[Leon]

It might be that the upper echelon has proven to hold it's value better. Regardless of what collectors say we don't want to buy a card (or trade) and have the value go down. There is a good market for lower grade items right now...but that same market was up about 50% or more a year or two ago and now, if you bought lower conditioned cards in that time frame, your values have gone down. I posed this same question when I very first started collecting and was buying my E102 Cobby. My decision was to collect nice cards that would present well but not necessarily high technical grades. I also chose not to collect sets as I like a wide variety of items (in my younger days it was girls....many of them too)......now, since I am happily married it's cards....and a wide variety of them. Good luck....