There's also the whole card grading/authentication racket, which introduces artificial scarcity to the market that wasn't there before to drive prices up.

Previously you just hunted down the missing cards in your collection. Now we have kids worrying about whether their card will grade a 9 or a 10 and attract top dollar.

There's even a sort of gambling element to sending a card in to be graded, its relatively expensive to do and you don't really know what grade you will get back.

Now you have influencers like Logan Paul wearing a "10" graded Pokemon card on a chain etc:

> https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/logan-paul-pokemon-card-pikac...