In this episode of The Collector’s Compass, Alyx sits down with Paul Baldwin Jr.—aka @Paullydoughnuts⁩—founder of #GetToStackin, trusted hobby voice, and one of the more outspoken, community-rooted personalities in the space today.

Paully brings a grounded, collector-first perspective to a moment in the hobby that feels as exciting as it does uncertain. With 20K+ followers across his socials and years of experience transacting and building trust within the community, he’s become a voice many collectors have turned to as the hobby has started feeling louder, faster, and harder to make sense of.

Alyx and Paully unpack the current state of the hobby from multiple angles—including Fanatics’ branded credit card, this year's Topps Industry Conference, the continued financialization of fandom, and what it all means for where the hobby is headed.

They discuss the return of iconic products like Topps Chrome Football and Bowman Basketball, the Topps licensing takeover, and why modern wax prices have reached a point where we're starting to question who today’s products are really built for.

The conversation centers on trust, transparency, and accountability, honing in on the recent Whatnot controversy, lawsuits, repack concerns, and the growing tension between community and commerce in the live-selling and breaking ecosystem.

They explore what’s changing in the hobby, what's worth protecting, and whether the space is evolving in a way that feels healthier, more sustainable, and more aligned with the people who helped build it.

At its core, this episode focuses on a bigger question: are we building a better hobby—or just a faster, more expensive, more emotionally volatile one?

Topics covered include:

• Paully’s roots in the hobby and why his voice resonates

• The launch of #GetToStackin and building trust in the community

• Fanatics’ new branded credit card and what it signals

• The financialization of fandom and hobby participation

• Topps’ growing influence and the new licensing era

• The return of Topps Chrome Football and Bowman Basketball

• The skyrocketing cost of wax and accessibility concerns

• Whether modern product is still built for real collectors

• The recent Whatnot controversy, lawsuits, and trust issues

• Repack culture, transparency, and accountability in the hobby

• What still feels worth protecting in today’s hobby

• Whether the hobby is becoming healthier or just more intense

If you’ve been feeling both excited and uneasy about where the hobby is headed, this conversation will hit home. Growth isn’t always the same thing as progress.

Subscribe, share, and join the conversation around awareness, accountability, and building a healthier relationship with collecting.

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Learn More About Paul & #GetToStackin:

Website: gettostackin.com

YT: @Paullydoughnuts

IG: @paullydoughnuts

X: @paullydoughnuts

Help for Problem Gambling: Call or Text 800-GAMBLER

This Episode of The Collector's Compass is sponsored by ‪All Touch Case, a premium display and protection solution designed to showcase your cards while keeping them safe. Use code COLLECTORSMD for 15% of your order. Collect. Protect. It’s a peace of mind.

#CollectorsMD | #RipResponsibly | #CollectResponsibly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E0cc_bWqGI&t=93s

Collectors MD is proud to officially launch A National Call To Action: Funding Responsible Collecting & Harm Reduction, a new initiative focused on increasing awareness, education, prevention, and support surrounding gambling-adjacent harm within modern collectible and digital consumer environments.

This initiative represents an important step forward as Collectors MD continues building bridges between the collectibles industry, public health organizations, recovery communities, councils, coalitions, creators, and community leaders.

Over the last several years, the collectibles ecosystem—along with many modern digital consumer industries—has increasingly adopted engagement mechanics centered around live selling, randomized products, auctions, constant stimulation, scarcity, and high-pressure purchasing environments. While these spaces continue to grow rapidly, more individuals, families, and organizations are also beginning to encounter emerging behavioral and financial harms without clear prevention or support infrastructure in place.

This initiative is not about attacking the hobby or pushing broad regulation. It is about recognition, education, prevention, harm reduction, and creating healthier long-term ecosystems through honest conversation and collaboration.

The petition calls for:

• Increased awareness surrounding gambling-adjacent behavioral harm

• Expanded public education and prevention efforts

• Greater collaboration between industry and behavioral health organizations

• Exploration of sustainable support and funding pathways

• Development of healthier responsible collecting standards moving forward

At Collectors MD, we’ve seen firsthand how rapidly these conversations are growing. Through peer support meetings, community outreach, partnerships, educational initiatives, and ongoing conversations with collectors and families, it has become increasingly clear that the current ecosystem lacks the infrastructure needed to properly address these emerging challenges.

This initiative is designed to help change that.

The goal is not to create fear around collecting. The goal is to create healthier environments where people can enjoy the hobby more sustainably, more intentionally, and with better support systems in place when problems arise.

We believe awareness and accountability can coexist with passion and enjoyment for the hobby.

Organizations, creators, professionals, collectors, and community leaders are now invited to formally support the initiative by signing the petition and helping encourage broader conversations surrounding responsible collecting and harm reduction.

This is about being proactive before the gap widens further.

Healthy ecosystems don’t happen by accident. They happen through honest conversations, collaboration, education, and a willingness to acknowledge where support systems need to evolve alongside the industries themselves.

Support. Accountability. Change.

Collect With Intention. Not Compulsion.
#CollectorsMD | #RipResponsibly | #CollectResponsibly

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https://form.jotform.com/261304600839150

Published February 07, 2026 | By Alyx E, Founder of Collectors MD

There’s no denying how much influence athletes, celebrities, and creators now carry beyond the field, screen, or stage. We see personal brands growing fast. Investments in sports teams, platforms, alternative assets, and entire hobby ecosystems. We’re even seeing major athletes launch their own branded hobby shops and break groups. Much of this is framed as passion projects or smart business moves, and often paired with meaningful charitable work through foundations and causes that matter.

But there’s a gap we rarely talk about.

We see celebrities endorsing casino and sportsbook ads every day. We see athletes collaborating with breakers, platforms, and high-velocity hobby formats. We see public figures entering collecting spaces that are increasingly expensive, speculative, and psychologically intense. What we don’t often see is that same visibility used to talk about mental health, addiction, harm reduction, or the realities many everyday collectors quietly struggle with.

The average collector today is largely priced out of the hobby. Box prices have exploded. Access has shifted from curiosity and connection to pressure and urgency. For younger collectors, or those without financial literacy or awareness of risk, the harm isn’t abstract. It’s already happening. And you don’t need a clinical background to see it. You just need to look at who’s being pulled in and who’s being left behind.

It’s hard to be heard when you’re speaking to a crowd that’s facing the other way. Awareness travels farther when those with reach and influence help amplify the conversation.

This isn’t a call-out. It’s a call-in.

Imagine if the same platforms used to promote products also helped normalize conversations about balance. About boundaries. About knowing when something fun starts to feel heavy. Support now exists for people navigating these spaces, but awareness doesn’t. There are thousands, maybe millions of people who don’t know help is even an option.

Using influence to point people toward responsible collecting, responsible participation, and real support doesn’t take away from the hobby. It protects it. It makes it safer. It keeps more people in the room long-term.

We don’t need perfection. We don’t need moralizing. We need visibility, care, and a willingness to say: there’s another side to this, and you don’t have to figure it out alone.

#CollectorsMD
Influence carries responsibility, and using it to serve the greater good matters deeply.

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Did you know you can now set deposit and time limits in the Whatnot app? This feature was added to help create a safer and healthier collecting environment.

It’s encouraging to see major hobby platforms stepping up and implementing meaningful changes, especially as Collectors MD and its mission-aligned partners continue advocating for reform. The real question is, is it enough?

Published December 22, 2025 | By Alyx E, Founder of Collectors MD

One of the most uncomfortable truths about both the modern hobby and the broader gambling ecosystem is this: technology moves faster than oversight can keep up. Platforms evolve, monetization accelerates, and new behavioral mechanics are introduced long before regulators, legal frameworks, or consumer protections are prepare to respond. That gap is where fraud, manipulation, and bad actors quietly thrive.

In the hobby, we see this play out in familiar ways. Shill bidding that artificially inflates prices. Burner accounts used to influence auction outcomes. Private consignment arrangements that blur the line between market discovery and market control. And live-selling environments where comps are selectively presented, urgency is manufactured, outcomes are framed as inevitable, and accountability vanishes the moment the stream ends. Layer in mystery repacks, vague odds, so-called “guaranteed case hits”, and algorithm-driven pressure, and the conversation shifts entirely. This is no longer about collecting—it’s about engineered risk, designed for velocity and volume, operating without a clear referee on the field.

When high-stakes behavior operates in a legal gray area, power concentrates with the loudest voices—and consequences silently disappear.

What makes this especially dangerous is that there is no single body watching over any of it. No gaming commission. No consumer protection authority specifically tasked with the hobby. No required disclosures, audits, or enforcement mechanisms. In many ways, it really is the Wild West—where innovation is celebrated, but responsibility is optional, and harm is often written off as “buyer beware”.

So who should be overseeing this? In an ideal world, it’s shared responsibility—platforms enforcing standards, manufacturers tightening language and transparency, marketplaces flagging manipulation, and regulators modernizing definitions of gambling-like behavior in digital-first environments. But until that happens, pretending the problem doesn’t exist only benefits those exploiting the gap.

So what do we do in the meantime? We slow down. We educate ourselves. We spread positive awareness. We name what we’re seeing instead of normalizing it. We stop equating legality with safety. And we build communities that prioritize transparency, informed consent, and accountability over hype, volume, and pressure. Progress doesn’t wait for formal regulation or reform—it begins with awareness and collective action.

The hobby doesn’t need to be dismantled. But it does need adults in the room.

#CollectorsMD
When systems outpace the law, responsibility doesn’t disappear—it concentrates with the people operating inside them.

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