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Dave HI am in investment advisor at a national brokerage house. Cards are most certainly an investment, but like any investment, your return will come from your skills at obtaining good value for your purchase (good purchase price) combined with your skill at recognizing which 'cards' the market will assign the most growth in price to over your holding period.
the current problem is, while individual issues will do better than some in the near term, we are probably at or near a longer term peak in prices as we speak. card cycles are similar to stock cycles, this one mirroring the move to 'hard assets' starting in march 2000. cards are participating in the recent (5-6 year cycle) upturn in commodities/real estate/art markets as investors moved away from financial assets (stocks).
ironically, peaks usually occur when a large amount of unsophisticated participants enter a market (much of what you are all saying here in essense) and have no sense of true value, purchasing an assett simply because is has gone up and they expect it to go up again (greater fool theory).
stick to your hard pricing principals and let the cards pass if they are too expensive. inevitably, as always, the market will turn and you will be there to pick up the same cards on the cheap when the blood is in the streets.