Baseball cards became a thing because Americans already had too much money. Other countries that got hit by world wars didn't have baseball cards.
New milenium came and now money is more useless than ever and people have much eadier time to gamble it away.
The cards were sold in packs of ten or something, and kids used to trade them with each other in the playground.
This reminded me that I should start collecting the Panini stickers for the upcoming football World Cup. The only issue is that I've read recently that they doubled in price and I had a hard-time convincing myself to throw money their way even they were cheaper, much less now, with the current price. Which is a shame, because I first collected World Cup Panini stickers 25 years ago, when I was a kid.