Collectibles Markets vs Economy - Why does it have to be this way?

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As we all know, we are well into year two now of insane price increases worldwide as never before seen inflation rates continue to soar. Every single thing from restaurant food to supermarket groceries (meats/dairy/grains/fruits/vegetables/paper goods) to every single item in retail stores (Walmart/Target/etc) to new and used vehicle prices to gas prices and on and on and on. Everything up roughly 30-40% from early 2022 prices. Of course, the supermarkets, retail stores, oil companies, etc. are not eating the losses as their expenses continued to increase, the cost just continues to be passed on to the end consumer to absorb everything.

At the same time, just about everything in every collectibles market that I am familiar with (sports cards, non-sports cards, comic books, vintage toys, etc) continues to see prices drop and drop across the board. If you rely on income from these sources to live on, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this is a recipe for disaster of epic proportions.

Why does the public have to just sit back and continue to tolerate price increases of everything and just keep paying up? Collectors are certainly not doing that by any means. If our income was increasing at a similar rate, it would be sustainable but income is falling, going in the opposite direction. Can people stop buying long enough to force an economic correction as we hobbyists have seen all to well happening to us over the past couple of years?