates structure in my brain there's plenty of research showing that the desire for control can motivate collecting because completing sets and building coherent collections gives people structure so let's bring it down to the behaviors some people collect like architects checklists sets completion systems some people collect like gamblers chase hits adrenaline the next box and modern collecting has more chase mechanics than ever you've got packs breaks random reward loops one more purchase all those things repacks now i'm going to say this carefully randomized rewards can train compulsive patterns in humans in research around loot boxes spending on randomized rewards shows replicable association with gambling symptoms trading card breaks and pack opening aren't the same thing clinically but the mechanic the mechanics rhyme chance outcomes anticipation social hype and the possibility of that big hit so do you prefer collecting that feels like progress or collecting that feels like suspense and what does that say about how you handle waiting in real life now here's the proof that reflection is more accurate than collection you give two collectors the exact same budget same income same time in the hobby same access they will build two completely different identities one will build legacy cards that connect back to family history and meaning one will build social membership cards that plug into a tribe one will build achievement completions rainbows checklists set registry energy others the other will build financial value liquidity market timing portfolio logic one will build personal memory childhood nostalgia time machine one will build completion flexing rare chasing mine is better this is not because one is smarter it's because that they're different people so if you want to know what kind of person someone is you can't always get it from their words sometimes the answer is in their collection i think if you're trying to figure out what your reflection is there's a little bit of an exercise that we can run here and you don't need to post this you don't there's there's no performance this is just something to do privately pick five cards you own and ask these questions what did i want to feel when i bought this what identity did this purchase reinforce if no one could ever see this card would i still want it what would it say about me if i sold it what part of my life was loud when i bought it if you can answer those questions you're collecting consciously if you can't that doesn't mean you're broken it means your collection is reflecting something you haven't named yet i'll end with this your collection is already a reflection the only real choice is whether it becomes accidental reflection or an intentional one because when you collect intentionally the hobby stops being a coping mechanism you don't understand and starts being a craft you can respect and if this episode makes you feel exposed then good maybe not because i want to embarrass you but because exposure is often the doorway to self honesty i hope this conversation has been helpful i really enjoy exploring these topics i explore love explore asking these questions about myself as a collector and i hope some of what i share resonates with you if it does there's one thing that i would love for you to do tell a damn friend anytime you put a post up that's sharing one of my episodes and tagging me i will always repost it and i appreciate those reposts i have a specific type of audience that i really really enjoy engaging with i'm building these episodes for you but there's always more people out there who don't know stacking slabs exists exists and would appreciate your help and telling a damn friend you all take care we'll talk to you soon