Slabnomics
Finance-Bro turned Card Bird explores the intersection of collecting, investment, and market theory for sports cards.
Think Financial Analyst meets Sports Card Collector.
New Episodes drop Tuesdays @ 7 AM CST.
Slabnomics
Compounding Secrets Every Card Collector Misses Ft. @Iowa_Dave_Sportscards
Ft. Dave Schwartz (@Iowa_dave_sportscards), Host of the Shallow End Podcast.
🎙️ Slabnomics helps sports card enthusiasts make smarter financial decisions. In this episode with Iowa Dave, we explore how compounding knowledge builds like compounding money, why failures are tuition, and how to stick to an investment thesis so you don’t miss the next Shohei Ohtani, but maybe more potently so you don't lose joy in what you do.
Keywords: sports card investing, sports card financial lessons, card collector investing tips, compounding secrets sports cards, compound interest explained
#CompoundingSecrets #CardCollector #SportsCardInvesting #Slabnomics #SportsCards #CollectingTips #SportsCardPodcast #FinancialDecisions
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Welcome back to Slabnomics, where we help sports cards enthusiasts make better financial decisions. Today on Slabnomics, we're going to have an episode welcoming Iowa Dave SportsCards, one of the people that I first listened to when I was getting into the podcasting game with my ears. It was great to have Dave on, and some of the episodes that we quoted here are so good to go back and listen to to make yourself a little bit better as an investor, as a collector. So that being said, today in our interview, there are going to be three takeaways. We are going to talk about how compounding knowledge works just like compounding money, how you can treat failures as tuition instead of as costly mistakes, and how to use an investment thesis so you don't miss out on your next show, Hey Otani. You guys are going to love this episode. Stay tuned, and I'll catch you later. All right, everyone. Welcome to Slabnomics. Today we have one of the people that I most early listened to when I was first getting into sports cards, Iowa Dave. Dave, thanks so much for coming on.
SPEAKER_00:How have you been? Good, good. Matt, thanks for having me. I I love what you're doing with your show for real. Not just saying that, and I'm really glad to be here to talk cards for a little bit. Absolutely, brother.
SPEAKER_01:And I really did listen to every single episode when I first got on because I'm crazy like that. Yeah, I think the themes that you have in your sports card podcasts really help people to be better investors, which is aligned with what I'm trying to do through a financial lens. So glad to have you on today. So tell the people first of all where your collecting journey started and how it's developed.
SPEAKER_00:Sure. Part one of my collecting journey was from about 1983 through 1990 or 91. Typical story. Got older, got disinterested, and left. Bought one card in the 2000s, and then started having kids. Like, no, not the right time. E11 or so, um, got really interested for whatever reason in the satchel page 53 Tops card. Was on eBay and thought, maybe I should get in now. And like, no, because you know, it was the recession was still kind of doing its thing, coming back from it. And at that point, we now had three kids at that point. And say, like, imagine me saying to my wife, like, hey, you know, I know we've got three kids and all these daycares and schools to pay for, but what if I start collecting sports cards? And I think back now, if I had done it, you know, with the with what prices were, if I had stuck, I know I would have stuck with it because of how much I enjoy it, where I'd be. But hey, you know, regret is what it is. But then I finally got back in in 2020, right, during COVID, like so many others did. I wasn't intending to get back in. I went home to St. Louis to see my dad during COVID. My parents never touched my side of the closet in the room where I used to live decades before. And I was really organized as a kid for for baseball cards anyway. And so everything was still on top loaders and everything was still labeled, and sets were still there, and binders and boxes, so I could knew exactly where everything was. My intent was to load everything up into the back of our Honda Pilot and bring it back to Iowa and then just sell it. And that's what I started doing. I got very, very lucky on my timing. I'll get to that in just a moment. But I was graded a few things. I got about 15 cards in right before the GLUT happened with PSA. So I was with the right company at the right time and I got it back and it was able to sell it at the right time. So no skill, right? Just just some lucky timing. And I had about one or two cards left. And I thought, maybe I maybe I'll keep some money from one and just see if I can play around with this a little bit. And the card I kept was the 1991 Upper Deck Michael Jordan, the card number one with him wearing the baseball uniform, the White Sox. We're just at the SP. I can't remember if it was all the All-Star game or if it was spring training, but he was in, you know, it's a famous card now. And I jemmed it. And I jammed it. And this was the height, people paying a lot. I thought maybe I'll get a couple hundred bucks for it, and it went to like eight hundred dollars. So I said to my wife, I'm like, hey, I'd like to hang on to this and just play around a little bit. And she's like, Yeah, sure, you know, go for it. And just sort of went from there. And the first card I bought was a an Anthony Edwards Prism base, because that's what I thought I was supposed to buy, some baseball cards as well. Um, and it took me a couple years to really figure out what I was doing, where I was going. Uh, I've told this story before, but I I think your listeners would like to hear it again. I started buying boxes of cards as well, and I was about six months into my return um to cards, when one day I was looking at a box of baseball cards and cards that I bought, and it took me this long, I don't know how it took me this long to notice it, but I'm looking at this and I thought, wait a minute, there's no logo on that player's helmet. I had been buying panini baseball cards for like five months because I didn't know they were licensed and unlicensed cards. And for whatever reason, my my eyes were not perceptive, my brand was not perceptive, and so I just wasted about six months buying, you know, these unlicensed panini cards. Oh well, it happens, right? And then eventually I just kind of learned, and uh, it's been, you know, several years now, five years now, since I've been back in and I I was gonna say I wouldn't change a thing, but I will say instead I wouldn't change much.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So you've actually given some financial themes there. Uh you kind of hinted at a little bit of compound interest starting early and how how much of an effect that has. There's some studies that show that the first 10 years, I believe, of investing in your 401k is worth as much as like the next 30. Um, because compound interest is just so powerful. Can you tell me a little bit about that? And have you seen compound interest when you've gone through your collecting journey?
SPEAKER_00:100%. I I'm a big believer. I'm I'm not a big econ guy, but I'm a I mean, like many are, I'm a big believer in compound interest. I started saving early. Now, even when I was making nothing, you know, my first out of work jobs, I was still starting a retirement plan, so I get it. But I'd like to talk about compound interest not just financially, but also in terms of of of knowledge and understanding and how that can also build over time. And when you think of someone like Jeremy Lee, who's been in the hobby for four decades, or Adam Gray for again for 30 years, their understanding of how it works, the knowledge they can call on, the institutional knowledge they have of the hobby, that's been built. You can't just learn that quickly. And you have to make you have to make mistakes. And the mistakes can be really painful. I know they were for me, I know they were for lots of people. Hopefully, when you start making them, you start making them early when you're not putting a whole lot into it financially. You'd much rather your mistake be a$15 or$20 base card than a$1,500 uh patch auto or something along those lines. Right. Because the way I look at it is you cannot succeed long term in this hobby space if you are not failing. If you know exactly what you're doing from the ground up, then you're a better person than me, right? Because that means you've done so much research ahead of time. And you've just probably studied and studied and studied what they do, I guess, for what, years before even buying your first card? Then you can maybe try it. I know some people have done that, but knowledge, understanding, patience with yourself of sort of all the mental faculties that come with this hobby, it's the same as the financial side of it, in which the longer you win it, the longer you're in it, the more you have, and the longer that you're in it, and the more that you can gather for yourself, the more successful you'll be in terms of satisfaction, but also in knowing that you're putting your money in the right places and using it the right way, I think. Well said.
SPEAKER_01:And Dave's failing up series, which is going on right now. That series is really powerful. And it seems from an interview that you had, wherein you talked about the power of failing with a professor. And I remember that he talked about how he was trying to motivate his students to be creative and to try and think outside the box by not creating the usual pass-fail system so that they wouldn't just try and give him the answer he was looking for. Is that something that you've found also applies to card collecting, to your podcast, just to life?
SPEAKER_00:Have you found that failure opens up creative outlets for you? 100%. And you're talking about Fair Star Cards, that's where you can find him on Instagram at Fair Star Cards. Yeah. You know, the thing is it's failure is inevitable. And so you can either embrace it and use it as an opportunity, or you can just kick yourself every single time that it happens and then stop trying things. As we're recording this, I am about five days from the semester starting when I start teaching again. And, you know, I tell my students, I'm like, you need to struggle, you need to fail. And if you're not, then that means that maybe I'm not pushing you enough, or that you are not willing to take risks. Risks are incredibly important because it gets you out of your comfort zone, uh, helps you move three or four steps ahead instead of just one step ahead, and you have to be comfortable with it not working. Now, how do you get comfortable? Well, some people just aren't wired that way. Some people were raised to be conservative and careful, and some were told, hey, you painted outside the lines, great, good for you. And like as a little kid, you learned, hey, cool, no problem. There are no different rules here, right? I I don't have to always stay inside the lines. I don't like my hobby failures. August 31st is when the 18th and final episode airs of failing up. And then I'm going to do one after that about myself, when I'm which I recap the 18 episodes, but also share some of my own. And I've got two or three or four that I'm going to share. And as I've been planning that episode, I've been thinking them through. And honestly, it's not any easier now thinking it through than when I first went through it two, three, four, five years ago. I still kick myself over one of them in particular. But otherwise, it just sort of happens. You know, uh Dave Spinrat, who goes by Rated Rabbi on Instagram, he calls it paying tuition. Right? You know, don't think of it as a failure. Think of it as paying tuition. We all go through it. We all don't know what we want. We buy the wrong things, we sell too soon, we sell too late. It's all part of it. You all have to go through it. It's like this rite of passage in a way.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I mean, failure is such an interesting topic because it's such a harsh word, almost a taboo word, and that goes back to the ego a little bit, right? But nobody wants to go around just saying, I failed, I failed, I failed, I failed. But your podcast opens that door to people. And I think it teaches a lot of lessons about the fact that failure is just opening doors that you didn't know were there. You know, I think the most dangerous thing that we we find is that we don't know what we don't know. So if you could give a piece of advice in terms of the financial failures that you've had, and you could distill it down maybe into one poignant lesson, what kind of comes to your mind in that vein?
SPEAKER_00:For me, I'm not an impulsive buyer, but I am an impulsive seller. And that's that's been my biggest failure day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, in that I find something, a car that I want, and I think about it and I do the research on it. And I'll think, does this fit into what I want to do? And I have these little categories that I want cards to fit into. Um, I want to be a player who I like, I want to be a set that I appreciate. I want to be a design that I find aesthetically pleasing. And once I've done my homework and once I think of a way that I can then afford it while staying within my budget, I sometimes just go. And one way that I'll just go is by moving other cards. And then invariably, a month later, six months later, I'm like, why did I move that card? Because the thought that I put into the new card was the same amount of thought I put into the card that I just impulsively sold. And then when I move it, I'm like, you love that card. Like, what are you doing? The this happened with most of the time, this has happened with with Shohei Otani. I identified him like lots did, as really someone who was going to be not just generational, but like spanning generations. A game breaker. Absolutely. He he was not the best player of his generation. He might be the best player in a century. I saw how much how excited I was to watch him play, to follow him, even though he was in Anaheim and you could hardly ever see him. His cards were visually okay, but there were some that I identified that I really seemed I liked a lot. I liked the way they looked, either with a parallel or with an image or whatever. He'd just come off his first arm injury, so he was down, his prices were down, and I could actually afford them. And with my background as first in sports media and then later as historian, my antenna is pretty tuned to knowing who's gonna stick around and who isn't. And I thought this is someone that's gonna stick because he's popular on multiple continents, he's doing something that nobody else has done before, and he's charismatic, and he's big and strong and good. He's gonna stick. And so I got a lot of his cards. Cards now that I really wish I had back, but I would move. Now, some I moved because I had to. Like I had to, one time I had to buy a new computer. It's like, hey, this is a great way. Sell the card. Great. One was to help with uh like a vacation, so okay. But other times it was like there were some that I moved that I don't know what uh even moved them for. And the cards that I moved them for, I probably have moved since. I get so excited about jumping on the card that I have studied and decided that I want that I forget about the work I put into the ones before and I will just impulsively sell. Now, since then, I have recruited a couple of people or started to trust other people who I will run some of my moves by ahead of time and they will tell me when to stop. Don't do it. But I didn't have that for a while. And I made some moves. For example, I had a 21 Heritage Chrome Gold Refractor Otani out of five that I found raw a little over two years ago. Pretty good price, graded it, BGS95. Time I ever used Beckett. Very scary. The communication is terrible. Yeah. So I'm about to never do it again after that one tie. And I was thinking about a month ago, what did I move that for? I don't know. I don't even know what I did, but I know I wanted something else more at the moment. You asked what my lesson is. It's slow down, right? It's slow down, have people around you who you trust because you're gonna make mistakes, you're gonna be impulsive, even if you're not an impulsive person. And sometimes being short-sighted, right, has cost me in the long term. Not just because the card has gone up now. Like gold refractor has clearly gone up, but more because I just want to have it, right? Like Otani has fulfilled all the promise that I thought he would have, which is why I got that card in the first place. But I forgot about that and neglected my own teachings in that moment to go chase something else that was shiny. And uh, I really wish that I had that. I would not, I doubt I would have even sold it at this point for the money. I just wish I would have it so I could look at it and have that part of my Otani PC.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I give similar advice when I say sleep on it. Yeah. Unless it's like a superfractor, you know, as you pointed out. There's certain cars that can't be replaced. And you've talked a lot on your podcast about things that can be replaced and things that can't, and how things get deprioritized. And sometimes they keep getting deprioritized, and you almost never buy one, which I think is fascinating. It's like that that constant hanger-on that at some point you finally do buy, but it's like just there where you kind of like it, but you don't like it enough to put it over this one, and you have this constant decision to make. And along those lines as well, the investment thesis for buying a card, especially with that Shohei example, right? Like he had all this promise, he was a talent that you recognized, a game-breaking one in a century type of player. You got a beautiful card, you gemmed it. I agree on BGS, by the way. And you you saw something else come along. And sometimes we lose sight of what our investment thesis was for that card. And that's not just for those that are trying to resell. That goes for collectors too, because you only have one dollar. You know what I mean? Your dollar only goes to one place, is maybe a better way to put that. But you have a budget, it's only going to go so far, and you have to figure out how to prioritize within that budget. Is that something that you really believe in and you've found through these failings, especially the ones you've called out?
SPEAKER_00:Oh my gosh. Especially, yes, at the beginning when I was I was buying football and soccer and baseball and basketball, hockey. I think those were the five, right, that I was in. And I just had to sort of narrow down what what I cared about. It doesn't mean that I care about basketball any less. It doesn't mean I care about football any less or any of that. It just means there's only so much in your budget. And I could either have a little bit of a lot of things or a lot of a couple of things, and I chose to focus on the lot of a couple of things and instead of going broader, going deeper. And that's been definitely more fulfilling. But you know, I would just look at my box of base cards and I would I would for some reason I had three or four Darius Garland rookie prison base cards. I don't know why. I had like three or four Ju Sotos. I always joke about my big Ju Soto problem. You know, the but eventually I thought, you know what? I love baseball. I I'm from St. Louis. Baseball is a religion there. And and then the other itch that I scratch is I collect basketball, I collect pre-Panini WNBA, so 97 through 18, which was uh pinnacle clear in Rittenhouse. And for a time like right now, when the market is exploding, I don't even know what the peak is, if there'll be a peak, whatever, I've pushed back from baseball just a little bit, not permanently, just right now based on the kind of cards that I want. There there are no big baseball cards on my radar right now. There's lots of little ones I'll pick up from my binder. But I've been really focusing on adding cards from the W because thankfully they have not they've gone up some. There's the Caitlin Clark effect, but nothing like at the rate of like Caitlin Clark is her own market. She's she's beyond anything. But you know, I've got a I picked up a Candace Parker rookie written house right before the National. I was just delighted to get that. And if and that was within my budget. What else is? You kind of have to see. But that's it. Baseball, all eras, and and ba. And sure, I I still love the NBA. There's no sport that I watch more on TV than the NBA. Football's great, but but you just can't do everything. Or do you want the do you want to have maybe like your home and then as you get more comfortable, maybe a nice a nice somewhere as well as like a second getaway or retreat? Or do you want to have like nine cabins scattered across the US and North America? For me, my whole life is just visiting your cabins. Yeah. That's right. That's right. You can only you only visit one at a time anyway. So I choose to to go deeper on two rather than broader on four, five, six, seven.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I learned that lesson when I used to watch every NFL game. So kind of similar, but if you hyperfocus into one and uh I just learned that I I stopped enjoying it as much because your brain gets tired of seeing the same thing over and over. At first you love that, but you get fatigue. And it's thank you for sharing about the WMBA stuff. I know that you don't talk about that stuff as much. I truly believe that collecting is a manifestation of the identity you either want or you have and want to manifest. What about WMBA particularly attracts you?
SPEAKER_00:Sure. There are a few different things. One is I knew I know exactly where I was when they played the first ever game in '97, right? I was working in Dallas, interning in Dallas. I was still in school. And I just remember watching the game on TV. So I was I felt like I was there from the ground up. I saw it. I know there was the ABL before that in some European leagues, of course, but uh I felt like I was there on the ground floor, right? There was Alisa Leslie, Rebecca Lobo, and they brought in some of the older players as well, like Nancy Lieberman Klein was playing in it. Oh, she went back to the seventies, but they kind of brought her in because they wanted to have that that her represented in the in that league and Lynette Woodard. And I always just kind of knew who they were. I remember I knew who Cheryl Miller was well before I knew who Reggie Miller was. ABC Wild World of Sports, R.I.P., right? Would had this big special on Cheryl Miller. And I was just, for whatever reason, just really fascinated by the quality of her play at USC. And then I didn't know where she went. Like, you know, there's no way to follow her. And I guess she went overseas to play. But then she pops back up into the W as a coach, right? Like, oh, there she is. They acknowledge her. They recognize her. It doesn't hurt at all that I have three daughters and I want them to see themselves and see representation in my collection as well, not just a bunch of dudes. And then the other big thing is I went to the University of Iowa, which has always been a really strong institution for women's athletics. So when I was, you know, in in college and I worked for the student paper or whatever, I covered women's basketball. I covered it when I was 19, 20 years old. And Iowa had a coach named Vivian Stringer who went on to go to Rutgers and be successful there. One of the greatest coaches of all time. I was always have just been around it for my formative years. And when we were older, my wife and I moved back to Iowa City. Not that old, but I mean when our kids were younger, we moved back to Iowa City after being in Chicago for about 10 years. And we now live about a mile and a half from the arena, which means that we could go see Caitlin Clark play basically whenever we wanted, um, until senior year when you know it was impossible to get a ticket. And so that just built and built in to see how our girls were so excited to follow her and Megan Gustafson and Kate Martin and some of the other Iowa players. I just think between my own history with the sport as a fan, as a professional, and now personal with the kids and proximity, that's uh it is just it was just the natural thing for me to collect. Plus, it was way more affordable than the NBA with players that I have less interest in, except for a few, you know. LeBron screen. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I mean, the the money aspect of it and how it comes in and changes the sport and changes dynamics, I think filters down into the collecting market really strongly. And some would say it's a lot more pure before all the money comes in and dilutes things and you get bad actors and people trying to do different things. And change is always just kind of scary, but there's a few things in there that you call out. Uh the fact that you have family ties into it being a good example for your daughters, being there at the ground floor. It's really interesting stuff. I'm trying to draw any parallels that I have through my fandom. I'm a Packers fan first and foremost. I was born in Green Bay, so that's kind of a thing where I think people in Green Bay don't have much. If you go through the city, you're not impressed by a beautiful skyline or any attractions or draws, but they have the Packers. Like the stadium is right in the middle and the heart of the city, and everything's built around it. And that's such a cool atmosphere and a cool way to celebrate and feel a real identification with that team or with that sport.
SPEAKER_00:So somebody asked you a question about your Green Bay fan. I have been to Green Bay, I've been to a few Bears Packers games there. And it's right, it's fascinating the way the stadium is surrounded by the houses. So who are you more attracted to when you're collecting of Packers players? Is it players that you saw growing up? Is it current players? Is it Aaron Rodgers, Jordan Love, Brett Favre, Bart Starr? Like who would be a quote unquote your quarterback?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's a good question because I've changed my answer. If you asked me six months ago, it would be a different answer. My Packers collecting has become much more focused. And I actually talked about this with Jeremy, whom you brought up earlier, SportsCard Live. We talked about how collecting can become more refined and more focused and targeted with his flight collecting, which is a concept I really like. But that's all to say that I started out just collecting all the Packers. And it's moved more into those that I look at their pictures and it it's about what portal it brings me to. Unfortunately, when I see a lot of Aaron Rodgers stuff, especially late years, it just brings me into his lack of commitment, his lack of trying to build a team around him and making sacrifices to make that happen. His ego while him claiming it being smaller through ayahuasca doesn't really strike many people and doesn't strike me that way. So early days Aaron Rodgers brings me back, you know, when he was just running and gunning and just every receiver was just lighting it up with him. Those are beautiful days. And so I have some cards of Aaron Rodgers from there, like the 2014 Air Marshall's silver. But to me, it's not about the most expensive cards or the nicest ones. It's just about how they make you feel. So I have a lot of Bart Starr because that's like you talk about Bart Starr with Packers fans, you go to Green Bay and talk to him about Bart Starr, and they just I don't know, they light up, man. And I'll never understand that. But kind of to your earlier point about ground floor, you know, like he was the face of the entire city. He was everything in that city. And Packers fans take it really hard when their quarterback who they've invested so much time into just decides to leave. And like, I know that's a very roundabout answer, but he was asked if they want you to come retire as a Packer, would you do it? And he was like, Well, they haven't approached me. But then one thing he said really irked me. He said, I don't think it would really matter. And I'm like, if you don't think it would really matter, you have not connected with the people of Green Bay. Retiring as a packer is paramount to your legacy to repairing bridges like FAV. So long answer to your question there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's interesting how you know there's that story several years ago about how he disconnected from his family, right? He clearly has some connection problems. I don't want to play pop psychologist with Aaron Rodgers, but you know, Packers, that doesn't matter. Family, uh, they're gone too. It's like, what's going on with him? But yeah, it it's it's interesting. And you become territorial too, I think, with maybe with you with the Packers, and you see people who are coming to it a little bit later and they don't necessarily understand the way you do. I know I was very territorial over Caitlin Clark. And I've I've been very honest about it. I'm I I haven't I don't own a single that's not true. I own one base prism card that my daughter and I pulled out of a pack. But I'm not touching her cards right now because they're too expensive. And honestly, I'm not sold. I'm not sold. I she could be the greatest of all time. She could also be Trey Yum, right? Lots of scoring, lots of assists, and not a lot of winning. And we'll see. And I've I've said that publicly before. I hope I hope she's I hope she's great. But when her senior year, when her when she really took off nationally, and then she's drafted and everything else, I was I would get really frustrated when I would see people post her cards and talk about her. Like you don't know her. Yeah, you didn't see her play, you didn't see her freshman year showing up with a mask because COVID was going on. You don't know that she's from the Des Moines area. None of that. None of that matters, right? That's just kind of silly stuff. But it does go back to what you were saying before about, you know, why, like what what is it about the W or what is it about anything. I think when you have that sort of connection, it could be a really powerful draw to want to collect it, but I also think it can be really dangerous potentially in that you can start maybe trying to collect things and overpaying for things because the emotion starts to drown out the rational side of it. And next thing you know, like cool, maybe you know, for example, I I like to collect a player named Sotagucci. He was a pinch hitter and a and a fourth outfielder for the Cardinals in the in the mid-2000s, and I've got some of his best cards, but I got them for like 10 bucks, 20 bucks, 30 bucks. If I were to start thinking I need to be the Sotagucci collector, and I'm, you know, there's a card of his right now that's on for like$500, like some X fractor out of 25 red or something like that. I'm not gonna pay for that. But some people do wrap up their identity into their collections. And I think if it's if you can't distinguish one side from the other, I think that's when you can really blow it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Being distinguishing and figuring out what it's all for is really important. And not just chasing after whatever comes to your earlier point.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you're you have to collections reflect you, but you are not your collection. And when you become your collection, oh boy. It's the that's when you start making the choices that will you will I think that I would anyway regret.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, taking emotion out of it is probably one of the first things you need to do. It's like, and that goes to what we were saying earlier about being able to sleep on things, wait on things, ask your friends, is this a good call? Sometimes I'll ask my friends who know more about the things than me, ask them about this, and I say this, and then they'll give me their advice, and then I will follow it. But sometimes I don't follow it as well. But to be able to make that choice and to listen to what people have to say, and at the end of the day, still not follow it, I think is actually very important as well. Because it's like I've heard what you had to say, I thought about it, I respect your opinion and and I value it. But at the end of the day, I'm going to do this because of this. You know, you've thought it through, you've tested it in the crucible. And the more you can do that as a collector, as an investor, the better you are in those activities. Because outside of emotion where logic stays, if you make all your decisions from pure logical syllogisms, you're probably going to win a lot. But we don't do that because we're human beings and we're not machines. So it's like, how do we figure out how we're going to be more capable of distancing ourselves from emotions so that we can maybe make smarter investing decisions in whatever way that manifests itself?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I don't know. If anybody has any ideas, please let me know because I still toggle right between the logical and the emotional. Me too. But the hobby is supposed to be fun as well. And some people have some people's hobby, I maybe we even think about this. I don't think the hobby is an accurate enough word at this point. I think there are two hobbies that are operating in the same space. And sometimes that then diagram overlaps a lot more, and sometimes it overlaps a lot less. But I feel like there's the general collecting side, which does not mean you don't want to make money and doesn't mean you won't want to make smart choices. But then I think there's a younger sect of the hobby where the hobby is making money. It's like a shark and a whale in the same waters, right? Just because you're in the same motion doesn't mean you're the same species. But me personally, I wouldn't be here if I wasn't trying to have fun. And so sometimes it is fun just to hit bin, right? And just to grab that card because you like the way it looks and you want it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. At the end of the day, it does come down to feeling. All sales, not all sales, most sales by people, and this is not just sports cards, this is whether you buy a new vacuum or you buy this knife set or whatever, is fueled by emotion. So it's not as if we're operating in a totally different realm here. And I like your whales and sharks analogy because people have different motivations for buying and for selling. And sometimes it's as simple as I'm going to keep buying until I fall in love with things and I'm going to keep those. You know? You talked on your podcast with Chris, Chris underscore H O J. Great dude. And you talked about how sometimes a card will come in, you'll look at it, and you'll instantly know like that's not it. And it's just like, well, just gonna sell it and kind of move on. That's been one of the biggest things that I've learned is like one, stop trying to catch falling knives. Like Anthony Richardson, it's over. Selling the cards, moving on, take your L's. But uh also it's okay to sell things when you get them and they don't spark the emotion when you look at them that you were hoping for. Because at the end of the day, it should be a personal thing and it should be something that brings you joy. Otherwise, why the hell are we doing it? Right.
SPEAKER_00:And sometimes it takes that card to realize, help you realize like a bigger thing. So I mentioned before at the beginning of this, we were we're just talking that in a lot of ways I got very lucky. And one way that I got lucky is when I was first getting into it, I was buying a lot of Bowman chrome first. First Bowman Chromes, but not the autos because I couldn't afford those, but just first Bowman chrome base cards. And at one point I realized, man, this sucks. I'm bored with these. And I would sell them on Twitter and make you know, make some money, which is kind of nice back when I used to sell on Twitter. But then one point I thought, I'm gonna get rid of all of these. And I did it right during spring training of 22. The peak when things start to go down was March of 22. Like that was the ultimate, that was the top of the roller coaster.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That was dumb luck. It was just me getting bored with it. Fast forward two years later, and early last year, I bought my first Bowman Chrome for the first time in a really long time. I don't know what it why I did it. It was Bobby Witt's first Bowman Chrome gold out of 50, PSA 9, not the auto. Again. Really good price off my slabs. I don't I don't know why the person was selling it for that price. I bought it as soon as I bought it. I regretted it. I didn't even have it in hand. I've I had remembered like I don't prospect. The only active player I have in my collection is Otani. Why did I do this? Because I was hoping something in my mind that goes, oh, this is a money play. This is not what I want to do. And it arrived, you know, my no authentication, no authentication because it's my slab. So I got it like two or three days later, opened it. Yeah, nope, put it right back in, put it back on my slabs and made like$10 or lost$5 on it or whatever. But sometimes you have to be reminded. And that it wasn't that I didn't like Bobby Witt. It was that I don't like the feeling of prospecting because then I can't watch a game and I can't read the news without everything being stressful and reading into everything. Everything is stressful. But oh my gosh, even Otani is like, oh, he went over four yesterday. I knew I shouldn't have bought that card. I knew it. I knew it. And then the next day he hits two homers. Why did I buy more? Why did I sell those ones before? So there's there's a pressure that I don't like that comes with collecting active players. And I had to be reminded of that. And sometimes we have to make mistakes. We have to fail, like I did with that wit card. But it was worth it because I haven't bought one since.
SPEAKER_01:Hey, what you own owns you, right? So wow, that's a powerful reminder, man. And that's so true. You tie your emotions into performance of someone else. I like to tell people I used to play Madden a lot. Like a lot, a lot. And I played it not because I wanted to like win Super Bowls, but because I enjoyed building teams, which might sound crazy to people, but I would fantasy draft it. You start over, you build your team like as an NFL draft as if they were starting over. And I would do that, and then I would take them for seasons on seasons like 10, 12, 15 years. And it was just like you build up, you make good trades, and you just have this wealth of resources over time, and then you have to deal with salary cap. And I just enjoyed that kind of team building aspect of it. And then I heard Naval, who's this venture capitalist and creator of Angelist, very well-known entrepreneur, and he said, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. And that sticks with me so much. And I was like, man, I've spent thousands of hours building these teams, taking them to glory and making these perfect, like under the salary cap teams that are monsters. And it's been fun. It's been a fun exercise, but the prizes that I'm winning from it don't have anything to do with life. And so I got out of that, sold all of my video games and tried to move it into things like this. You know, building something real and having cool people on to talk about real stuff. Such a good reminder to us all that you don't have to put your emotions into something you don't want to. Totally up to you.
SPEAKER_00:We won't have to be in this hobby space, right? You can we can don't have to be here. We don't have to trade anything, don't have to buy anything, don't have to sell anything. We can we have autonomy over ourselves.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Own what you do. So you talked about failures. You bring that up a lot, but I think you're a very successful person. So let's flip the script a little bit and let's share with the people as well some of the things that you've been successful with and some of the reasons why you think that is.
SPEAKER_00:I'll move away from the cards just a little bit and talk about the podcast, The Shallow End. I it started for two reasons. One, to kind of connect with people. I didn't really know people in the hobby, and I was just sort of there floating around, and I thought this would be a great way to connect. But also I wanted to learn how to do the technology. I mentioned I'm a teacher and I work in in teaching media and and other things. And I realized I didn't know how to do it, and that was kind of a good way to just throw myself in and start. But I I'm really proud of the connections that I've made through it. There are some folks who have eight, ten, twenty thousand followers and they've earned it. They've worked really hard. But I've I've tried to build mine really organically by just, you know, a couple followers at a time, a couple followers at a time. If somebody writes, I write back. I try to not just to say thanks, but to look through their collection and say, hey, thanks for listening. By the way, love that Jim Brown card you got, you know, and you're collecting that's amazing. And just try to build a little bit of a community, I think. I'm happy with that. There's only been one time I think I ever said please like and subscribe, and I felt dirty saying it. Um, which is not saying anybody else should be. It just wasn't just I'm not much of a salesperson. I I sold cut cone knives in college for a little bit, right? And I sold like two knives like to my aunt and to my parents because I hated asking people to buy stuff. And so I just want to put a like a good product out there, I hope. Um I try really hard to keep it evergreen. I try hard to block out all the noise and to just keep it really focused on what it's like to be a collector, and most of all, just to make the kind of content that I want to listen to. Because I think that's the most important thing. I think one way to struggle in the content space is to try to make content that you have no interest in that you think there is a market space for, because people are gonna sniff that out every time. They're gonna smell out people who are disingenuous or not knowledgeable. I knew from listening to you from the first episode, like this guy knows what he's talking about. And I don't know economics. My wife is who was an econ major, right? But but like I listened to you one time, like he knows, boom, right away, right? Um, a guy named Paul Hickey, who does sports card strategy, right? Um he just wants to sell, and a lot of people turn their nose up at that, but he was honest from day one. He says, I don't, he's he doesn't even like cards that much. He has a little bit of a Magic Johnson collection, but otherwise he just saw an opportunity, goes, This is what I'm gonna do. And I just appreciate people who are really honest. For even though he's so big now in the hobby, Jeremy Lee, I think, is is very honest. And I love that. Just people who are willing to put themselves out there. I read a book. I think my I'm gonna tell now my big secret, but I read a book right before I started the podcast called Uh How to Write a Memoir. And I then decided that in a sense that this podcast would be my memoir. And one of the number one lessons before even chapter one, it was just in the book's introduction, was you've got to be vulnerable, you've got to be open and honest. Because if this was a book and somebody opens it and reads it, and you're not touching on anything beside beyond surface level, they're gonna either reset you or they're gonna stop reading. And I like to read a lot, but there's only been two times where I've read a book where I stopped in the middle because like I thought this person is not being dishonest, but they're they have all these walls up around them. Um and one was they're both fiction books or non-fiction books. Obviously, one was Bob Ryan, the the legendary sports writer from the Boston Globe, who I love, love, love, love. But his book, anytime he got to something interesting, he would just move on to like, and then the next game, which was four to three with the Red Sox, I'm like, can you please say more about yourself? He wouldn't do it. And the other was I don't always listen to it as a book on tape, it was or on audio. Um, Anna, Anna Kendrick, the actor, right? Where she was everything was a joke, and she was just was so scared to say anything emotional about her life. It was just, it was details, but no emotion. And as I read that memoir book before I started in the podcast, I thought, yep, that's why I turned off and stopped reading those two books, because they were not being open and honest. They weren't lying, but they just weren't being open. So I shouldn't say they weren't being honest, they weren't being open. And I decided, okay, if I'm gonna do this podcast, that's how I have to approach it. I have to approach this like a memoir of just vomiting everything out as necessary, like I screwed up here, or I want this card, or here's how I messed up, or here's how something in my family life affected this or that, or here's what I want, here's what I don't want. And if I can't be open and honest about it, I just won't do it. Episode about it. But if I am going to do it, then I am going to be open and honest about it. So I think you asked what I've been successful at. I hope that I've been successful in making an open and honest piece of content each week.
SPEAKER_01:If you haven't listened to The Shallow End, Dave has an episode on there that I think is truly remarkable. I'm a person that likes to pick out things, and I think a lot of people are like this. We like to pick out things that are truly remarkable and special. And I think your episode where you spoke about the process of trying to sell a card and how it got complicated and choosing to do the right thing and how it ended up working out or not working out, I won't give it away. Is a truly remarkable piece of podcasting where you're open, honest, and authentic. You share the difficulty, the struggle that we all go through about how to be honest and how to, when no one's looking, do something that might not be in our best interest in the short term, but in the long term is about building who we truly want to be and who we want other people building someone we want other people to see in all of our decisions. And it's not about just the big times, it's the little things that create the glue for that. I don't remember that episode title. Can you tell the listeners what that was?
SPEAKER_00:Can't remember the title either. Oh, I do remember now. It was uh I thought about bidding on my own card, or I considered bidding on my own card, is what it was called. And it was about uh this little card I bought for 61 cents off COM C of Albert Pooh's, and it was his 2003, so third year card, upper deck, uh, and it was like a play ball flashback card to the 1930s. And I just have this, I have this cheap throwback page in my binder of Albert Poohs throwback cards, and this fit. There's like Chick-o cards and old Bowman cards, but they're all a dollar or anything like that. But it's a good way to see what he would have looked like had he lived 70, 80 years ago. Card comes in the mail, I open it up, I don't even notice it at first. I just see, oh, it's part of my Compsie order. Great, there it is. And as I go to slide it into my binder, I see a shiny gold one of one on the card. And uh 61 yes, a 61 cents. And I start text, I start messaging it. I'm like, holy crap. Like, look at this, right? You know, I I like I tried to sell it and I didn't know how much it was worth, and I got some offers and I still didn't know. And yeah, and then basically I eventually sent it off for consignment because I didn't had no emotional attachment to it. I went and bought, actually went to Com C and bought another one for 90 cents. Think, you know, because I and then tried to sell like, hey, great, free profit, even though I love pools. I don't even know what the set was. I didn't know what the set was, but it was like an artist proof parallel one of one. But then after a while, I became unsure of what it was and um thought I had it figured out, then nobody was bidding on it at consignment. It was had three watchers and then to two watchers, and finally on the last day, oh, I missed a key part of the story. It was labeled wrong. So it was also labeled wrong on on uh through the consigner and it called they called it like a USA something. I'm like, but no, that's not it. So it's labeled wrong. There's one bidder, they're gonna win it for like 99 cents, is what was what it looked like. And that's when I thought, should I bid on this? Because I remember somebody, I think it was Jeremy Lee talking about once. Somebody had shilled bid their own stuff, kind of got exiled from the hobby. And Jeremy had said, there's no, you should never ever bid on your own card. And he or his guest said, but maybe there's an exception if someone has it labeled wrong and you're trying to protect yourself. And so that was going through my head. It wasn't just like, hey, this sucks. I'm not getting enough money. It was this is labeled wrong. And I might lose this because of a third party that is messing this up. Ultimately, I thought, I can't do it. I won't bid on my own card. But I did finally reach the funding company I was using, and they finally, like on the third try, got a hold of the consigner who then took it down and then gave it back to him. And I do have the card back now. It's back in my collection. But I ultimately decided it wasn't worth it, right? You can't buy back your integrity. And even if you don't think you'll get caught, you have to assume that the whole world is watching and do the right thing. And I was I'm glad that I didn't bid on it. I would have felt terrible. And I'm also glad I got the card back because I was pissed off that it was labeled wrong. So yeah, I still have the card.
SPEAKER_01:It's nice when the story ends with a win and you choose to do the right thing. Those small choices really add up to how our large our large choices are impactful. And so thank you for sharing that story. I think it's such a cool story. Thank you for sharing your wisdom, your successes, your failures, which have led you to successes. Is there anything else that you would like to promote as we wrap everything up here?
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. Hey, if you're listening, thanks for listening. Keep listening to Matt, keep listening to Slabnomics. But also, if you haven't yet, please check out The Shallow End. A new episode comes out almost every Friday. Friday morning, it comes out. And if you want to check out the limited series from the shallow end called Failing Up, there are 18 episodes with 18 collectors. They're all about 20 minutes or less. Really short. It's a really good binge listen. So thanks for considering. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:Go listen to The Shallow End. It's amazing. It's on my rotation for sure. So hey, thanks so much for coming out, Dave. I think the audience is really going to feel that integrity that you put out because it's palpable, man. So keep doing what you're doing. You have such amazing guests on as well that are all they're so filled with love of the collecting aspect, especially. And uh, they're all very creative in the ways that they do it. So kudos on the shallow end, and thanks again for coming on. Thanks, Matt. Take care. All right. So amazing to have Dave on. You can find him at I What Dave Sports Cards on Instagram. You can also find his podcast at the shallow end. Uh he's anywhere podcasts can be found. Make sure to listen to that failing up series. Very powerful stuff. My favorite part of this episode was talking about compound interest and how that can apply to decisions. Because as your decisions get better, they become more and more impactful as time goes on. You have to have the courage to keep making mistakes. So definitely words that I'm taking to heart and always trying to work on. So if that resonated, share this episode with one of your friends. Let's all get better together. Keep building, and I will talk to you later.
