Posted By:
warshawlawOn the actual topic of this thread, while I understand that no one has a complete set has anyone ever assessed the population of these cards to determine whether there is a full set in existence? That would be an interesting bit of info for you collectors/masochists. Might inspire some earthshattering trades 
As far as the card market goes, I have several random thoughts:
First of all, I don't share the same pessimism as many do w/r/t the development of future collectors. Kids do collect, they just don't collect what we collect. The days of 12 year olds (like I was) having collections rivaling adults and setting up as dealers at shows is over, just like the days of having people practically throw boxes of old cards at you to get rid of them. My 6 year old nephew and his friends all collect baseball cards but they get the cheapo packs that many of the manufacturers put out right now with no fanfare alongside the richy-rich packs with all the crapola inserted. There are a number of products out there that can give a kid a pack for a buck, retail. Most kids' allowances today allow them to buy a pack a week, at least, which is about where it was when I was a kid. As I recall it was about 25 cents for a pack and my first allowance was around that level. Upper Deck especially has been cognizant of that market and creating packs for it. Are they "worth" something? No. But the kids like them. If they like the cards and are interested and find trading them to be fun, when these kids develop a bit more maturity and sophistication, I am sure that some of them will end up at shows and interested in old cards. As long as they aren't condition bugs or chasing E107 type cards, they can have a rewarding collecting experience as kids. If they go after cards of all time greats like Aaron, Mays, Seaver, Gibson, etc., they can readily score lower grade cards from the 1970s for huge discounts at any decent show or on ebay. Remember too that THE KIDS DON'T KNOW HOW IT WAS BEFORE; to them, everything today is normal. We are the ones who are worried because we recall "how it used to be".
Second, we are so far removed from a magnates-only market that the comparison with rare art just isn't accurate. Sure, the headline cards draw amazing money, but what the vast majority of collectors are perfectly happy to collect cost a few hundred dollars. I can never even aspire to own a Van Gough or a Wagner, but I can certainly aspire to 90% of the cards out there.
Third, I think you have to look at the revolutions that card collecting has undergone over the last few decades as a progression towards and then through maturity as a hobby, not as a reason to panic about a bubble. The ACC and Sports Collectors Bible were the first two milestones towards systematization of the hobby, which is the first step in creating a base of collectors all talking the same language about the same stuff. The price guides (Beckett, CPU, etc.) took it to the next level, which was quantifying the market. Once those two forces were in place, the next step was creating a trading floor. In our case it was the many card clubs that sprung up. I was in the West Coast Card Club here in LA; we had a monthly meeting, which was held in a church basement. There were dealer tables for members who wanted them, an auction and a lot of socializing. This was followed by the non-club big shows when promotion made sense. Show development culminated in the National formation in the early 1980s. The next step was the formation of additional trading sites in the form of card stores. From these elements, a national collecting movement was formed. Since the early 1980s, the changes in the hobby have been driven by technology and marketing. The first innovation was the autograph show, which dramatically expanded the appeal of the shows, especially when you could get (as I did) a DiMaggio autograph for $12 or could shake hands with Sandy Koufax (as I also did) instead of being churned through an assembly line. It took the existence of shows and stores and hobby papers and guides and counterfeiters to get the manufacturers to begin (a) paying attention to the non-kid customers and (b) innovating like heck. Fleer and Donruss started the marketing and development fight in 1983-84; Upper Deck started the technical boom in new stuff with its 1989-91 issues. The show-store-marketing economy flourished until the late 1990s when the internet and auctions clobbered both old marketing models BY REPLACING THEM WITH NEW MODELS. That wasn't the death knell for the hobby; if anything, it has expanded even more. Slabbing boosted the price effect even further by generating a perception of fungibility and objectivity (yeah, I know... that is why I said "perception").
I am optimistic because we are no longer seen as the weird card geeks trading worthless paper in church basements. I got so much $hit for collecting as a teen that I dropped out completely from ages 15-22. Does anyone realize that the president of a major telecom company was in here yesterday talking about his recent six figure card expenditures? We've gone from a clown act to major investment over the last 30 years. Once investments develop that sort of momentum it is rare that they fall totally out of favor unless technological changes kill them off.