The Weekly Rip 5.10.26 [Influence]
We begin to explore the question can collectors truly separate personal taste from social influence in a hobby built around visibility and market validation?
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The Weekly Rip
Your Stacking Slabs Sunday Update
May 10, 2026
I’ve been ultra obsessive with combing through my collection in the recent weeks.
It’s led me to the topic of influence. A pursuit to analyze my own personal collection and perhaps yours.
When you look at your collection, what are you really seeing?
Is it a set of decisions you made on your own?
Or is it a trail of moments where the room helped you decide?
That question gets uncomfortable fast.
Because you want to believe your taste is yours.
You want to believe the cards you chase say something about you.
Not about the feed.
Not about the last sale.
Not about what everyone else already agreed matters.
But if you’re honest, the line isn’t clean.
It never has been.
You don’t start collecting in a vacuum.
You learn what exists from other collectors.
You learn what matters from sales.
You learn what’s important from repetition.
You learn what’s safe from consensus.
Before your taste ever feels like your own, it’s already been shaped.
That doesn’t make your taste fake.
It makes it influenced.
And most collectors never stop long enough to separate the two.
So the real question isn’t whether social influence exists.
It does.
It’s everywhere.
The real question is whether you can recognize it while it’s happening.
Because if you can’t, you don’t have taste.
You have alignment.
And alignment feels good.
It gives you language.
It gives you confidence.
It gives you cover.
When you buy a card that everyone already understands, you don’t just get the card.
You get the story.
You get the comps.
You get the approval.
You get to be right with other people.
That’s powerful.
And it’s dangerous.
Because the more you rely on the room, the less you build anything of your own.
You start calling it research.
But a lot of the time, it’s borrowed certainty.
And borrowed certainty is quiet.
It doesn’t feel like influence.
It feels like clarity.
That’s how it works.
You see the same card posted again and again.
You hear the same arguments.
You watch the same prices climb.
At some point, it stops feeling like persuasion.
It starts feeling like truth.
But truth in this hobby is rarely that clean.
Price is not taste.
Visibility is not meaning.
Recognition is not understanding.
They overlap.
But they are not the same.
And when you confuse them, your collection starts to drift.
You stop asking what the card does for you.
You start asking what the card says to other people.
That shift is subtle.
But it changes everything.
Because once the audience shows up in your decision, you’re no longer collecting.
You’re performing.
And performance has a cost.
It speeds you up.
It pushes you toward what’s legible.
It rewards what gets understood fast.
It makes it harder to sit with something that needs time.
It makes it harder to trust your own reaction.
You start to feel urgency when the room feels urgency.
You start to feel conviction when the room feels conviction.
You start to want things faster.
Not because you studied them deeper.
But because the volume around them got louder.
That’s not realization.
That’s synchronization.
And if you’ve been collecting long enough, you’ve felt the other side of it too.
The quiet after.
The moment when the card finally shows up.
The noise is gone.
The comments are gone.
The energy is gone.
And all that’s left is the card.
Sometimes it hits.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
That gap tells you more than any comp ever will.
Because it forces a simple question.
Did you want the card?
Or did you want the moment around it?
Most collectors don’t ask that question.
They move on to the next chase.
The next signal.
The next opportunity to feel aligned again.
And the collection fills up.
But it doesn’t get clearer.
It gets denser.
More cards.
More activity.
Less point of view.
That’s the trap.
It looks like progress from the outside.
But inside, something is off.
You can feel it if you pay attention.
You spend more time checking prices than studying the card.
You feel relief after buying more than excitement after owning.
You need other people to understand the purchase right away.
Those are signals.
Not that you’re doing it wrong.
But that your motives are mixed.
And mixed motives are normal.
The problem starts when you pretend they aren’t.
Because if you never admit the influence, you never build any resistance to it.
And without resistance, there is no independence.
So what do you do with that?
You don’t try to remove the room.
You can’t.
The room is part of the hobby.
It teaches you.
It sharpens you.
It exposes you to things you would never find on your own.
You need it.
But you can’t let it do all the work.
You need space between what you see and what you do.
You need a moment where it’s just you and the card.
No comps.
No posts.
No validation.
Just a question.
What does this do for me?
Not what does it do in the market.
Not what does it signal to other collectors.
What does it do for me?
If you can’t answer that clearly, the room will answer it for you.
And once it does, it’s hard to take that back.
You can also test yourself.
If nobody could ever see the card…
If you could never post it…
If nobody would ever comment on it…
Would you still want it?
That question cuts through a lot.
It forces you to separate the object from the audience.
And when you do that, your answers change.
Sometimes a lot.
You can slow yourself down too.
When a card gets loud, wait.
Let the moment pass.
Let the energy drop.
See what’s left.
If the interest holds, it’s yours.
If it fades, it never was.
And you can be honest about your intent.
Some buys are about meaning.
Some are about movement.
Call them what they are.
When you mix those frames, you confuse yourself.
You expect the market to validate taste.
You expect taste to behave like a trade.
That’s where frustration shows up.
Clarity fixes a lot of that.
But the hardest part is this.
You have to ask yourself why you’re buying.
Not the easy version.
The real version.
Are you selecting something you respect?
Or are you trying to feel more certain?
Are you building something?
Or are you stabilizing something?
Those answers matter.
Because collecting can give you both.
Meaning and control.
And if you don’t know which one you’re chasing, you’ll pay for one and tell yourself you got the other.
That’s how collections lose their voice.
So can you fully separate your taste from social influence?
I don’t think so.
And chasing that idea will mess you up.
But you can get better at seeing the influence.
You can get better at catching it in real time.
You can get better at deciding anyway.
That’s the work.
Not purity.
Not isolation.
Awareness.
And choice.
Because once you accept that the room is always there, something changes.
You stop trying to escape it.
You start learning how to stand inside it.
Without letting it speak for you.
That’s when your collection starts to feel different.
Not because it’s louder.
But because it’s yours.
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Reissue: Are You Collecting for You or for Them?
Roscoe (@lonnieskywalkerivcollector) on Staying True in a Visible Hobby
What happens when your taste runs against what everyone else is paying attention to?
That’s the tension I kept coming back to in my conversation with Roscoe.
Because the hobby today is built on visibility.
What gets posted.
What gets liked.
What gets validated.
And it’s easy to think your taste is your own.
Until you start asking where it came from.
What I Saw in Roscoe’s Approach
Roscoe’s collection didn’t start with validation.
It started with belief.
He saw something in Rhea Ripley before most people did.
Before the main events.
Before the spotlight.
Before the broader hobby caught on.
And instead of waiting for confirmation, he acted.
That’s what stood out.
He didn’t need the hobby to tell him he was right.
He trusted what he saw.
How He Navigated Influence
That doesn’t mean influence wasn’t there.
It always is.
We all see the same posts.
The same sales.
The same conversations.
But Roscoe didn’t let that dictate his direction.
He used it as context.
Not as a compass.
There’s a difference.
The hobby can show you what exists.
But it shouldn’t decide what matters.
Roscoe kept that line clear.
What This Reveals About Collecting
This is where the real question sits.
Can you actually separate your taste from the influence around you?
Or are they always blended together?
The truth is, most collectors don’t know.
Because they never stop to ask.
They react.
They follow.
They assume their interest is original when it’s been shaped by what they’ve seen.
Roscoe’s approach forces a different level of awareness.
He made a decision early.
Then he stuck with it.
And because of that, his collection reflects his conviction.
Not the crowd.
What This Means for You
If you want to understand your own taste, you have to slow down.
You have to question it.
Why do I like this?
Would I still like it if no one else did?
Am I drawn to this—or am I responding to it?
Those questions aren’t easy.
But they’re necessary.
Because the clearer you are on your own taste, the less the noise controls you.
The Truth About Taste and Influence
You can’t remove influence from the hobby.
It’s everywhere.
But you can decide how much weight it carries.
Roscoe’s collection works because he made that decision.
He didn’t eliminate influence.
He managed it.
He stayed anchored in what he saw first.
And that’s why his collection feels consistent.
It reflects him.
Not the moment.
Because in a hobby built on visibility, the collectors who last are the ones who can see clearly.
Not just what’s popular.
But what’s personal.
I appreciate your support for Stacking Slabs. Tell a damn friend.
Take care,
Brett
“Price is not taste” is an idea that resonates during the bull market when card prices stop making sense, especially when you do comparative analysis with other cards that you can get for much cheaper and have better fundamentals when you do the research.