This is a great point. In the 90s people were collecting base cards. You can still do that if you want to. People are complaining about the cost of the high end stuff, but they also look down on the cheap stuff.
The truth is, there are cards available at every price point.
It is a very accessible hobby price wise.
Ignoring 3-4 top players, there are lower-end rookies available for everybody. If my kid is a huge Brady Tkachuk fan and wants his rookie card, I don't have to spend $30 USD on his Young Guns, I could go on eBay or COMC and get multiple different rookie cards for a few dollars each, like his OPC Platinum.
Once you get into players who aren't the top 3 on a team, and aren't "new", everything is dirt cheap. Claude Giroux had a borderline HHOF career, was the top player on his team for two decades, was on video game covers, his rookie cards are available for $1, his YG is $20 or less, and he has many autographs available under $20 on COMC and eBay. Not to mention inserts, jersey cards, etc.
Then there are hundreds if not thousands of autograph cards from 2010 to present available on COMC for $1-$5.
The idea that this is an expensive hobby is lunacy. Anytime people argue that, all I hear is that people want to gamble and rip boxes on the cheap. Which is a fair want, but that has nothing to do with whether collecting itself is expensive. There are numerous cheap and fun avenues to enjoy hockey cards that are almost completely separate from the financial aspect of the hobby because the cards themselves are so affordable, and there is no room for speculation (for example, my Cory Conacher Cup Rookie I paid $10 is not going up or down in price, it simply exists).
The people who say they want to go back to the day of ripping packs at corner stores and sticking them in their bike wheels don't actually want that. What they want is a time machine, so that they can go back to that day, then they can say to themselves here, buy 5 sealed boxes from that shop keeper, keep them in a moisture controlled environment, ask around and see which of your friends pulled a Wayne Gretzky, hustle them for it, while you're at it invest in a stock called Amazon.
Even their fantasies about hockey cards going back to their salad days center around the idea that there was some sort of treasure at the end of the rainbow. Nobody would fantasize about that if there was zero collectibility to a Gretzky rookie or anything pulled. People want this impossible reality where they can buy packs of Series 2 for $1 and pull a $1000 Bedard. It's not happening.
