I don't know how many are familiar, but in the 90s, there was something like this giant things of businessmen/speculators/investors getting really involved in Baseball cards and Comics, saying that if the industry produced droves of them and people collected them, they'd become worth a lot in a few years. This was based on the fact that older Baseball Cards and Comics were valuable if people collected them.
The problem was this was an ignorant idea: the older Baseball Cards and Comics were valuable because they were limited and rarer; not everyone collected them, and there were only so many out there even for those who did. So when the Comics Industry and Baseball card industry started producing these droves of collectors comics/baseball cards, with -for comics- different cover variants and these "first issues" that were supposed to be something big, and specialty issues, etc, and -for baseball cards- different versions and halogram versions and so forth, or even just the issue of overproducing to the point where the market was saturated and everyone owned a card or comic making it worthless (and that can be blamed on consumer ignorance too), or convincing people to buy cards that weren't worth anything to begin with, the market eventually bubbled and collapsed. And it nearly destroyed both industries. Today, comics are lucky to sell a few tens of thousands issues when they could once (and even before the bubble started, I believe) sell millions. And baseball cards as an industry is totally dead; there's no trust anymore to give value to any new cards.
So what if this all was avoided? And how could it be avoided?
The problem was this was an ignorant idea: the older Baseball Cards and Comics were valuable because they were limited and rarer; not everyone collected them, and there were only so many out there even for those who did. So when the Comics Industry and Baseball card industry started producing these droves of collectors comics/baseball cards, with -for comics- different cover variants and these "first issues" that were supposed to be something big, and specialty issues, etc, and -for baseball cards- different versions and halogram versions and so forth, or even just the issue of overproducing to the point where the market was saturated and everyone owned a card or comic making it worthless (and that can be blamed on consumer ignorance too), or convincing people to buy cards that weren't worth anything to begin with, the market eventually bubbled and collapsed. And it nearly destroyed both industries. Today, comics are lucky to sell a few tens of thousands issues when they could once (and even before the bubble started, I believe) sell millions. And baseball cards as an industry is totally dead; there's no trust anymore to give value to any new cards.
So what if this all was avoided? And how could it be avoided?