[oneofakindcards]

...Now today as said it's all about pulling the hits and flipping them as soon as you can for as much as you can it's no longer a collecting hobby it's a speculator hobby. I've often compared trading cards today to the stock market where in a very short span a card can go from a value of hundreds sometimes thousands for the right guys Superfractor (ex. Strasburg) to maybe a $5-$10 card if your lucky all with in a couple of months. Again with the adults it's almost like a look what I pulled and how much money I made off of selling it rather than hey look at this neat rookie card I pulled I think I'll put that into my collection and maybe give it to my kids or grandkids one day....

This is a particularly great point. Collecting has become so specialized - partially because its impossible to collect and put together sets. As a result, if one is not a collector of the *players* of the cards one pulls, one doesn't feel guilty selling because the pack was so expensive in the first place.

When one thinks about it, manufacturers like sets that nobody can complete as it makes almost everyone who buys packs a 'gambling middleman' for them...these people are actually paying for the "privilege" of being a distributor LOL. Besides, the odds of pulling your player are usually poor at best, especially in the higher-end products.