#1: Welcome to the Weekly Rip
👋 Hello, I’m Brett from the Stacking Slabs Podcast and welcome you each week to my newsletter the Weekly Rip. The goal of this newsletter is to elevate the people who make the Hobby better.
What’s up everyone?
I decided to create the Weekly Rip as a way to share some of the great happenings in the Hobby on a weekly basis.
Yes, I know I do this on the podcast, but I’m a firm believer that a rising tide lifts all ships…or something like that.
I want this newsletter to serve as an opportunity to share Hobby news and share content from other passionate collectors in the Hobby.
This newsletter is for the collector.
This is for the Hobby participant that makes purchases both their heart and mind.
I learned this from Adam who is the editor and curator of the Basketball Card Fanatic.
Adam is one of many contributors that make this Hobby a better place and this newsletter will serve as a platform to help promote all of the greats.
Let’s get this party started. 🎉
🌊PSA Making Waves This Week
My personal take is that the elevation of pricing was inevitable.
I’m happy that Nat is in charge now. He’s one of us.
He has the Hobby’s best interest at hand and he has a business to run.
Here are the 3 things that I am hopeful for on the other side of this:
This prevents people from sending a bunch of junk that impedes delivery timelines
This opens the door for other grading options to find pricing and packaging that fills the gaps that PSA might leave with their increases.
Turns the tide on the PSA slab being more of a collectible than a commodity
I’m a big fan of the Card Talk guys. I think Tyler, Lou, and Ryan do a kick ass job of sharing trends and news in the Hobby.
I listen to their podcast on my walk during lunch every Wednesday.
They do a great job of breaking down the PSA news.
Listen here if you want more coverage on it.
🏈Football Cards Baby!
I love football cards and I talked about the reasons why I thought football cards were gaining more traction than ever this offseason on my Wednesday episode of SSP this week.
Spoiler alert if you haven’t heard the episode yet.
A big reason is TOM F’N BRADY.
This guy…
After winning his 7th Lombardi people are salivating to get their hands on TB12 cards in Bucs gear.
Prizm is out. Optic just hit. NT, Flawless, and Select are on the way.
Brady winning his 7th is the best possible thing to happen to the football card market.
How’s this for a ripple effect?
J.J. Watt goes to the Cardinals and my favorite Kyler Murray card that I own (Yes - that’s a disclaimer in my own newsletter) jumps overnight!
I’m sure this will be the first of many Card Ladder screen grabs I share in the Weekly Rip.
If you aren’t already using Card Ladder you should.
Sign up using my link. It’s a small way you can show your support for SSP and The Weekly Rip.
I am a massive fan of Chris, Josh, and Kristina. If you are reading this newsletter you all know them already.
Support them any way you can. They do the Hobby good every week.
How about that late night chat on the Crossover every Friday?
It’s an event and some of my favorite time in the Hobby.
The best thing to happen to the Crossover was it being delivered in audio format every week.
I’m old and can’t stay up for hours 2 and 3.
I’ve started my week with it every week since it’s been released and it has been awesome.
Love all of the insights.
P.S. Chris will be joining me next Friday on the Hobby Hustle to break down all of the record breaking sales in the March Goldin Auctions
⚡I’m NOT a Pokémon guy, but respect the Hustle
Are you following Ben Carlos?
This guy creates incredibly compelling content.
I’m not a big YouTube guy, but he’s grabbed my attention with his work.
I love his creativity and ambition.
Check out his video involving Logan Paul.
This is what you call shooting your shot.
Also, I DM with Ben about wrestling. Extra bonus points.
“What sets could dethrone Prizm, Optic, or Select over the long term?”
This was a question that was sent to me by @drakes_pc for the Instagram Live I did around the All Star Game with my man Greg (@thepackprophets).
I didn’t get a chance to address it on the live stream, but wanted to give this question some time here.
For context I am going to address this question directly for basketball cards.
I’m not sure my answer would differ much across other sports, but here we go.
I think most people look at these 3 sets as the Big 3 because they bring the most synergy together from all of the different personas in the Hobby.
“Investors” prefer these sets because they are the most liquid and benchmark products to transact on.
Collectors enjoy these products because their parallels have provided a ton of chase opportunities around certain players and sets.
Go check out my conversation with Ji (@theluckyshow05) if you haven’t already.
Although, it some what fell into his lap the pursuit of Stephen Curry Gold Prizm cards validates the importance of that parallel to a hardcore Steph collector like Ji.
These products are all different and don’t want to generalize them by grouping them together, but I think you can all understand the spirit of the question and my job of trying to answer it with some ration.
I think it will be really hard to dethrone Prizm from it’s place.
There is so much brand equity built up from all of the various personas in the Hobby.
The buzz around LaMelo Ball is reaching great heights right around the time of Prizm 2020-2021 drop.
Did you see this kid drop 30 on the Blazers?
And then get the jersey swap treatment from Senior Melo?
Rookies drive the Hobby and these moments matter.
Look out. This product is bound for the $2k box and beyond.
Absurd?
Of course, but we operate in a market that is predicated on hype.
Prizm is the standard and collectors must recognize this.
While I’m not sure Prizm will ever be pushed off it’s pedestal I think there is a lot of opportunity for collectors to shift their focus on other new (and old) products that are happening on the basketball card front.
You’ve probably all see my crazy pursuit of grabbing all the NBA Award Winners each year that the Galactic parallels have been released in the Revolution product.
I posted my most recent pick up yesterday:
I think personal pursuits like this are important and can help elevate products like Revolution who might not get as much love.
Revolution not only has the Galactic parallel, but also on card autos.
It’s vastly underrated and I think comes in at a decent price point when compared to the rest of the big 3.
Finally, I think the introduction of new products like Panini One and One can help shift the focus to sets that are created and built for the collector.
I mean what collector wouldn’t want to have this moment stored in their PC?
👑Luka: $4.6 M Reasons He’s The Hobby’s New King
I talk a lot about how I’m an NBA League Pass Degenerate.
Straight up junkie, yo.
Shoot it in my veins and let me slowly fall asleep with the soft sound of the basketball leather hitting the net.
I’m from Indiana.
In 49 other states it’s just basketball
In Indiana it’s a religion.
I’m being dead serious. This is what we do here.
Hoosiers, Larry Bird, Bob Knight, High School Hysteria…the list goes on.
Want your mind blown? 🤯
That is the list of top 12 biggest high school basketball venues in the country.
11 of them are right here in Indiana.
The importance of the game is learned early here.
Everyone has a basketball hoop in their drive way or on their garage.
Basketball is the culture.
We respect the game.
We believe it’s significance.
We are honored and proud to call this THE BASKETBALL STATE.
Need more confirmation?
Check out this list of the 155 ABA and NBA players born in Indiana.
I’ve got a lot of love for my state and that translates into an appreciation for Luka Dončić.
Luka plays basketball with a reverence for the game.
Yes, his stats are ridiculous, but he cares more about winning.
Hoosiers can sniff this out from a mile away.
I’ve been watching Luka a lot this year.
He loves basketball and I love watching him play.
His cards have been significant to every Hobby conversation in every Hobby circle for a while now.
He’s the Hobby Heart Throb and this was confirmed with the sale of his One of One NT Logoman earlier this week.
A deal put together by power collector Shyne105 .
We should have been shook by the news, but we all just had this vibe of we are just getting started.
By the way, I can’t see Shyne’s name without thinking of this:
I hope you enjoyed the first edition of the Weekly Rip.
I ask you two things in closing:
Do whatever you can to use your skills to give back to the Hobby - we need it more than ever
Please share this newsletter with whoever you think can benefit
Happy collecting,
Brett (@stackingslabs)
P.S. I just dropped my episode with Sierra (@california_card_collector) today. He’s one of the greats. Go give this a listen.