Depressing

[MattyC]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

The mania surrounding the Otani autographs in the new Topps Heritage set is instructive. A ton of mania out of the box to get these cards and get on eBay. People who were asking $75,000 a month ago. If someone paid that they are a sorry sorry guy, because they are now a few thousand last time I checked. This is just people buying a lottery ticket.
Manufactured scarcity. Signing in different ink colors and then trying to say a certain color is more valuable. Cmon. That’s nuts.

No one paid 75k or anywhere near that for his Red Ink Heritage cards. So trying to cite the crazy high ask in an attempt to slight that sector of the hobby is a bit specious. They have been changing hands in the 3-6k zone.

In terms of saying the difference between a Red Ink and Blue Ink auto is subtle and thus "nuts," I could see drawing a parallel to there being a massive premium to a card because it has a different advertising back— yet an identical front— to a much cheaper card. Some might call that "nuts."

Or a card that displays infinitesimal (if any) improvements over another card in a higher graded flip selling for exponentially more than a nearly identical (or better looking) card in the next flip down.

Or the cost of a rare common one needs to complete a set.

The salient point being that there are a lot of aspects to the hobby that different people might raise an eyebrow to— doesn't make any collector "nuts." And it doesn't make whatever they do with their money worthy of a supercilious treatment.