Brendan, you said it much better than I did. My concern is that modern, artificial rarity is conflated as something worth paying a lot of money for...even though there is no reason other than manipulation for the particular 1 of 1 cards to be considered rare. And even though they are technically rare -- the only rainbow chrome autographed RC for a particular player, for example -- they are not special. The 1933 Lajoie is special for many reasons in addition to its rarity.
All that said, I am glad Topps and Bowman have figured out a way to make their sets challenging to collect again. And I have bought modern chrome cards of players I like but that is a rarity (pun intended). I think they have a place it is just the choice of the word "rare" to describe them that is problemmatic. Better wording would be to call them exclusive maybe.
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