Quote:
Originally Posted by Hankphenom
Thanks. I have never thought of anything, short of fraud, as good or bad in the hobby, just trying to understand it. Couple of questions from your answer: please explain how liquidity (meaning cash sloshing around, I assume) benefits the hobby outside of the modern sector--is it that some of that cash will move into other sectors?; what are base cards, and what happened during the first junk wax era, which I take to be the late 80s and 90s? Any other insights will be welcomed.
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What I mean by liquidity is the consistent flow of cards in the hobby. Without people flipping and selling cards, you'd have a lot less supply on the market, making it tougher to find cards you are looking for.
Base cards are non-serial numbered cards. For example, cards 1-600 in a Topps set of cards. Those cards are not serial numbered, and each card has the same quantity printed, and Topps/Panini have been printing TONs of them, so they are not in any way rare.
Yes, the first junk wax era was the late 80s-early 90s. Topps/Donruss/Fleer/Upper Deck printed an insane amount of product as interest in the hobby ramped up. They printed so many of them that the cards basically lost all their value. A similar thing is happening now with Topps/Panini base sets, where they are printing insane quantities of the base cards, and then adding tons of different inserts/parallels into every set they release, which is diluting the market. Rookies no longer have 1 or 2 cards, they end up with 100+ cards in different colors/sets.