Jake L, there are a few different ways to look at Mr. Mint and what people believe he's done "for the hobby".
He did help to bring card collecting to the forefront but if you were a true collector and didn't care about the value of cards and you're on a limited budget then that attention only made it harder for you to collect because of the price escalation that took place when all that attention was brought to the hobby.
It turned from a hobby to a business and a lot of the fun went with it because now if you truly loved the cardboard, your dollar didn't go as far after all of the attention that was brought to it.
This is not to say that without Mr. Mint the price escalation wouldn't have come around.
I guess the sad part about all of the attention is that it brought all of the low life ass holes into the hobby. This resulted in a lot of manipulated value to the hobby which made the hobby less fun for the true collector.
My thought is that a true collector is someone that doesn't look at their collection as a "portfolio" but rather something that gives them joy when they look at it. Ooops, I hope I didn't open a can of worms and step on some peoples egos.
