This is a good question and a complicated one, and it's not possible to isolate a single event or two as the cause for the hobby's decline.
I certainly wouldn't blame the price guides, because it's a fluid hobby and the marketplace ultimately determines prices . Rare cards always sell for more than common ones, Babe Ruth always sells for more than Joe Schmo, pristine cards always sell for more than beat up ones. Over time, given enough transactions, the more desirable cards will always rise to the top.
Third party grading is somewhat of a factor. With the goal of helping the collector solve problems, it at the same time created a host of new problems. Certainly it caused a huge spike in the price of high grade cards, putting them out of reach of most collectors. But TPG is not the reason for the hobby's decline.
If I wanted to simplify the answer and pick a couple of causes, I would say it's a combination of a very poor economy, and the maturing of baseball card collecting. In the 1970's, baseball cards were a well kept secret that only a small group knew about. As publicity brought droves of new collectors into the hobby, it grew in leaps and bounds. But no industry can grow forever, and ours eventually reached its saturation point. While there are always new collectors coming in, we've now reached the point where alot of collectors are getting older, or losing interest, and dropping out. The net result is there really isn't enough growth anymore.
And while the economy may get better one day (I'm not holding my breath), the rapid growth that we experienced from roughly the 1970's to the 1990's is over forever. We are likely to see prices more stable, without huge increases, and there is a distinct possibility we will even see the industry get smaller. I guess we'll have to stick around to find out.
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