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There’s been a lot of buzz around the Topps Industry Conference this week. Watching it all unfold from a distance – amid a frenzy of exciting hobby updates – I couldn’t help but notice what wasn’t being said.
There was a clear opportunity to acknowledge what a lot of people are already feeling but don’t always have the language for. The pace and pressure of the hobby have fundamentally changed, and most collectors haven’t fully caught up to what that actually means. The way products are now released, marketed, and consumed has created an environment that moves faster than most people can realistically engage with in a responsible way.
That moment came and went. The conversation stayed focused on growth, access, and momentum, which makes sense from a business standpoint. At the same time, the Fanatics credit card announcement made that direction even more obvious. It was framed around priority, exclusivity, and first access to new products, and it was immediately followed by a wave of releases designed to generate excitement and demand. None of that is accidental. It’s coordinated, intentional, and effective.
For someone trying to collect with intention, that creates a real internal conflict. You can go into a week with a plan to be more disciplined, more selective, and more grounded, and then something like this gets introduced and shifts the entire environment around you. It’s the equivalent of trying to clean up your diet and suddenly being handed unlimited access to something you know will test that commitment. The reaction you feel in that moment isn’t a personal failure. It’s a response to a system that is designed to create that exact reaction.
That doesn’t make the industry inherently evil or malicious, and it doesn’t make collectors careless. It means the system is doing what it was built to do. Once you fully understand that, the conversation becomes less about blame and more about awareness. The hobby is already evolving in this direction, and it’s not going to slow down anytime soon. There are too many incentives reinforcing the current system for anything to change overnight.
If the system isn’t going to change, then the responsibility shifts to us as collectors to adjust how we engage with it and to stay vigilant in how we navigate it.
There is a growing group of collectors who are trying to engage with it differently. They still enjoy the hobby, they still want to participate, but they’re paying closer attention to how these environments influence their decisions. That perspective isn’t about pushing back against the industry. It’s about adding context that currently isn’t being represented in those larger conversations.
Over time, this perspective deserves a place in environments like these. Not to go against the grain or challenge everything being presented, but to make sure the full picture is being represented and acknowledged by the people shaping it. There is a meaningful difference between participating in something and actually understanding how it works.
This concept brings me back to a scene in The Matrix. In the final scene, Neo appears to be dodging bullets through speed and control. What’s actually happening is that he’s seeing the system for what it is – the code behind the matrix. He can finally understand the underlying structure, and that awareness changes how he responds to everything in front of him.
That’s the shift. When you start to recognize the patterns, the pacing, and the incentives, your decisions begin to slow down. You create space between the stimulus and your response. That space is where control starts to come back into the picture.
This shift in mindset doesn’t make you immune to the environment, and it doesn’t make it effortless. It simply gives you a better chance to stay aligned with what you actually want out of the hobby. In a space that continues to move faster and push harder for engagement, that awareness becomes one of the most valuable tools you can have.
#CollectorsMD
Seeing the system clearly doesn’t eliminate temptation, but it gives you the awareness to move through it without losing control.
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