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Judge Dred (Fred)The funny part about adding competition (Donruss, Fleer and Upperdeck) to the baseball card manufacturing game is that competition usually results in lower prices. In this case competition resulted in the beginning of the end for kids and baseball cards.
Collecting habits started to change to speculating on rookie cards. Then each company added those chase cards and the next thing you know it wasn't a kid thing anymore, it was an adult past time that pushed kids out of the market. Even kids (that could afford it) were hooked into the rookie and chase card craze.
It makes you wonder how much money people spent on over produced rookie cards and over hyped chase cards. I would be willing to bet that there are several people that spent thousands on those cards and couldn't recoup a nickel on the dollar for that stuff. I would also be willing to bet that a lot of those people are hesitant to delve further into the hobby because the thousands they spent on over hyped and produced material is wasting away in closets and they aren't interested in spending more on the hobby because they probably haven't a clue about what's out there (unless it sparkles and shines).
There are so many more options (vid games, etc) for kids these days that baseball cards are just heaped in with the rest of the crud available. I'd hate to be on the marketing staff for MLB or some of these baseball card companies because it looks like a rough road ahead for them.