Stop Waiting for Validation: The Cost of Outsourcing Your Taste

Foreign. Welcome back to another episode of Stacking Slab, your hobby Content alternative flagship episode, if I may. We're here, we're ready to go. We're ready to rock. It has been a lot of fun putting together these flagship episodes in 2026. Not saying flagship hasn't always been legit. It has become something much bigger. And I think the more I dig into the culmination of conversations that come my way, the more I have begun to take note, take note of what collectors are talking about, what they are inquiring about, where the conversation leads us in the documentation process that I am putting together through my myriad of conversations on a weekly basis on top of my own observations of collecting, psychology, behavior has really created a fun combination for me to sift through each and every week. When I'm putting together the flagship episode here on Stacking Slabs and you're out there, you're telling your damn friends you're doing everything I could possibly ask as a host. And I think these episodes are hitting the mark. They are hitting the heart of the collector, the mind of the collector, getting you to think, getting you to consider what you are doing with your collection, how you're approaching it, pitfalls, obstacles, communication styles, negotiation, independent taste, and a whole lot more. I don't think I'm critical of collectors. I am more critical of, of the fact that if we're spending all of this time, money, energy and resource to put into our collection, how do we take it a layer or two, or maybe 10 deeper to get us to understand why we're doing the things that we're doing. And so I'm having a lot of fun, appreciate all of you who are telling your damn friends, make sure you hit the follow button, run on over to the Patreon group, do the things that help stacking Slabs grow. I do appreciate that today's topic is, I don't know, maybe a culmination of a lot of different topics. And one of the most enjoyable moments in this space is when we as collectors get the opportunity to spot something that we truly love based on look, feel, rarity, scarcity, design elements, aesthetics. And we do the homework, do the research, and continue to love it more and realize there's no one really around us loving it like we love it. And those moments are rare. And those moments I adore about this hobby. I adore not seeking validation. I adore taking chances. I adore being first or one of the first. But I understand not everyone is wired like that. And I think because everyone's not wired like that sometimes we get into the situation where we see a lot of the same stuff, a lot of the same approaches. And I think this comes from the need to seek validation. And I think waiting for validation is not a neutral act in collecting. It is often an act of outsourcing judgment. And that part about this space is beyond me. Why outsource an opportunity to be creative, to express yourself? Why outsource the opportunity to buy cards that are unique? Why outsource the opportunity to take chances and chances that you truly believe in? So that's what we're going to dig into in today's episode. But before we talk about that, got to shout out Inferno Red Technology, 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, the 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 we have a new episode coming next week of Built in the Hobby and excited to share that with you. Are you ready? I know I am. One of my favorite parts of the week is digging into these topics. So let's just get into it. I believe that one of the biggest lies that collectors tell themselves is I am just waiting for more information. Now, I'm not here to investigate every individual collector who's ever said that, but I don't believe you. No, you're not. A lot of the time you're waiting for permission. You're waiting for someone else to buy the card first. You're waiting for the big sale. You're waiting for someone with a bigger account to post it. You're waiting for a podcast to talk about it. You're waiting for the hobby to create enough noise around the lane so that if you walk into it, you no longer feel alone. And I get it. Kind of think collectors feel lonely when they're early. Because being early can feel stupid. Being early feels like the room is looking at you sideways, wondering why in the world you are spending your money, your time, your attention, your reputation on a player, a brand, a parallel, a run, a master set, or a category that no one else has bothered to bless. What I want to do is challenge that instinct today because I think it is killing a huge amount of joy in this hobby. And it's not just joy. It's killing originality. It's killing courage. It is killing the part of collecting that should make us feel the most alive. The hobby gives us a rare gift. It gives us the chance to think like an owner. It gives us the chance to look at the same catalog, same checklist, same resources as everyone else that everyone else sees, but arrive at different conclusions. It gives us the chance to develop tastes instead of renting consensus. And yet so many collectors still behave like they're standing in a single file line waiting for the person in front of them to take the first step. And every time I think of that visualization, I can't help but think about the video game lemmings just walking off the cliff because the person in front of you did that. That isn't collecting. That is social loafing with cards. And the dangerous part is that it feels smart when you're doing it. It feels prudent to say, well, there are no big sales. It feels reasonable to say nobody's posting these. It feels data driven to say there's no content around this lane. But very often what looks like discipline is really discomfort. You're not following a thesis. You are avoiding the emotional cost of being first. Psychology has a whole lot to say about this. There is research on social proof and informational cascades that say people often follow the visible choices of others. And once enough people do that, later people can start copying behavior instead of trusting their own information. And that is why silence becomes self reinforcing. No one moves because no one else moved. The absence of validation starts masquerading as evidence. Then layer on decision avoidance. There's a major review in the psychological bulletin that says people commonly dodge decisions through choice, deferral, status quo bias, omission bias and inaction inertia with anticipated regret and uncertainty acting like accelerants. In plain English, doing nothing feels safer because if nothing happens, your ego thinks it has protected itself. You can always tell yourself you were being careful. But regret research flips the knife. Gilic and Medvik found that actions sting more in the short run, but inactions are what people regret more in the long run. This is the collector's life story right there. You feel sharper pain when you make the wrong move today, but years later, what keeps you up is usually not the card you bought and missed on. It is the lane you knew was yours and never had the stomach to build. This is why this matters so much. Because I do not think most collectors are actually looking for independent taste. I think they are looking for independently approved taste. They want to feel unique without ever feeling exposed. They want to be first in line, but only after four or five other people have quietly proven the line is safe. And that is exactly how categories remain dormant until they do not. That is exactly how collectors miss the window where the lane is still personal, still weird, still yours. And once the lane becomes obvious, the economics change, the competition changes, and even the emotional texture changes. The hunt gets crowded, the anxiety goes up, the signal becomes louder than the substance, and the lane may become more expensive, but it often becomes less intimate too. There is actual collecting research that helps explain why this feels so Hollow. A 2025 study on sports card motivations found that people collect for education, athlete identification, social connection, entertainment, investment, escape from stress. In other words, the hobby is supposed to do more than function as a public scoreboard in self determination theory. A theory we've talked about in the Flagship this year tells us autonomy is one of the core ingredients of self motivation. So if your collection is built entirely outside of validation, do not be shocked when it starts to feel efficient but dead. And let me be crystal clear here. I'm not saying ignore the market. I am not saying ignore the data. I am not saying blind conviction is noble. I am saying the market is a tool, not a guardian angel. The data is input, not a permission slip. And the best collectors in the hobby do not wait for a category to become socially certified before they commit. They study it, they feel it, they understand it, and then they move. One of the easiest examples to cite is just going back and looking at some receipts. Take 9798 Metal Universe basketball for example. I think packs of this stuff cost like $2 and 50 cents when it came out. Nine cards today. That sounds insane because the same product sits near the top of the 90s basketball hierarchy. That is the first lesson. The market does not always recognize importance on release, so sometimes it has to be taught and sometimes it has to mature into the object. Just think about the PMG Green Michael Jordan. I listen to enough podcasts, hear enough collectors talk. Although I don't collect Jordan, I have a deep understanding of how important the green PMG card is not only to Jordan collectors, but to the universe of the hobby. And I understand how the private market works and I understand people know where these Jordans sit. And in one instance, several in one collection. And I also get there are companies that exist that make offers on behalf of other people or collectors make the offers themselves. But the Jordan Green PMG hasn't moved. It hasn't moved since December of 2020 I believe. Is the the right date. Yeah, December of 2020. An authentic copy sold via Heritage for $915,000. That card would blow the past that number if it went to market today. I think this tells us that one of the most iconic modern basketball cards on earth spent years with barely any public validation relative to eventually where it went and where that card will continue to go into the future. Thin public signal did not mention thin importance. It meant the lane was still thinly discovered. And if you want proof that the hobby can be late, look at the red version. The red version is continuing to soar, continuing to climb. You have 90 copies of this card and you've got these cards selling for over half a million dollars. The point is not to obsess over the price. The point is to understand how absurdly long the lag can be between creation, recognition and consensus. Another example on the PMG front is just Nat Turner's build of the green PMG set. You know, he's been on record to talking about pulling the carry kdels and trading it away for store credit because he didn't realize how rare it was. And then in retrospect, went on to try to complete the entire set. Well, there's a lot there, but it's not just, oh, these cards are expensive, let me collect them. There's some autobiographical moments in there. There's emotion involved. It's unfinished business converted into collecting conviction. And Nat's been on this podcast talking about his passion for that set and kind of what he'd do to complete it. I think about Chris McGill, our good friend Chris. You know, he's been on here, he's been on his hoecast talking about Michael, his Michael Jordan collecting. And he described returning to the Jordan collecting through a different door. 90s Jordan one of ones. Not the usual PMGs, rubies, all the bangers that we talk about, not the loudly celebrated cards. He said the Jordan one of ones were more obscure, less visible and less valuable than the hobbies established darlings. But that spoke to him. He's also talked about after years of watching collectors discuss the Jordan's catalog, it just kept hitting him that nobody was talking about the one of ones. Then came the 9899 upper deck gold one of one. And Chris bought it from a Japanese auction site in a couple years ago or last year. And the collector had bought the card, I think in 2003. And he held it for 22 years raw, never graded it, and it effectively stayed hidden until it surfaced on Instagram. And that is exactly the kind of moment that exposes how flimsy hobby Validation can be. If a Jordan 101 can disappear into private hands for over two decades and then we it's out of sight, out of mind. Sometimes it just means that the lane lived outside the public square. And Chris did what I think the best collectors do. When the Lane stops being theoretical and starts feeling personal. He didn't just sit around, he acted. He bought the card. Then he let the card change the map in his head and he used it as a starting pistol for a research project or pursuit. A new logic for how to approach Jordan collecting. That is what independent taste looks like in real life. It's not a random win, not fake contrarianism. A collector notices that something keeps pulling him in, does the work, and then lets the work lead to concentration. Chris also connected that approach back to another project when he started, or I shouldn't say started, completed, I guess. The Christian McCaffrey black finite run. He talked about how niche collecting taught him different ways of finding cards that might never publicly surface and how subtle signaling patients and relationships matter. When you're hunting one of ones rather than browsing cards that reappear every year or so, that detail matters because it shows taste alone is not enough. If you are going to build an unvalidated lane, you need a method, you need research habits, you need a search strategy. You need conviction that can survive silence and zoom out one more level. The entire hobby now treats one of ones like a native language. But heritage is 2026. Lot description for the 97 Ultra Michael Jordan masterpiece says Flir introduced the masterpiece parallel in 1997 and pioneered the now standard one of one chase card concept. The specific Jordan sold for $2.1 million this year. So even the one of one itself, something that now feels standard, almost foundational, had to begin life as a new unproven form of scarcity. Someone had to understand its significance before everyone agreed. That is the bigger truth that I think I'm trying to address and want to drive home here. Every accepted lane started as somebody's strange idea. Every normalized grail started as someone's private obsession. Every respected collector path started with a moment where the broader market had not yet caught up. So if people are looking at your project funny, that does not mean you are right, but it absolutely does mean you're not wrong. It means you are in the only phase where real originality is possible. Now let me throw some cold water on the other side of this, because this is where most people get sloppy. Independent taste is not buying random junk and calling it conviction. Independent taste is not fetishing obscurity. Independent taste is not confusing low demand with hidden greatness. And independent taste is definitely not permission structure for weak research. If you are going to go all in on a lane before the hobby validates it, then your standards need to get stricter, not looser. You need to be able to understand why the object matters and communicate that. You need to be able to say why this card, not the other card. You need to be able to explain the checklist, the scarcity, the historical slot, the esthetic language, the provenance pattern in the failure points. You need to know whether the absence of comps means low circulation or low relevance. You need to know whether the lane has structural gravity or whether you are just projecting onto cardboard because no one else wants it. Research into uniqueness is useful here because it shows something important. The desire to be distinct can support innovative behavior and the feeling original can make you more resistant to persuasion. That is a gift if you pair it with competence. That is a gift if you pair it with competence. It is a disaster if you pair it with ego. So your job is not to be different. Your job is to be different for reasons that can survive scrutiny. The standard I would use is if you are considering going all in on Elaine before the hobby validation, ask yourself five questions. First, does this object have personal voltage? Not. Do I think I should like it? Not. Would other people eventually respect it? I mean, do you actually feel pulled towards it? Second, can I explain why it matters? If you put yourself in front of an audience on a microphone for five minutes, can you tell me the catalog story, the design story, the scarcity story, the player story, or the collector story? Third, is the scarcity real? No sales can mean no circulation. It can also mean no interest. Which one is it? Fourth, would I still love this lane if the market never came? Because if the answer is no, then you're not building taste, you're pre loading an exit thesis. Fifth, do I have a process? Most important, budget, research, flow, watch list, outreach, patience, documentation. If you do not have a process, your conviction will crack the first time the lane goes quiet. What I don't understand about collecting sometimes is that so many people don't have a process and they spend thousands of dollars, hundreds and thousands of dollars, a ton of money. I just think about being maybe this is because I spent my career in business before I started working in sports cards the whole time. But I never went into any launch, any campaign, any go to market strategy without a strategy in place. I've got a strategy. I've Got a process so I can feel comfortable in the money that I'm allocating to certain tactics or programs in order to hit goals. That same is true with collecting. Especially if you're spending a shit ton of money on cards, you. You gotta have a process. And that quiet part, I think is really important. If you don't have a process, your conviction will crack. The first time the lane goes quiet, that being quiet, that's important because many of the best lanes stay quiet for a long time. That's not a bug. That's the arena. Sometimes the absence of public noise is the price of admission. Sometimes the best thing about the lane is the market is not flattened into a ranking list or a series of comp screenshots. Sometimes the upside is not financial first. Sometimes the upside is that your collection actually starts to look like you. That may be the most overlooked point in the entire hobby. Collections are self portraits. A recent sports card study found collectors are motivated by identity, entertainment, connection, education, investment, and escape. In other words, your collection is not just a warehouse of objects. It is a record of how you see the game, how you see scarcity, how you see beauty, how you see history. Honestly, how much courage you have. So if your collection looks exactly like the collective feed, then maybe that is because you have taste that perfectly overlaps with the market. But maybe, and this is a harder truth, maybe it means you have outsourced too much of your imagination. We have imaginations. Go back to when you're a kid, man. You remember when your parents said, like, use your imagination. Like, go have fun playing your room. Use your imagination. I took that as a challenge, man. I loved using my imagination. I love being creative. I still use those things today. But maybe it means you've gotten so good at reading the room that you forgot how to read yourself. And if you can't read yourself, then you're never going to build and develop the collection that truly means something to you. And I think this is where regret begins. Not in the mist flip, not in the card that dipped after you bought it. Regret starts when you realize that you had a lane in you and you kept asking the crowd whether it was okay or not. I don't ask people permission on cards. I hardly ever seek feedback on cards and what they look like, what they cost. Because I, quite frankly, I don't care what your opinion is. It's my, my money, it's my collection. That is death to the best part of collecting. Because the best part of collecting is not efficiency. The best part of collecting is discovery. It is the moment where the object hits you before the market can explain it. It's that moment where you feel the category opening up in your mind. It is the moment when you realize, I do not need this to be popular. I need it to be true. And if it's true, then your responsibility is not to wait. Your responsibility is to get to work, study it, write about it, talk about it, document it, show it, be the content. Because an unvalidated lanes. The first serious collectors often doing two jobs at once. Building the collection, building the language around the collection. That is not a burden, that is a privilege. That is authorship. That is category creation. That is how the hobby expands. So here's where I'm at. If you are only collecting what the market has already certified, then, yes, you. You may reduce some risk. But you are also giving away one of the greatest freedoms the hobby offers. You are letting other people decide what deserves your fascination. You are letting delayed consensus dictate present desire. You are treating collecting like a permission structure instead of personal practice. And I think that is way too small, way too safe, way too timid, way too for a way to collect. I would rather see a collector build something weird, thoughtful, discipline and deeply personal than assemble another technically correct but emotionally vacant stack of approved cards. Because one of those collectors is making a collection, and the other one is making a resume for likes. So if there is one lane that keeps tapping on the shoulder, player, brand, parallel run, master set, forgotten, insert weird serial number card. Whatever it is, do not dismiss the signal too quickly. Interrogate it, stress it, research it hard. Make sure it is real. Make sure it can survive your own scrutiny. But once it does, stop waiting for the crowd to bless what you already know. The crowd is usually late. The crowd is usually loud. After the work is done, the crowd loves to show up for the ribbon cutting and pretend it was there for the excavation. Do not be that collector. Be the one that excavates. Be the one who learns. Be the one who sees the lane before the lane has language. Be the one who buys the card because it hits your bloodstream. Because the history matters, because the scarcity is real, because the story is there, because the object feels alive in your hands, and because you trust yourself enough to build before the hobby collapse. This is not recklessness. This is earned conviction. And if you can do that with discipline, research, patience, and taste, then whether the market ever catches up or not, you win. Because you do not need to spend your collecting life like a lemming. You need to spend it acting like an owner. My name is Brett. I love sports cards. I am fortunate enough to get to talk about sports cards professionally for a living here on the Stacking Slabs Network. This is the flagship episode. If you're here for the first time, welcome to the party. Make sure you hit the follow button. Come back for more. If you've been here for a long time, you know I appreciate you. Tell a damn friend and I'll talk to you soon. Sa.