The Hobby Trinity Was Never Supposed to Become This
An update about where we've been, where we're going, and why I believe the best days are still ahead.
If you’ve noticed I’ve been a little quieter lately, you’re right.
I haven’t disappeared, burned out, or sold the collection to buy a bass boat. Although, if Topps announces another 37 parallels of the same card next week, I may at least browse Facebook Marketplace.
The truth is a lot less dramatic: I’ve been building.
Not in a fancy Silicon Valley office, either. My version of a boardroom usually involves baseball cards spread across the dining room table, a laptop with far too many tabs open, one kid asking for a snack, another asking if we can rip one more pack, and my wife wondering how penny sleeves have somehow ended up in every room of the house.
It’s not exactly Wall Street. It’s probably closer to Main Street, U.S.A., and honestly, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Before I explain what I’ve been working on and where The Hobby Trinity is headed, I think it’s important to go back to why this exists in the first place.
It Started With My Son
When I started The Hobby Trinity, I wasn’t trying to build a brand, start a business, or become a content creator. I was simply trying to write about baseball cards.
More specifically, I was writing about my son helping me find my way back into the hobby.
Like a lot of people who return after being away for years, I came back with childhood memories, an adult paycheck, and absolutely no idea how much the hobby had changed. It didn’t take long to realize that combination could get expensive.
I made mistakes. I chased hype because everyone else was chasing it. I bought cards because I convinced myself I would never see another copy. I confused a great player with a great buy and paid prices that make me laugh now—or cringe, depending on which card we’re talking about.
The funny thing is, I still make mistakes. I’m human, and I’m always going to get some things wrong. Hopefully the mistakes are smaller and less expensive than they used to be, but they still happen.
The difference now is that I understand them better.
Every bad buy taught me something. Every flip that didn’t go according to plan taught me something. Every auction I should have skipped made me a little more disciplined the next time around.
Eventually, I started to wonder whether those lessons might be useful to someone else.
That’s really where The Hobby Trinity came from. I wasn’t trying to tell people what they had to buy, pretend I had all the answers, or act like every prospect was the next superstar. I wanted to help people getting into—or finding their way back into—the hobby avoid some of the expensive lessons I had already paid for.
If I could save someone from making one $100 mistake, that felt like a pretty good day.
Over time, one idea kept showing up in almost everything I wrote:
Fund the hobby with the hobby.
Buy smarter. Sell intentionally. Protect the bankroll. Let your flips help pay for the cards you actually want to keep.
And if you happen to make a little extra along the way, put some of it into the life account. Take your spouse to dinner. Buy your kids ice cream. Add a little to the Disney vacation fund.
Baseball cards should make life better. They shouldn’t compete with it.
A Reminder on Friday Night
Friday nights have become Family Rip Night in our house. For a while, Pokémon had taken over and baseball cards had quietly slipped into second place.
Then last Friday, completely out of nowhere, my son told me he wanted baseball cards instead of Pokémon.
That probably doesn’t sound like a huge moment, but it was to me. It reminded me exactly why this whole thing started.
It wasn’t about followers, subscribers, impressions, or algorithms. It was about a dad and his son sitting around a table opening packs together.
Everything else has grown from there.
So, Where Have I Been?
The short answer is that I’ve been building.
The longer answer is that somewhere along the way, The Hobby Trinity stopped being just a newsletter.
Substack came first because writing was the easiest way to document what I was learning and share our journey. As more people started reading, I wanted a place where conversations didn’t disappear after a few comments or get buried under the next post.
That’s how Discord happened.
I wanted to build a place where collectors could ask questions, share pickups, celebrate wins, talk through mistakes, and get to know each other. Discord gave The Hobby Trinity something the newsletter couldn’t provide on its own: an actual community.
After that, I ran into another problem.
You can build the best community in the world, but it doesn’t help many people if nobody knows it exists.
That’s when I started taking X seriously.
The goal was never to become an influencer. Honestly, that has never interested me. I wanted more people to discover The Hobby Trinity, find the newsletter, and join the Discord community.
What I underestimated was just how different X really is.
It’s fast, loud, and relentless. You open it to check one notification, and suddenly you’re 45 minutes deep into a debate about whether a color match deserves a 30% premium.
It’s basically the hobby version of trying to rope-drop Magic Kingdom in July. You start the morning with a plan, and twenty minutes later you’re sweating, confused, and wondering how you ended up on the other side of the park.
While all of that was happening, I was still writing articles, building Discord, creating graphics, researching players, updating the Prospect Tracker, working on spreadsheets, and teaching myself enough coding to be dangerous.
Somewhere in there, I was also trying to be a decent husband and dad.
Eventually, I realized I was spending more time moving information between platforms than I was actually improving it. I was updating the same thing in Substack, Discord, spreadsheets, graphics, and X. The more The Hobby Trinity expanded, the more cumbersome the process became.
That wasn’t sustainable, and it wasn’t the mission.
Building Instead of Posting
Over the last few months, I’ve spent less time asking, “What should I post today?” and more time asking, “What would actually help collectors tomorrow?”
That change in thinking is the main reason I’ve been quieter.
Instead of simply creating more content, I’ve been building the systems behind it. Instead of copying the same information into four different places, I’ve been working on ways to automate the repetitive parts so I can spend more time analyzing what the data actually means.
A post can live for a few hours. A good article might stick around longer. But a useful tool or resource can keep helping people after the timeline has moved on.
That’s where most of my time has gone.
What I’ve Been Building
Behind the scenes, I’ve been working on a website that will finally give The Hobby Trinity a real home. I’ve been rebuilding The Front Office, creating better Discord tools, and developing Market Wires, dashboards, a Buy Line Engine, and a much stronger Prospect Tracker.
The goal isn’t to overwhelm people with even more information. The hobby already has plenty of information.
The goal is to make the information useful.
Some days it feels like I’m building a baseball card company. Other days it feels like I’m arguing with one line of code that insists something that worked perfectly yesterday has never worked in the history of computers.
Both are true.
The Buy Line
If there is one idea that has become the heartbeat of everything I’m building, it’s The Buy Line.
The question isn’t simply, “What did the last auction sell for?” or “What are people paying today?”
The better question is:
At what price does this card actually make sense?
That sounds simple, but it changes the way you look at almost every buying decision.
A great player doesn’t automatically make it a great card. A great card doesn’t automatically make it a great buy. Even a great buy still needs a realistic exit plan.
That’s why you’ve seen the same framework show up again and again:
📈 Player Signal
💳 Card Signal
📊 Market Signal
✅ Boardroom Verdict
It started as a way to organize my own thoughts. Now it’s becoming the foundation behind the tools, articles, graphics, and market research I’m building.
The goal isn’t to predict the future perfectly. Nobody can do that.
The goal is to make better decisions with the information we have.
A Disney Realization
At some point, I realized I had been thinking about The Hobby Trinity the wrong way.
Disney doesn’t just build rides. Disney builds worlds.
The rides support the movies. The movies support the parks. The parks support the hotels, merchandise, food, and memories people take home with them. Every part makes the other parts stronger.
That’s how I see The Hobby Trinity now.
The newsletter isn’t the destination. Discord isn’t the destination. X isn’t the destination, and the website won’t be the destination either.
They’re all connected.
An article creates an idea. A Discord conversation creates a question. A tool helps answer that question. A better decision creates the next story. X helps more people discover the whole thing.
Everything feeds everything else.
That’s what I’m trying to build: not one platform, but an ecosystem that helps collectors make smarter decisions while still remembering why they collect in the first place.
To The Front Office
Before I wrap this up, I want to speak directly to The Front Office members.
First, thank you.
Seriously, thank you for spending your hobby dollars with me. There are a lot of newsletters, creators, communities, and tools you could support. The fact that you’ve chosen to support The Hobby Trinity means more than I can properly put into words.
I also appreciate the heck out of you for continuing to support it while I’ve been less active here. I know the articles haven’t been as frequent, and I know the Prospect Tracker hasn’t been updated the way I wanted it to be.
That has bothered me more than you probably realize.
I haven’t forgotten about you. In fact, much of what I’ve been building has been designed specifically for you.
The Prospect Tracker is the best example. I always believed it could become one of the most valuable resources inside The Front Office, but the process behind it became too cumbersome. Each update meant touching multiple platforms, checking several sources, updating spreadsheets, and then trying to turn all of that into something readable and actionable.
It worked for a while, but it was never going to scale.
Instead of continuing to patch the process together, I decided to rebuild it.
The good news is that the data is flowing now. I have a much more automated system in place that can keep the information updated more frequently without requiring me to manually rebuild everything each time.
Now the challenge is turning that data into something that is genuinely useful.
Anyone can dump numbers into a spreadsheet. That isn’t what I want to give you.
I want to create something actionable—something that helps you quickly understand what is moving, what deserves attention, and where the market may be creating an opportunity.
The system still needs more testing. I want to verify that the data is accurate, that the updates are behaving the way they should, and that the final product is actually helpful instead of being another noisy dashboard full of numbers.
Once I’m confident it is working the way I need it to, Front Office members will have access inside Discord.
I’ve also got a few other things in store for you in the near future as a way to show my appreciation. You’ve continued to support The Hobby Trinity while I’ve been building behind the scenes, and I don’t take that lightly.
Your support has helped make this possible. My job now is to make sure your membership becomes more valuable because of it.
What Comes Next
The next chapter of The Hobby Trinity isn’t about posting more for the sake of posting more. It’s about building something more useful.
That means a website that ties everything together, a stronger Front Office, a better Prospect Tracker, the Buy Line Engine, Market Wires, better research, and more useful conversations.
It also means more thoughtful content.
I still want to write articles, break down players and cards, share market thoughts, and talk about the parts of this hobby that make no financial sense but matter anyway. The difference is that I want each piece of content to connect to something bigger instead of disappearing into the timeline.
I’m not trying to build the largest hobby community.
I’m trying to build one of the most helpful.
If we can make better decisions together, we’ll enjoy the hobby longer. We’ll protect our bankrolls a little better, build collections we’re proud of, and hopefully have a little left over for the things that matter outside the hobby.
What Isn’t Changing
For all the talk about websites, dashboards, automation, and data, the heart of The Hobby Trinity hasn’t changed.
I’m still going to overthink Braves pitching prospects. I’m still going to rip packs with my boys on Friday nights. I’m still going to buy cards that make absolutely no financial sense because they make me smile.
I’m also still going to make mistakes.
Hopefully fewer than I used to, but I’m human. That part isn’t going anywhere.
None of this started with software. It started with baseball cards. It started with my son. It started with wanting to help people enjoy the hobby without making every expensive mistake I made along the way.
Everything I’m building now is simply an extension of that original mission.
So yes, I’ve been a little quieter.
Not because I’ve stopped caring about The Hobby Trinity or lost my passion for the hobby. Honestly, I’m more excited about both than I’ve been in a long time.
I’ve been quieter because I’ve been building something I hope will last.
Whether you’ve been here since the first article or found The Hobby Trinity yesterday, thank you for reading, trusting me, and spending a little of your hobby time here.
I truly believe the best days of The Hobby Trinity are still ahead.
Now let’s get back to baseball cards.
See you in the boardroom.