Been marinating in my brain...
Bags of gasoline, toilet paper, water bottles, land, houses, gold, bitcoin, dogecoin, baseball cards, pokemon toys, amiibos, sneakers, you name it.
The media will frame this as the irresponsible and ignorant hoarding of your fellow man, the unending greed of American citizens; but I also have to think of this speaks to, oft unexamined in mainstream news outlets, the desperation of regular folks. They buy bags of gasoline not just for themselves but on the off chance they make it big. They hoard toilet paper on the off chance they can sell in excess. Everything is a hustle because when you are starving, are broke, got bills up to your neck, you have to hustle.
Or am I wrong? Is it a fundamentally American thing to reach certain stratas of society and just want to greedily turn every object into a cash-cow, a golden goose egg? Once you reach an extra 30k of income, and you don't want to waste it on your dumb stupid family, you decide to gamble with it out of sheer boredom?
Who are these people really?
As someone who has worked in game retail for a long time, this is insane. The old old old cards ARE valuable for a number of reasons, largely because they are 20+ years old by now. New cards are printed in MUCH larger volumes, and protective sleeves are more commonplace now than they were in the late 90s. This sort of frenzy mindset is what killed sports cards in the 90s- eventually there won't be a printing shortage, and there will be a ton of new cards on the market that people may or may not want. The old cards will be fine because you can't actually MAKE any more old cards.
The difference between PKMN and MTG vs traditional sports cards of course is utility. Baseball cards are just to look at or sell, but game cards can be used to play either for fun or competition. Magic has a more robust competitive scene, so that helps reign in some of this mentality (outside of very old cards, and the prices on those can literally be anything and it doesn't matter).