Not a Good Thing
Like many, I disagree with the destruction of scarce items in order to make mass-produced items with a sliver or a chip from that genuinely (and genuine) scarce item. The idea that a relic has been chopped up so that it is not a true relic but an indistinguishable fraction of a relic is disturbing on many levels. But, clearly there is a market for this type of thing. And where there is a market, whether it the new shop owner who needs the foot traffic that relic cards might generate in order to keep his doors open, or the manufacturer who keeps (for better or worse) the new card makret stocked with product, there are people willing to exploit (non-pejorative version of the word here) that market.
If you look on eBay, you will often see auction sales of "three words in Geroge Washington's handwriting," which refers to an historical document written by George Washington that has been chopped into a thousand pieces of three or four words and sold in such tiny fractions. And they sell. And its criminal, in my mind, to destory that handwritten Washington document (although the do sometimes come from badly damaged documents that are otherwise unsaleable).
I do not like either practice, I wish they would stop, but as long as there is potentially profitable demand, there will be supply.
|