What would it take to collect modern cards again?

[Brendan]

Originally Posted by ls7plus

It would be an extremely difficult feat to accomplish, for me. I like rarer cards of stars and HOF'ers to be, and therefore am inclined to at least take a look at such cards as Joe Mauer's Chrome Gold Refractor rookie, for example, with only 50 printed. But with that limited production comes rampant speculation, along with a lot of purely transient demand (ie., making itself felt only while the player is still not only active, but on the upside, rather than the downhill slide of his career), artificially raising the prices to rather ridiculous levels. Larry

Here's my opinion on this matter.

Let's take some anonymous player and let's see the number autographs of him in a given set. (note: I don't actually know any of these counts and I'm sure the corresponding refractors to numbering is off)

Base auto: 800
Refractor auto: 500 (numbered to 500)
xfractor auto: 250
green refactor auto: 100
blue refractor auto: 50
orange refractor auto: 25
gold refractor auto: 10
red refractor auto: 5
superfractor auto: 1

So it may seem rare when it's numbered to ten, but it's just the same as the rest of the 1,741 autographs except the border is a different color or it's shinier. I can understand why people like modern cards, as autographs and game used pieces can be interesting. However, the pull towards an artificially scarce card makes it easy to shy away.