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Comment by owisd | Hacker News Reader

The whole appeal of trading cards comes from some company creating artificial scarcity on the supply of the cards, if you could just go online and order for a flat per card fee any brand new trading cards a la carte from the entire back catalog it would take away all the "fun".

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Really the appeal of trading cards and foundation of scarcity goes back to the 1960s when kids would play with the cards, put them in bicycle spokes to make brrr sounds, etc. and then their parents threw their cards out or the kids did themselves when they outgrew them.

Fast forward 20-30 years and scarcity happened for cards like Mickey Mantle and other hall of fame players and prices shot up to thousands for a single card in mint condition. Kids like me hear that and buy tons of baseball cards. The lore of people with rare cards was talked about at card shops. It was cool to buy a pack and see what you got and trade with friends. Being a baseball fan at the time, it was fun to collect every player on your favorite team, maybe get cards signed by them at a game.

The fun is in the collecting, sharing, memories, etc. I'm sure there are similar stories for things like comic books and other collectibles (first edition books) where earlier releases of things are now rare. If everything were just a flat fee per card nobody would bother.

You can buy individual cards on COMC or eBay and can find pretty much anything you want that way.

Buying singles is generally regarded as the best way to build a collection, but it's not as fun as buying a pack or box of cards and seeing what you get. Collecting vs. gambling.

Our youngest is huge into baseball. His grandfather collected cards when he was a kid (50's and 60's).

Now they open boxes as a way of talking about baseball and bonding. Valuable cards are just a positive side effect.

I think for thing like card game direct to order model might make sense.

But that would not allow you to sell all the bulk(multiple copies of same minimally useful cards) to pad profit margin. Or make the whole thing to lottery (see 1/1 One Ring). Thus driving gamblers to acquire as much product they can.

I started collecting the newer Pokémon cards because of how good they look. I’d be overjoyed if they were abundant, but the knockoffs don’t come close

Same situation with Ferraris. If only they would hire more people, cut some corners and get a bigger factory, I could afford one!

Not a useful comparison, since the limitation isn't of the supply of cards overall but of particular cards that (other than the material printed) are identical to the common ones.

To be fair, unlike a monopoly controlled product, Ferraris are fungible in that I can equally not be able to afford a Lamborghini, Bugatti, Koenigsegg and numerous others. We have many options for cars we can't afford. The Honda will have to do. :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

This is quite a silly comparison, because these cards are cheap to produce and trivial to manufacture relative to something like a car. The value is from the perceived scarcity, not from the perceived quality or luxury or usefulness, and the scarcity is at the whim of the manufacturer who artificially decides which cards will be scarce and which will be common.

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