What It Took to Buy My Biggest Card

Stacking Slabs · Ep 1088 · 1d ago · 41 min

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About this episode

I spent $30,000 on the 2022 Immaculate Roman Reigns Premium Memorabilia Autograph Platinum 1/1.The price will get attention. The decisions behind it are the story.I break down the relationship that made the deal possible, how I funded the purchase, and why I sold around 60 cards to bring one card into my collection.This episode is about sacrifice, collection projects that have run their course, and the difference between chasing scarcity and buying a card that belongs in your collection. Check out the awesome software that <a href="https://infernored.com/">InfernoRed Technology</a> can build for you.Sign up for <a href="https://stackingslabs.substack.com/p/coming-soon?r=hjr6d&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy">Hobby Jobs and The Weekly Rip</a> for freeGet your free copy of <a href="https://subscribepage.io/CollectingForKeeps">Collecting For Keeps: Finding Meaning In A Hobby Built On Hype</a>Start your <a href="https://patreon.com/StackingSlabs?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink">7 day free trial of Stacking Slabs Patreon Today</a>[Distributed on Sunday] Sign up for the Stacking Slabs Weekly Rip Newsletter using this <a href="https://stackingslabs.substack.com/p/coming-soon?r=hjr6d&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy">link</a>Follow Stacking Slabs: | <a href="https://twitter.com/stackingslabs">Twitter </a>| <a href="https://www.instagram.com/stackingslabs">Instagram </a>| <a href="https://www.facebook.com/StackingSlabs/">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://vm.tiktok.com/cvNbNG/">Tiktok</a> <a href="https://www.patreon.com/c/StackingSlabs" rel="payment" title="★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★">★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★</a>

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Transcript

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Foreign. We are back. Another episode of the flagship here on Stacking Slabs, your hobby content alternative. The episode that is the Heartbeat, the engine of the Stacking Slabs network. Without the flagship, I am not sure we could keep the rest together. These episodes mean so much to me. It has been the foundation for the last six years, delivering one of these episodes each week where I share my experience. I talk about the psychology around collecting dial into a collector topic that is on my mind and today's episode is going to be very personal. It is going to be an episode where I talk about the biggest card I've ever bought. I'm going to share the process, the decisions, the psychology behind the purchase and hopefully a whole lot more. The intention with this episode is to share a point of view from one collector. I've always viewed my collection as living, breathing. It grows, it retracts, it evolves. So much is going on. This movement is exciting to me. I appreciate change. I appreciate watching change in my collection and also understanding while that change exists, which pieces stand tall in the long run. We're going to dive into all of that and more. Make sure you are following along wherever you're listening to this episode, so hit the follow button. A lot of you have been doing this and I do appreciate it. If you're enjoying this enough. Teladam Friend, A great way to do that is sharing in your story on Instagram. If you do that, I'll repost. I'll probably put Teladam Friend and copy on it. I do appreciate all those shares and we are putting more content out than ever before in the stacking slabs. Patreon link is in the show notes and shout out to Inferno Red Technology, the sponsor of the flagship. They're the engineering team behind some of the biggest names in sports and collectibles like DC Sports, 87. Com, C collectors, Upper Deck and eBay. From Yu-Gi-Oh 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 everyone in between. See what they can build for you@infernored.com I spent $30,000 on a Roman Reigns card. I think that sentence will get attention. We love prices. We love big prices in this collecting space. It also leaves out most important parts of the story, the conversations that made the deal possible, the collections I had to break apart, the cards I had to sell, the trust required from the different people involved, the responsibility that came after I said yes. This was not one transaction. It was a series of Decisions that forced me to decide what I wanted my collection to become. I sold non one of one parts of my Tyrese Halliburton collection. I broke apart my Colts Gold Prizm and Gold vinyl runs that had taken years to build. I consigned around 60 cards through multiple rounds of sales and I did that all in part to acquire one single card and that is the 2022 Immaculate Roman Reigns premium memorabilia autograph platinum one of one on card autograph superstar Worn slash used material. It's in a PSA9 holder that doesn't matter much, but that's a nugget to share. This is a card tied to a wrestler I've been following for years. A card connected to a story that helped bring some consistency into my life during COVID A card from the period when Roman Reigns became the Tribal Chief and started one of the longest Championship Reigns in WWE history. This episode is not about whether you should spend $30,000 on a card. It is about what happens when the right card asks you to make a real decision. What are you willing to sell? What parts of your collection have already served their purpose? Are you buying the card because it's scarce? Or does the card belong in the collection you want to build? Next. Excited to get in to this episode and I appreciate you spending your time with me. There's so many places where you can consume hobby content. I shared on Instagram last week a photo of the card and I shared a small blurb and I alluded to the fact that I'm gonna probably doing an episode on that purchase this week. Well, this is the week. I one-of-one talk through the entire process how the opportunity started. I want to talk about relationships with the seller. I want to talk about the conversation that led to the deal. I want to talk about how I paid for it. I want to talk about the cards that left my collection. I also want to spend time on the subject Roman Reigns, my relationship with wrestling, wrestling cards, and why this carried enough meaning for me to make those decisions. I'm sharing the number because I think it matters. $30,000 is a lot of money. I had my cards out and my kids were getting ready for bed and of course I shared this whole lead up with my wife and I realized since I had it, I hadn't shown her yet. And I showed it to her and she was just like, Yu-Gi-Oh it's here. And my oldest daughter Jolene was like, let me see it. And she said, cool. And I said, you know, this could probably fund your first year of college. And of course as A five year old or almost five year old, she has no concept of money. But that really put things into perspective for me. I'm not going to hide behind vague language and call it a major deal without telling you what major means. And I think at the same time the number is not the lesson. The real lesson is what the purchase required from me. This card forced me to examine my entire collection. It forced me to separate the cards I enjoyed owning from the cards I I still felt responsible for owning. Those are not always the same thing. The opportunity started with one of my favorite collectors in the wrestling card community. Roscoe. You might know him as Lonnie Skywalker 4 collector. Roscoe reached out to me and asked if I had interest in the Roman. I knew the card. I knew it was important. I I also knew that it was going to be expensive. What I did not know was how expensive. This card entered Roscoe's collection from a private deal. There's no data in card ladder around this card and the uncertainty matters when you are discussing a one of one. There's no second copy sitting in another listing. There's no other owner you can call next week. You do not wait for another copy to surface at a price you like more. The owner controls the only available supply and that creates pressure. It can make collectors act faster than they should. It can also make a collector confuse the fear of missing out with a reason to own the card. And I had to separate those two feelings. Did I want the card because I had a chance to buy it? Or did the one chance matter because this was a card I had wanted for the type of collection I was building? Those questions might sound similar, but they're not. Scarcity can create urgency. Scarcity cannot create meaning on its own. And the relationship with Roscoe also mattered. This wasn't a cold message from a person I never met. Roscoe and I had recorded a podcast together. We had talked over the years. We briefly met at the National a year ago, and our relationship did not start with this transaction. And that history gave both of us context. He knew what I collected. He knew my connection to wrestling. He knew this was not a card I planned to buy, post and move a few weeks later. I knew how he collected. I knew this was a meaningful card in his collection. I knew he was not sending it to me because he had no other options. That did not guarantee we would make a deal. It gave us a place to start. Relationships do not move the need to negotiate. They change the quality of the conversation. Though you have more context. You have more trust. You can speak with more honesty about what each person needs. Roscoe gave My House number. I countered. He told me I was close. He also told me he had received a trade cash offer and that was an important information. There was a real alternative on the table for him. He was not required to wait for me. I came back to him with a $30,000 cash offer. He accepted it. And that is a short version of the deal. A seller gave me a number. I countered. He had another offer. I improved my position and we agreed at 30k. The number alone does not tell you why the deal worked. Roscoe and I also spoke over the phone and I think this matters in big deals because that call mattered. When deals reach this level, I do not want every part of the conversation just happening through direct message. Messages are good for sharing numbers. They are not always good at communicating intent. A phone call gave us room to discuss our positions. Roscoe was able to explain what he needed from the deal. I was able to explain how I planned to complete it. Neither of us had to guess what the other person meant. When collectors make large deals, communication is one of the few risks they can control. You cannot control where the market is going next. You can't control whether another Roman Reigns card sells for more or less. You can control whether the other person understands the terms. You control whether the payment plan is clear. You control whether the timeline is clear. You control whether concerns are discussed before they become problems. I let Roscoe know from the beginning that I had planned to use the Wharf sports cards for card funding. I was not presenting myself as someone who was just sitting on $30,000 in an account that I was ready to send. I told him how I planned to fund the acquisition. I told him because he deserved to know. Roscoe was comfortable with the structure and that openness helped the deal move forward. It also created a responsibility for me. I now had to manage expectations with Roscoe. I had to manage expectations with Nick at the Wharf Sports Cards. I had to do everything in my control to get Roscoe paid. Once Roscoe received his money, my responsibility moved to paying the worf back. The card was in my collection, kind of not really. The transaction was not quite finished, and I think that distinction became important. I want to be clear about what card funding did for me. It gave me time to convert card equity into cash. It did not make the card less expensive. It did not remove the responsibility. It did not turn 30k into free money. It moved the payment timeline. That structure only worked because I had cards in my collection. I was prepared, or kind of prepared to sell the ultimate Judgment Day. Let me tell you everybody. It worked because Nick understood what I owned and we had. We've worked together, we're friends. He knew what I had in my collection. It also worked because Roscoe understood the process. It worked because I committed to selling the cards required to close the balance. The worst version of this decision would have been buying the Roman first and planning to figure out the rest later. That is how emotion takes control of a financial decision. I needed a repayment plan. I needed to know which parts of my collection were available. I needed to act once the deal was complete. When a one of one becomes available, the collector can feel like the hard decision is whether to say yes. The harder decisions often come after the yes. Will you sell the cards you said you were willing to sell? Will you accept the fair offers? Will you follow through when the cards leaving have memories connected to them? Will you pay back the obligation before moving on to your next purchase? The purchase was one conversation. Paying for the purchase required action over a decent period of time. The first move I made was selling a couple Tyrese or a few Tyrese Halliburton cards locally. It was kind of ironic. Once this deal was made for the card and I was in sales mode, I saw a post From Boom Baby Cards 317 on IG about needing the Tyrese Halliburton Gold Prizm Run. And those cards were great cards and they were my collection. But I had a mindset of moving more towards just one of one Halliburton card. So it seemed like a good opportunity to make a deal. These were not cards I bought without a connection. They were cards I enjoyed building and owning. When I made that deal in person, that money went directly back to Wharf. This is where the word sacrifice can become misleading. I did not hate those Halliburton cards. I was not waiting for a reason to get rid of them. They had given me value. I enjoyed finding them. I enjoyed building the run. I enjoyed looking at them together. Selling them did not erase any of that. The ownership still counted. The enjoyment was real. A card does not need to remain in your collection forever for the purchase to have been worthwhile. That was one of the first lessons from this process. Collectors often treat a sale like an admission that the original purchase was wrong. I didn't see it that way. I think your collection changes because you change, your priority changes, your budget changes, the cards available to you change. A card can be right for one period of your collecting life and wrong for the Next one. Those Halliburton cards helped fund something that carried more meaning for the direction I wanted to go with my collection. That does not make the Halliburton run a mistake. It makes it part of the Roman story. The larger decision involved my Colts collection. I built a Colts gold and Colts vinyl collection. That was significant. Those projects required time. They required research relationships. They required me to keep watching for cards that didn't surface. I loved building them and I'm a Colts fan. Those cards represented my team, Prizm history, player connections and the years of collecting work. Breaking those runs apart was not an easy decision. It was also a decision I had started making before I admitted it to myself. The process of building this collection had become a chore. I was still trying to make complete runs. I was still watching for missing cards. I was still carrying the responsibility that comes with a long term collection project. The satisfaction had changed. I was putting effort into the runs because I had already put so much effort into them. That is an easy trap for a collector. You start a project because you love it. Years pass. The love changes. You keep working on it because stopping feels like wasting the time and money you'd already invested. The past effort begins making the decisions for you. And I had to ask myself a direct question. If I did not own these cards today, would I start building the same runs again? And my answer was no. The answer gave me clarity. It did not mean the collections had failed. It meant they had reached the end of their role in my collection. And the Roman opportunity forced me to act on something I already knew. I had made some sales to Andy and Shane at IndyCard Exchange. I moved cards that had taken me years to bring together. Those were local relationships with people I knew and I that mattered to me. I knew the cards, where the cards were going. I also knew I was making a fair deal that would help me reduce the balance. After those sales, I still had work to do. I ended up consigning, I think, around 60 cards to nick. At the worst, sports cards. It took multiple rounds of consignments. There was not one sale that cleared the entire balance. That would have made things a lot easier. There were no single card waiting in the background to solve the problem. I had to go through my collection. I had to make choices. Then I had to return to the collection and make more choices. And that process taught me more than buying the Roman did. It is easy to sit in front of your collection and call every card important. It becomes harder when you need to rank them. Which cards are central to what you collect which cards are connected to a past version of your collection. Which car cards are you keeping because you still value them? I was not selling junk. I was selling cards with demand. I was selling cards I like. This is how judgment day and consolidation works. If you want to acquire one of the best cards in your collection, the outgoing side often needs to include cards you care about. Selling cards you do not want is inventory management. Selling cards you like for a card you value more, value more as a collecting decision. And I received years of utility from those 60 cars. Some gave me the satisfaction of finishing parts of run. Some gave me relationships with other collectors. Some gave me content ideas. Some sat in my collection during periods when they were the exact cards I wanted to own and they had already done something for me. I did not need to keep every card to prove that the experience mattered. And that shift helped me to sell without feeling like I was destroying my collection. I was changing its direction. There's another part of this story that needs to be said. I do not have an unlimited collecting budget. I run a small business. I have a wife. I have three small kids. I have a mortgage, bills, responsibilities and people who depend on me. Those facts do not disappear when a one on one just becomes available. The Roman had to be funded through the collection. I was not willing to place the purchase ahead of my family. I was not willing to take money that the business needed to pay for it. I was not willing to create an open ended obligation with no plan to close it. My collection needed to pay for the card and that Pandora gave me a way to evaluate the decision. If I was not willing to sell enough card equity to fund the Roman, then I was not willing to buy the Roman. Those are the same decisions. Collectors tend to separate buying and selling. Buying feels emotional. Selling feels financial. In this case, they were connected. The roman was worth 30,000 to me. If I was prepared to release 30,000 in cash and card equity. If I wanted to keep every other card and own the Roman, then I did not have the budget for the Roman that is part of large acquisitions that gets left out of each post. You see the card, you do not always see the cards that left. You see the one of one. You don't see the 60 cards consignment. You see the announcement. You do not see the round of payment that followed. I want you to see both sides, because both sides are the deal. To understand why I made this decision, you need to understand my relationship with wrestling. Wrestling has been a part of my life since I was three years old. I followed the characters, I followed the stories. I followed the changes across eras. The connection started long before sports cards became part of the equation. When I returned to the hobby in 2019, wrestling cards played a major role. They gave me an entry point that felt personal. I was not trying to buy what every other collector was buying. I was collecting people in moments connected to something I had followed throughout my entire life. Wrestling cards help me remember that collecting can be built around your interest. It does not need approval from the wider market. It does not need to fit into the largest sports card category. It needs to matter to you. And that connection shapes stacking slabs. I was learning about cards while reconnecting with stories that had stayed with me. I learned products. I learned parallels. I learned how wrestling collectors thought about rookie cards, first appearances, autos, memorabilia and character changes. I started understanding which cards carried meaning beyond a serial number. Roman Reigns was a part of that process. I was a Roman Reigns fan before the Tribal Chief era. Believe it or not, I was always the guy during these pay per view parties when everyone was booing Roman Reigns. I was the guy in the Roman Reigns Superman punch, cheering for him. I think that is worth saying because a lot of people change their view on Roman after 2020. The tribal chief character gave fans the version of Roman many had wanted to see. There was more control. There was more depth. There was more tension around every relationship. Roman did not need need to ask the crowd for approval. He carried himself like the person WWE had told us he was. For years. I had stayed with him before the transformation. I watched the pressure that was placed on him. I watched the reaction from the fans. I watched him continuing through it all. By the time the Tribal Chief arrived, it felt earned. It did not feel like the WWE had introduced a new wrestler. It felt like Roman had taken control of the story people had been telling about him. The history matters. When I look at the card, I'm not collecting one character from one year. I'm collecting the path that led to the character. The COVID period also sits inside this card. For me, life fell uncertain. Normal routines disappeared. Live events changed. Sports changed. Wrestling changed. But WWE kept producing shows. The presentation was different. The buildings were empty. Then the Thunderdome arrived. Roman returned at SummerSlam in August 2020. A week later, he one-of-one the Universal Championships. The bloodline story started taking shape. Roman, Paul Heyman, Jey uso. Jimmy uso. The relationships became part of the conflict. Family was not background information. Family was the story. Roman was not defending a championship in isolation. He was building control around the people Closest to him. The story kept developing. You had to remember what happened the week before. You had to watch how Roman spoke to Jay. You had to watch who stood beside him. You had to watch who acknowledged him. That story gave me something to follow. During a period when the days often felt the same. The same. I could turn on the WWE and watch the next part that carries weight for me. A car does not need to picture every moment to hold the memory of the period. And this card represents that period. The card carries a 2022 date, the debut year in the three year run of the WWE Panini relationship. And that year sits in the center of Roman's title run. He entered 2022 as Universal Champion. At WrestleMania 38, he defeated Brock Lesnar and added the WWE Championship. And he became the undisputed WWE Universal Champion. The bloodline was controlling wwe. Roman had moved beyond being one of the company's leading names. The entire product was was being built around him. His Universal Championship run continued for 1,316 days. When I look at this card, I see the run. I see the period when the Tribal Chief became the center of the wwe. I also remember where I was when the story started. And that connection is very real. Now let's talk about the card. This is the 2022 Immaculate WWE Premium Memorabilia Autograph Platinum one of one Roman Reigns. It comes from the first WWE Immaculate release and that matters to me. Immaculate entered WWE as one of Panini premium products. This was not a base Prizm parallel with the sticker autograph. The card combines several features I want in a Roman card. It has an on card autograph and the signature is part of the card instead of being placed on a sticker before production. It contains Superstar worn or used material which is very very rare in the Panini era. It comes from a product built around premium autographs and memorabilia. It is the Platinum one of one. There is no parallel above it in this set. The card is graded to PSA 9. And for this card the grade is not the center of the decision. There is no second platinum available in another holder. The card is the card. The grade gives me condition, context. The one of one established its place in the product. I also want to be honest about what the card is not. It does not provide the type of event specific memorabilia provenance collectors are now seeing with WrestleMania patch cards. The card does not tell me that Roman Reigns wore the material during one named match. I'm not going to add a story to the memorabilia that Panini did not provide. That's A limitation and I considered it. The WrestleMania patch program has changed how wrestling collectors think about event used material. Those cards connect a specific patch, event wrestler and one on one autograph and the markets respond. Roman did not have a WrestleMania patch available for me to chase when I made this decision. He didn't wear a patch in the last two WrestleManias. He did wear one at SummerSlam. Which means another major Roman card will enter the conversation once that piece is produced. That does not reduce what this Immaculate card means to me. It helps define it. The Roman Immaculate comes from the Panini era, an era beloved by myself and many, many wrestling card collectors. It comes from from the first year of WWE Immaculate. It comes from the heart of his title run. It combines a hard signed autograph, worn material, premium product and top parallel. That combination matters. The card does not need to be every type of Roman Grail at once. It fills its own place. I'm not claiming this is the most important Roman Reigns card in existence. His 2022 Prizm black one of one certainly matters. That is in the collection of my friend Steve Diamond. Card collector got a chance to hold that card at Wrestling card takeover. His 2014 Topps Chrome Zebra Fractures certainly matter. Early autographs, future event patch cards will matter. Collectors will rank those cards in different ways. I do not need every collector to place this card first. I need to understand why it belongs near the center of my collection. The answer is very clear to me. There are several psychological forces at work when a collector considers a card like this. And the first is scarcity. One of one cards create pressure because the opportunity can disappear. And that pressure is real. But it can also be dangerous. The words one of one can cause a collector to stop evaluating the rest of the card. Who's the subject? What is the product? What is the card connected to? Does it have an autograph? Does it have memorabilia? Would you care about this card if the 1 of 1 stamp was removed? Serial numbering should strengthen the card. It should not carry the entire card. For me, the Roman had enough without the stamp. The one of one gave the card its final position in the set. The second force is loss aversion. Selling a card you own can hurt more than missing a card you never own. You already have a relationship with the cards in your collection. You remember buying them, completing the deals. You remember the person who you sold them to. You know what those cards look like. The new card is still an idea that can cause collectors to hold every existing card while chasing new ones with new money. I cannot take that path. I had to compare The Roman with the cards already in my collection. Not in theory, card by card. The third force is competition. Runs create momentum. Once you own five cards from a ten card run, the missing five cards start to feel like obligation. The closer you get, the harder it becomes to stop. And completion can be satisfying. It can also keep you committed to a project that no longer gives you the same return. That was part of the decision on my Colts prison run. I had to decide whether I still wanted to complete the collection or whether I wanted credit for the work I had already done. Those are different motivations. The next force is identity. Collectors build part of their identity around what they own. I had become the person building Colts gold Prizm and gold vinyl runs. Other collectors knew about those projects. Breaking the runs apart meant changing something people associated with me. That can feel uncomfortable. It can also feel freeing. It allowed me to change. You're allowed to change. You do not one-of-one a past collecting goal permanent control over your collection. The fifth force is the need to justify a large purchase through future valuation. When you spend 30k on a card, it is tempting to build a market argument that makes the decision feel safe. Roman is one of the largest stars in wrestling. Not just now, but of all time. His market has room to grow. Wrestling cards are receiving more attention. Premium 1 of 1 have produced larger sales. All of those factors can be part of the evaluation. None of them guarantee an outcome. I cannot tell you that the card will be worth 50k or 75k or 100k in the future. I do not know. I did not buy it because a spreadsheet promised a return. I bought it because I believe the card was worth more to my collection than the money and card equity required to acquire it. And that is the decision I can defend. Before completing the deal, I needed to answer a few questions. Would I still want the card if no public sale price established a higher value? The answer is yes. Would I be comfortable owning the card if the wrestling market slowed down? The answer was yes. Was I prepared to sell cards I like to pay for it? Obviously yes. Did the card connect to a part of my life and collecting story that lasted for years? It did. Could my collection fund acquisition without taking priority over my family or my business? Yes. Did I trust the seller? I did. Did I understand the repayment process with Worf? Yes. Was I buying the card because it was available or because it fit where my collection was going? It fit where my collection was going. If I needed future appreciation to answer those questions, I should not bought the card. That does not mean future value is irrelevant. 30k is too much money to pretend value doesn't matter. I considered the market. I consider Roman's place in wrestling in wrestling history. I consider the growth of wrestling cards. I considered the supply of premium on card Roman autographs with worn material. I considered where the card sits within the Panini era. Price mattered. Value mattered. They did not replace the personal connection. The process of paying for the Roman showed me what I valued. That is what sacrifice can do for a collector. It creates ranking when you do not have unlimited money. Every yes carries a no. Yes to Roman meant no to keeping Halliburton Gold Prizm run. It meant not continuing my Colts Gold and Prizm and Gold vinyl run. It meant no to holding dozens of cards because they had been in my collection for years. That does not make the decision negative. I found the process energizing. My collection was changing because I made a choice. I was not waiting for the market to tell me what to do. I was not selling because I had stopped enjoying the hobby. I was selling because I knew what I wanted. There was fear in changing the collection. There was also relief. Some projects had really started to feel like work. And some cards had become items I maintained instead of pieces I connected with. And that Roman gave me a reason to address that. I did not lose the experience of building those collections. I converted part of the collections into a card that matched my current priorities. That is not the correct move for every collector. Fewer cards do not always make a better collection. More expensive cards do not always make a better collection. One of ones do not always make a better collection. The right collection is the one that reflects the collector. And for me, the transaction created more alignment. The deal will influence how I build my collection moving forward. The phrase I keep returning to is the best of the best. I need to define what that means. It does not mean every card needs to be the most expensive card of a player. It does not mean every card needs to be a one of one. It does not mean I will stop buying cards that are fun. The best cards for my collection need to carry more than one reason for ownership. They should connect to a person I care about. They should connect to a period, moment, team or story. That card should have a place within its product and scarcity should support the story. The purchase should fit my financial reality. The card still makes sense after the excitement of the acquisition ends. And that's the standard. The Roman has also changed how I look at runs. I still respect the work required to build them. I still value collectors who choose a lane and keep going I need to be honest about whether I enjoy the work myself. A collection project should not only survive because A collection project should not survive only because I'm afraid to stop if I'm checking boxes without feeling connected to cards. The projects and need to be reconsidered. That does not mean I will sell everything and place the full collection into a handful of slabs. It means each part of my collection needs a reason to remain. And the Roman will also make future purchases more challenging. Think that's a good thing? When one card carries this much meaning and required this much sacrifice, random purchases look different. A card can still be cool without needing to come home with me. I can appreciate a card without owning it. I can watch another collector acquire it and feel happy for them. I can wait. I can direct more energy towards cards that have the strongest connection to my life. Buying less is not about restricting the hobby. It gives the cards I buy more room to matter. I keep returning to relationships involved in this deal. Roscoe did not have to contact me. He knew the card would mean something to me. And the opportunity came from years of conversations before either of us knew the deal would exist. Nick did not have to provide the funding structure. Our relationship gave him enough context to understand my collection business and my plan. The local sales mattered, Andy and Shannon and any card exchange matter. Collectors who purchased cards through consignments mattered. Large deals can look like one collector acquiring one card. The deal involved a network of people and that does not mean relationships should be built on a transaction strategy. People can feel when you only contact them because you want access. The value comes from staying connected before you need anything. Recording the podcast, have the conversation, meet at the show, talk about the cards, learn about other people's collections, follow through and small commitments. Trust is built before the one of one becomes available. When the large decision arrives, the history makes a direct conversation possible. Roscoe and I still had to agree on price. We still had to work through payment. The relationship did not make the card cheap. It gave us confidence to work through the details. And that work is something. The price of The Roman was 30k. The real cost was more personal. It was the quantity colts collection Halliburton run 60 cards. I gave up through consignment. I was letting go of work I had completed. It was accepting the parts of my collection no longer reflected where I wanted to go. And that is why the card means more to me than it did when Roscoe first sent his message. I know what it required. I know which cards help bring it home. I know which Conversations made it possible. I know what the card represents. The Roman is not standing alone in my collection. The history of outgoing cards is part of his story. That is the part no price guide will record. As we wrap this up, just want to say you do not need to spend 30k to face this type of decision. Your number might be 300, might be a thousand, might be 5,000. The amount changes. The questions remain. Does this card connect to your life? Would you still want it if the market stopped validating the purchase? What would you need to sell? Are you willing to sell those cards? Put the outgoing cards in front of you. Make the trade visible. Look at what will leave. Think about what each card has already given you. Then decide which side better represents the collector you are today. I'm grateful Roscoe reached out. I'm grateful we were able to have a direct conversation. I'm grateful for Nick and the Wharf sports cards and their ability to create structure that worked for everyone. I'm grateful to every person who purchased a card I sold. I'm grateful for the collections I broke apart. They gave me years of enjoyment. They helped me understand what I wanted. Then they helped me acquire a card that brings together my wrestling fandom, my return to collecting, the bloodline story, Roman's title run, and the direction of my collection. The purchase price might have been $30,000, but the value to me is the clarity the decision created. My name's Brett. I collect sports cards. I create content about sports cards and collecting here on the Stacking Slabs Network. I appreciate your attention, your passion. I appreciate you spending part of your week here. Take a look at your collection this week. Find one project you are continuing because it still means something to you. Then find one project you're continuing because you already started it. And be honest with the difference. You enjoyed this episode. Hit the follow button. Tell a damn friend. Happy collecting. Take care. We'll talk to you soon.

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