Why Good Outcomes Don’t Always Mean Good Decisions

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If you’ve ever opened a pack and pulled a low-numbered chase card, sold a card for double what you paid, or lucked into getting a PSA 10 on a condition sensitive card, you've had some good results in the hobby. These experiences feel like you made the right call, but here’s the thing: a good outcome doesn’t necessarily mean you made a good decision.

Former professional poker player Annie Duke has a word for this: resulting. It’s the human tendency to judge the quality of a decision based only on how it turned out. In poker, in sports, and in collecting, resulting can trick us into reinforcing bad habits and overlooking smart process. And when the luck runs out, those shortcuts come back to bite us.

Thinking in Bets

Duke’s book Thinking in Bets is one of the clearest guides on how to separate decision-making from results. After years at the poker table, she realized that even world-class players fall into the trap of confusing luck with skill.

Resulting is simple: if the outcome is good, we assume the decision was good. If the outcome is bad, we assume the decision was bad. But that logic doesn’t hold.

For collectors, this distinction matters. Short-term wins can cover up a shaky foundation. If you happened to flip a hyped-up card for profit, that doesn’t mean the move was sound, it just means the hobby gods smiled on you this time. Smart collecting is about building a process that works over the long run, not just getting lucky in the moment.

Duke uses relatable scenarios to hammer this point home.

• Good decision, bad outcome. You stop at a red light, play it safe, and do everything right. Then another driver blows through their signal and slams into you. The result is bad, but your decision was still the correct one.

• Bad decision, good outcome. You run a red light. Stupid move. But by chance, no cars are coming, and you sail through without a scratch. The outcome was fine, but the decision was reckless.

In both examples, the key is luck. Outcomes are noisy because we can’t control every variable. The only thing we can control is our process for making decisions.

Common Resulting in the Hobby

The same thing happens in collecting. Just like running a red light without consequence doesn’t make it a good decision, some of the most common moves in the hobby can look smart only because the outcome happened to break our way.

Bought into the hype and flipped a card for profit.

We’ve all seen it happen: a player has a breakout week, social media lights up, and prices spike. You jump in, buy a card, and a few days later, you flip it for a tidy profit. There's no better example of this than Bol Bol's 2020 summer league surge. A few double doubles and it seemed like he was a can't miss prospect. His PSA 10 Prizm Silver almost 4x'ed in a month when it went from $175 to $712 from June to July 2020. You can pick that card up today for less than $10.

If you picked up a copy in June and sold in July, it probably felt like you read the market perfectly. But did you? If the hype cycle had ended a week earlier, you might be holding a card that’s already down 70%. In reality, you weren’t running a sound process; you were riding a wave. The outcome was good, but the decision was closer to gambling than collecting/flipping strategy.

Buying raw cards to grade on eBay.

It feels great to buy a card we've had our eye on and discover that it's in great condition. It's even better when you send that card out for grading and it comes back in a gem-mint grade. The market value jumps and you can feel like a genius who's discovered the cheat code to making it rich in the hobby. But you're bound to come accross the stack of raw cards that came back with surface scratches, bad centering, or chipped edges. Those sit in a shoebox, quietly eating away at the margin of that one gem. If you only judge your process by the winners, you’re falling into resulting. The real measure is whether your overall raw-to-grade approach consistently works after accounting for all the misses.

Sending payment through Friends & Family on Facebook deals.

You’re buying from someone you don’t know well, but they ask you to send PayPal Friends & Family to save them fees. You hesitate, then do it — and the card shows up without issue. Great outcome, right? But it wasn’t a smart decision. That “win” just trained you to take unnecessary risks. Eventually, you’ll run into a bad actor, and you’ll have no recourse. The one time you got away with it makes it more likely you’ll try again, and that’s exactly how resulting sets traps for collectors.

Not checking cert numbers.

A slab gets listed at a good price, and in your rush, you skip the step of checking the certification number with PSA or BGS. The card arrives, it looks fine, and you’re happy with the deal. That reinforces the shortcut — “I didn’t need to check, it worked out.” But you did need to check. The good outcome this time makes you less cautious next time, and eventually you end up buying a card with a deactivated certification or a fake copy altogether. Resulting tricks you into thinking the process was good, when really you just got lucky.

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The lesson here is simple: don’t confuse results with decision quality. Good outcomes don’t validate bad decisions. And bad outcomes don’t mean you did something wrong.

In Duke’s words, the smarter way is to judge your choices by the process you followed, not just the score on the board. For collectors, that means slowing down, reflecting, and building repeatable systems that protect you when luck inevitably swings against you.

Actionable Checklist for Better Decision Making

Here are practical ways to strengthen your collecting process:

1. Use a Pre-Purchase Checklist.

   Before you buy, slow down and walk through a structured set of questions. Here’s mine.

2. Run periodic assessments of your purchases.

   • Am I satisfied with this purchase?

   • Would I buy it again? At the same price?

   • Did it serve the purpose I intended (PC, flip, grail chase)?

3. Do post-mortems after major activities.

   After a big purchase, sale, grading order, or trade, ask yourself:

   • If I could do it over, what would I change?

   • Did I get lucky, or was my process sound?

4. Build a feedback loop.

   Write down your takeaways. Small notes now can prevent big mistakes later.

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Every collector has a story of a “win” that wasn’t really skill, it was just timing, hype, or plain luck. That’s fine. But smarter collecting means recognizing the difference and not letting luck dictate your habits.

Good outcomes don’t always mean good decisions. The best way to win long-term is to build a process you can trust, even when the short-term doesn’t go your way.