The higher-end of the card collecting hobby has changed permanently. The card companies are putting a lot of effort and money into producing unique or otherwise

The higher-end of the card collecting hobby has changed permanently. The card companies are putting a lot of effort and money into producing unique or otherwise limited cards (autographs, relics, rare prints, etc). That's not going to stop. For example a lot of the more common rookie card prices have already deflated back toward something closer to sane prices. Take the Greg Maddux 1987 Leaf rookie card - that went up ten fold in less than two years, primarily during the pandemic bubble, and has now deflated by around 60-70% from the peak of the bubble. That card (and numerous others like it from other prominent players of the past 40-50 years) is unlikely to quickly reinflate back to the peak, it might take five or ten years to get back there. What isn't going to dramatically deflate, are the exceptional cards. The higher quality 1952 Mantle cards are not going to drop by 60-70%. The 1986 Fleer Jordan rookie in a PSA 10 is never going back to the days when it could be purchased for $10,000-$30,000. A high-end Lebron James rookie (seven figures) isn't likely to roll backwards by 70% from the peak. Those days are forever over. There is a lot of money willing to pay up for such cards. The high-end part of the card hobby is and will remain closer to behaving like the art market than like the mainstream cards-from-packs hobby. And the giant premiums that card companies can command for high-end boxes, they're not giving that up if they can avoid it, they have no interest in rolling that back to the old days. Granted, Fanatics and their new monopoly may screw everything up.