Don’t Let the Show Choose Your Collection

Foreign. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another flagship episode of Stacking Slabs. This is your hobby content alternative here on the Stacking Slabs Network. I am fired up. I am so excited to be here. I'm feeling a lot of energy, a lot of momentum on the other side of getting home from New York and Fanatics Fest. The dust has not quite settled yet. A lot of conversations, a lot of connections, a lot of relationship building, a lot of cards, a lot of athletes, lot of everything. Flight got canceled. Got an extra day in New York. I maximize that when your flight gets canceled, you gotta turn the lemons into lemonade. And I did that by attending Saturday night's main event at Madison Square Garden. My first wrestling show at msg. That was a bucket list. It was awesome. Got to see Tyrese Halliburton come out and play foil to Jalen Brunson. Celebration. I think I was the only person in MSG cheering for Tyrese Halliburton. It was awesome. Great time. I'm sure most of you saw the clips online. Maybe a programming note, or maybe just my own note before we jump into today's episode, which we're going to be talking about shows and how shows start before the show actually starts. And I want to get into that. But one of the things you'll observe here online is the peanut gallery. The people that aren't at the show but are commenting negatively about the show because whatever they're seeing from afar, they don't like. And so they are saying, these events aren't great, they're bad for the hobby. They're this, they're that, but they're just spectating from their mobile devices and then sharing their opinions. And it is completely acceptable to share your opinions. We can say whatever we want. But I will say if you aren't going to the actual event, your opinion should be taken with a grain of salt, because you have to be in it, you have to experience it. And there's another opportunity where this is going to happen once again on the other side of this episode at the National. And I'm just a big believer in that. I think in order to comment, in order to really share perspective, you have to live it and breathe it. If I never saw the Odyssey, but I decided to jump on this microphone and talk shit about the Odyssey, that doesn't make much sense, does it? If I never were to listen to the Strokes, is this it? But over the years, I just saw so many people talk about how it's a quintessential rock and Roll album of the 2000s and I just sat and spoke negatively of it. That wouldn't make much sense, would it? So. So be careful who you take your information from, is all I have to say. And before we get into today's episode, shout out Inferno Red Technology, the official sponsor of the flagship episode. They are the engineering team behind some of the biggest names in sports and collectibles like DC Sports, 87, COMC 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@infernored.com Another episode of Built for the Hobby on this feed will drop tomorrow. If you're listening to this on launch day we are going to be talking about an event that the Inferno Red team will be running at the National. It is four builders. Can't wait to share that episode. So let's dive into it. It is officially show season. I guess I didn't realize when I was in New York you had the Dallas Card show happening. You had West Coast Card Show. There were card shows galore and it is not stopping. Fanatics Fest is done. The national is next. And for the next two weeks the center of the sports card industry sits inside two convention buildings. Cards you have watched online all year are sitting in cases. Dealers you have messaged are standing across the table. Collectors you know through a screen are walking the same floor. There is energy in that. There's risk in that. And the message today is not that you should avoid buying cards at a big show. I am not telling you to walk through the national with your wallet locked away. That would be silly. I'm here today to tell you not to let the room decide what you collect. And that's the difference. Fanatics fest brought 250 dealers into the Javits Center. The national is promoting more than 600 dealers across 500,000 square feet of floor space. It is set to be the largest show in the event's 46 year history. Across all five general admission days, there are 36 hours of show floor time. Even if you attended every minute, never stop to eat, never stopped to talk to a friend, and never waited for a dealer. You would have about three and a half minutes per dealer. Most collectors are not attending all five days. If you are there Thursday through Saturday, you are down to about two and a half minutes per dealer. That's that will tell you something. Your strategy Cannot be to see everything. Your strategy has to be to know what matters. Walking into a show without a plan does not keep your options open. It hands your decisions to whatever card price, dealer, crowd or moment sits in front of you. That is what I want to talk about today. How do you become an active collector at a card show? How do you use the week before the national to raise your odds of finding a card you you want to own? How do you keep the show fun without turning the trip into a string of impulse buys? And how do you use one deal to start a relationship that lasts beyond the building itself? I go to about two or three shows a year. I've talked a lot about having three small children, got three daughters. They are awesome. I spend a lot of time with them when I'm not doing this. And so it's just challenging for me to get out this car Shows rule I love seeing cards that I've never seen in person. I love walking around. I love running into people. I love the conversations that start because two people stop at the same card. But I do not walk into a show expecting that I need something to buy. My collecting taste is specific. The cards I want do not sit in every case. I'm not there to look for liquid cards. The player might be right, but the set might be wrong. The set might be right, but the card does not have the eye appeal I want. The card might check every box, but the price takes me away from a card that fits in my collection more. And I think that is the tension. A card can be good and still be wrong for your collection. At Fanatics Fest, I saw a ton of great cards. I saw cards that made me stop. I saw cards that were fun to check out, to ask questions about. I saw cards that would look great in a pickup post. That does not mean they belong in my collection. And this is where a show can really mess with you. A card has more force when it is in your hand or right in front of you. The dealer is watching you look at it. Your friend is standing next to you. Someone else is waiting to see it. The card is here now. The show in Sunday. You traveled to be in the room. All of that context starts making the case for the card. The context can become stronger than your own tastes. You start asking a weak question. Can I make this card work? That is different from asking whether the card belongs in your collection when you buy a card at a show because it feels like the thing to do. The first few days are easy. You have the pickup photo. You have the story you have the memory of the deal. Then the show energy fades. A card pops up online take that fits your lane, specifically that you've been building and collecting in. It is that player set everything that you want. Now the show purchase becomes a funding source. You paid a show price. You sell with less leverage. You take the L, you move the money into the card you would have bought if you had stayed aligned from the jump. The problem is not that you bought at a show. The problem is that the show made the decision for you. I do not want this episode to turn into a lecture about restraint. That's boring. You don't want to hear that buying cards is part of why we go. The national should feel fun. You should leave the room for surprise. You should be open to cards that were not sitting in your safe search or on a list. But open does not mean unprotected. Empty hands are better than a full case of compromise. The goal is not to buy fewer cards. The goal is to make better decisions before the pressure arrives. I'm going to draw the line here. The approach will not fit every person who walks into a show to buy. If you are buying to flip, the economics of the deal carry more weight than the card itself. The card is inventory. You are looking at an entry price. You are looking at a spread. You are looking at liquidity. You are looking at the size of the buyer pool. You are looking at the grading, upside, deal velocity and how fast you can move the money into the next card. You might buy a card that you would never own for yourself and that is fine. The value sits in the transaction. For personal, collection, buyer, the card is the point. Price still matters. Comps matter, Condition matters. Negotiation matters. But the first question is not how cheap can I get this. The first question is does this belong in what I am building? And that difference matters. A collector can buy a card at a fair price and make a good decision because the card fits a lane that matters to them. A flipper can buy the same card at the same price and make a poor decision because the margin is gone. The reverse is also true. A flipper can buy a card with no personal connection and make sound inventory decision. A collector can buy it because the deal feels too good to pass and end up owning something that they don't care about. Know which role you are playing before you walk in the door. When collectors use a reseller filter for every PC purchase, they start collecting discounts. They buy the card that is under comp instead of the card they really want. When resellers use a collector filter for inventory. They start falling in love with stock. Both create problems. You need to know the job of the card. Is it inventory? Is it long term PC? Is it a trade piece? Is it a short term bridge for another card? Put the card in a category before you negotiate. Do not decide the category after you own it. There's a reason this gets hard at a show. It's not lack of discipline. The environment changes the decision. Research on choice overload does not say that more options are always bad. It says overload grows when the choice set becomes complex, the decision feels hard, preferences aren't defined and the buyer is trying to reduce effort. The results can show up as less confidence, more regret, delayed decision and a greater chance of switching later. A review covering 99 observations and more than 7,200 participants identified those conditions as key drivers of choice overload. That sounds a lot like a big card show to me, huh? You are comparing cards across players, your sets, grades, serial numbers, prices and conditions. The inventory has no common structure. One case has vintage baseball. The other has 90s basketball. One has wrestling, the next has inserts. The next has a card you've never seen. You are making hundreds of small decisions while talking, walking, checking your phone, meeting people and watching the clock. More choice gives you better chance of finding a match. But it also asks you to do more work to identify that match. A plan reduces the size of the decision. 600 dealers become 30 worth researching. 30 become 10 worth visiting early. 10 become 3 meetings. 3 meetings become 1 or 2 cards that fit. That is how you move from the entire show to your collection. Impulse buying research gives us another part of the story. A large review of 186 papers found that impulse buying is shaped by the person. The reason for shopping, available time and money, the environment, emotions and self control. Communication and price prompts have an effect. Products tied to identity carry their own pull. Sports cards sit close to identity. Your player says something about you. Your team says something about you. The area you collect in says something about you. The set says something about the way you see the hobby. Then add the show conditions the card in your hand. The dealer tells you another collector just asked about it. The case is crowded. Your friend likes it. You know you might not see the card again during the trip. The clock is running. Research across 131 scarcity studies found that the time and supply limits can raise purchase intent. With time based scarcity carrying more weight for purchases then require involvement. A rare card at a weekend show has both forms. There might be one copy in the building. There is also a closing time. The urgency might be real. That does not mean the urgency should write your rules. The goal is not to remove emotion from collecting. That would remove part of the point. The goal is to keep emotion connected to your collecting identity instead of the room. One thing that just keeps invading my mind as I'm preparing this episodes is just a simple comparison. I think about impulse buying and I think about the grocery store. Part of the reason why I have my groceries delivered because first of all, it's impossible for me to get out of the house with three kids. Second of all, I don't want to impulse buy stuff. I don't want to buy a bunch of junk because it's in front of me. And I think if you just think about it from a card perspective. Cards are not groceries. The useful point is the preparation gives you a reference before the environment starts applying one. You already know what matters. You already know what card is worth to you. You already know what you'd pass on. That brings us to one of the most useful ideas of the show. Create if then rules before you even arrive. Research on these plans calls them implementation intentions. Instead of saying I want to stay disciplined, you decide what what you will do when a situation occurs. For a collector, it can sound like this. If a card is not on my main list and it costs more than my flex budget, then I take a photo, note the booth, walk away for 30 minutes. If I find an exact target within my price range and it passes inspection, then I act. If I hear myself saying that I need to buy something to make the trip worth it, then I stop shopping and leave the floor. Maybe grab lunch, take a break. If a dealer is pressuring me to decide before I have the information, then pass. If a card that fits my player but not my collecting lane, then the player name alone is not enough. These rules remove decision from the moment you made them. When you were at home, you made them without all the noise. That is the version of you that should have a vote. That is what I mean when I say active collector. A passive participant enters the building and waits for the show to present an opportunity. An active collector creates opportunity. Before the show, a passive participant asks every dealer the same broad question. Do you have anything cool? An active collector knows knows which dealers handle the material they collect and ask the question that they can answer. A passive participant hopes the right card is visible in a case. A active collector asks about inventory that never made the case. A passive participant starts researching a card and while the dealer Waits. An active collector has a range and knows the condition. Questions. A passive participant treats the trip as one shopping session. An active collector treats it as a week of sourcing that ends with an in person inspection and a handshake. The show starts before you walk in. The work you do during the next week is part of the hunt. It's not admin work. It's collecting. I would build the plan in three parts. Hunt list, dealer board, buying rules. That's enough. You do not need a system with 20 tabs. You need a plan. You will use the hunt list. Start by defining what a win looks like. Do not write find something cool that's not a target. That is permission for the room to choose. A win might be an anchor card of your main player. A win might be finding one card from a set that you've been building. A win might be meeting three dealers who handle your lane. A purchase does not have to be the only outcome that matters. Because the fastest way to make a poor buy is to tell yourself that you must come home with the card. Next, you can build tiers. Tier A is your exact list. It's got everything exactly how you want it. Tier B is your collection fit list. Maybe not the exact cards. They're the lanes that have earned place in your collection. Tier B gives you room to find something you do not know existed without giving the entire show access to your budget. Then create a flex lane set a fixed amount of money that will not block a tier A purchase. That money can go towards an unplanned card. The point is not to kill spontaneity. The point is to give spontaneity a boundary. The last part of the hunt list is the no buy list. This might be the most important what cards get your attention at the show but never hold your attention at home. A no buy list is not a claim that those cards are bad. It is a record of what you have learned about yourself. Use one test for every off list card. Would I search for this card on a normal Tuesday night at home? If the answer is no, ask why the convention is changing the answer. Your price plan. It's important. For each main target, write three numbers. The current market range, your target price, your walkaway price. Those aren't the same number. The current range comes from relevant sales. Not one high sale, not one low sale. Look at the sales that match the grade, serial number, condition, autograph quality, patch quality and market timing. Your target price is where the deal feels good. Your walkaway price is the most the card is worth. Inside Your collection plan. That number should account for what you give up. Every card competes with another card even when the other card hasn't appeared yet. A $5,000 purchase is not only $5,000. It is every other use of that $5,000 that is the question and impulse buy hides. What does this remove from my future options? A show premiums not is not always the bad decision. You inspect the card, you do all the things. The mistake is deciding the size of the value while the card is in your hand. Set your acceptable premium for the show. Price does not have to be the lowest price for a PC purchase to be right and just needs to fit your plan. Dealer board One of the things I do and one of my favorite things is creating a dealer board. The national already has given you the raw materials on what dealers are going to be there. The official dealer list is posted. The list I think runs like 55 pages. There's an interactive map. Download it, search it. Start with the dealers you know. Then add dealers who specialize in your collecting lane. Build a board of 25 to 40 names. Make sure you put the booth number, Instagram account, main inventory lanes. Do all that. Then do the digital work. Go to the dealer store, look at the inventory. Look at sold inventory. One person I'll shout out here. And he's a friend and I just was with him last weekend for a minute. But he's very organized. And that's Kevin the Captain, 37. Like he lets everyone know what's going to be in the room. He lets everyone knows where he's going to be at. And I think there are dealers out there providing that information and it's on us if you want to be an active collector to absorb that information and put it into your plan. I think communication before the show is important. A good message is specific. It makes it easy for the dealer to help you. It can sound like, hey, I saw that you're setting up at Booth 1432 at the National. I collect earlier cards from that player with a focus on X and Y product lanes. I'm looking for these three cards plus low number cards that fit the range. I saw you have handled similar material. Do you have anything in that lane, including cards that aren't posted? I'll be at the show Thursday, Friday. I'm ready to buy the right card after I check it out. That message tells the dealer who you are, what you collect, why you contacted them and when you could meet. Compare that with this. Got anything cool for me? The dealer can't answer that. You have Handled them. The work of defining your taste. Specific collectors get specific leads. Ask for all the information. Do the work. The more you engage with the dealer ahead of the show, the better off your trip is going to be. Once your board is built, move the names to the map. Create three rooms, priority stops, secondary stops. Open browsing areas. Plan your time schedule. Be prescriptive. Make sure you maximize your time because you're doing the work in advance. When you write the rules after this. To protect a plan, keep them on your phone. Have a starting point. Create your own rules. Remember you're the CEO of your PC. You are allowed to create rules and make sure you follow them when the doors open. Run your plan. Run your playbook. Run it and see how it goes. I can promise you if you are building out a prescriptive strategy and plan and you follow some version of this, you will maximize your time or increase your odds of coming home with a card. I am a fan of setting up deals before the show. It gives a trip an anchor. You know there's at least one card that you're going to have a crack at. You know there's at least one person you're going to meet. You replace random hunt with a meeting. The in person part matters. You want to hear where the card came from. You want to test the work in action. The transaction become the source of a relationship six months later. The dealer might message you because of the card you bought and might have something similar you might like. They might remember that you paid on time, communicated clearly, followed through. Dealers want those types of buyers. The card might be the transaction, but the relationship creates several more opportunities. I think the pre show deal is the best. There's one part of this idea that I think needs care. Landing a card you love can make the trip feel worth it. The card can hold the memory of the show. The meeting can become the part of the weekend you remember that has value. But do not make the purchase responsible for paying back the airfare, hotel, meals and time away from your family. Those costs are already part of the trip. The moment you tell yourself that you must buy a card to make it all worthwhile, you create pressure. Pressure lowers your standards. You start treating any purchase as progress. The trip can produce value through relationships, content, time with friends, business and experience of seeing the hobby in one place. A card can anchor that value. It's not reimbursement. The distinction protects you. You can walk away when the right card is not there. You can pay a fair price when it is there. You are not asking one Card to carry the cost of the weekend. Here is the work I would do before leaving the national. Right three to five cards or card types that would make a real impact on your collection. Write the collection fit lanes that give you room beyond those targets. Set your flex budget. Write the cards and products you are not buying. Research the price target and walk away price from each of the cards. Download the dealer list. Build a board of 25 to 40 dealers. Review the stores and Instagram pages. Send five to 10 personal messages like I talked about earlier. Try to set meetings. Ask each contact who else should you meet. Map the booth. Write your if then buying rules. Put the plan on your phone. Share it with the person you're attending with. I think the last step helps. A friend who knows your plan can ask the question you might avoid in the moment. Is this one of your cards? Does it fit your lane? It's important to have support. It's what it's all about. I'm not trying to be overly prescriptive. I'm just trying to be overly prepared. And I think doing these sorts of things at a show like the national that is stimulation, overload and very, very overwhelming can help. Show season is officially here. Fanatics Fest gave me that reminder. A big room can make every card feel important. It can make every deal feel temporary. It can make buying feel like participation. But you do not have to purchase a card to prove that you belong at the show. And you do not have to avoid buying to prove that you have discipline. You just need a strategy. You need to know what you collect, why you like it. You need to have those rules. Walk into the national with names, booth, numbers, questions, range and meaning. Do not walk in with some vague hope that the bright card will find you the best show. Purchase is not the card that got the most attention in the room. It is the card you wanted before the room had a chance to influence you. And the best version of the deal is buying the card from someone you will know after the show ends. Be active. Do the work now. Let the show be the place where the plan comes together. Do not let the room choose your collection. The show always starts before you walk in. Appreciate you supporting stacking slabs, your hobby content alternative. Make sure you hit the follow button. Tell a damn friend. Run on over the Patreon group. Do all the damn things to help get this show. Be seen by your friend and your friend's friend. We appreciate your support over here. Take care. We'll talk to you soon.