The big change happened during the pandemic when there was a renewed interest in gambling/speculating on sports cards.
I suspect it's because a lot of collectors or influencers from other sports where PSA was the top choice got into hockey at the same time as a large amount of new hockey collectors.
Like I said in my post, the other thing that changed was interest in parallels. Hockey previously was very heavy on the prominence of a set. Young Guns, FWA, etc. Football and basketball geared more to aesthetics and shiny cards.
So what I wonder is if these changes are going to burn out and alienate the core fan base in the long run, with a lot of these new collectors not sticking around once they realize they aren't getting rich. Or, if this is simply UD having their finger on the pulse of the long-term direction of the hobby.
I agree with this. Basically during he pandemic, not only were people buying more sports cards, a lot of people went back to collect hockey from the glory years of 1990 to 1995-ish when people routinely collecting four-sport because cards were still like a buck a pack for high end stuff like Upper Deck. At the same time, there was a bunch of people who withdrew money from Bitcoin and instead bought collectibles from when they were kids as well so collectibles went crazy. Since PSA was king in baseball and basketball, these people went with what they knew and collected PSA in hockey using their baseball card collecting knowledge.
In baseball, all of the major manufacturers saw how well pre-rookie cards of the mid 80s Topps Traded/Fleer Update/Fleer Star Stickers making cards of rookie players before they got their main rookie year release was huge:
1984 Fleer Update with Gooden then Clemens and then finally Puckett -
Was insanely hot with those cards going from a 20 dollar set to triple digits for those guys....
1982 Topps Traded Cal Ripken and 1983 Topps Traded Darryl Strawberry -
After the 1984 Fleer Update went crazy in post 1985, when these players' main releases hit and got hot, people went back and looked at past releases and these two cards went crazy too
1985 Topps-Team USA Mark McGwire, various 1986 Fleer Update/1986 Topps Traded/1986 Donruss The Rookies, 1986 Fleer Update Jose Canseco/1986 Donruss-Rated Rookie Jose Canseco, 1986 Fleer Star Stickers Will Clark -
In 1987-1989, there was huge interest in the 1987 rookie class and many of these players such as Canseco, Bo Jackson, Barry Bonds, etc...so naturally they would go back and check for those players' pre-1987 cards
After this, many of the main sets had subsets within dedicated to pre-rookie cards such as Donruss Rated Rookies, Fleer Prospects (the two prospects on the same card, often of the same team), Topps and Score draft picks (such as 1990 Frank Thomas cards and 1991 Topps Chipper Jones) plus the mini sets you could buy, mentioned above, The Rookies, Update and Traded.
This carried on to hockey as the existing Topps/O Pee Chee was joined by Upper Deck, Pro Set, Score, etc.
Starting in 90-91 sets, which wound up being insanely loaded
OPC had the famous Central Red Army inserts (including the famous Sergei Federov)
OPC also had the various Russia league players (best card I think was Arturs Irbe)
UD and Score had first round draft picks (Jaromir Jagr being the best card)
Pro Set had the top two draft picks...weird since it was the deepest draft in a long time
UD also had some early cards of players like Mats Sundin #1 OA, not yet in the NHL, Score also followed suit but
Score had the special Eric Lindros
UD Hi numbers had Young Guns including the pre-rookie of Pavel Bure also Team Canada WJC Scott Niedermayer, Felix Potvin, Pat Falloon, etc.
1991-92 this continued with Upper Deck with Canada Cup with pre-rookie cards of Nicklas Lidstrom, Teemu Selanne, Slava Kozlov, and many other players etc. and the WJC cards including the Czech version with Paul Kariya
Then later both baseball and hockey had complaints that kids were going with their moms to get the hot player's rookie card, buying that player's card and then finding out later the real "rookie card" was printed two years earlier...for example Felix Potvin (1990-91 UD Hi Numbers WJC Team Canada Felix Potvin) and 1990-91 Score 1st Round Draft Pick Martin Brodeur, both players started playing and doing NHL things in 1992-93 seasons. So eventually in baseball they made the RC symbol to put on cards while in hockey they only allowed players with enough NHL games to appear in NHL releases.
Minor league cards in hockey became rather inferior cards while in baseball, these cards continued to be important via Topps' Bowman brand. So people in the 90s who continue to collect cards of multiple sports but eventually moved on to keep collecting baseball since collecting cards became so expensive, people could only focus on one sport, got used to both cherishing the Bowman 1st Card and the Topps RC card developed the two-rookie card idea while hockey collectors eventually focused on UD Young Guns one-true-rookie mindsets. For example, the 2005-06 Upper Deck S1 Sidney Crosby in hockey vs. the 2009 Bowman Rookie Auto Mike Trout and 2011 Topps Update Mike Trout.
So when those collectors came back to key hockey cards they collected not only HOF and multi-Cup winner Scott Niedermayer's 1990-91 UD HI Numbers WJC Team Canada card, in PSA 10, they also looked for all of Scott Niedermayer's 91-92 NHL releases in his actual New Jersey Devils uniform as well in PSA 10...despite the fact that in 1992, Scott Niedermayer's Team Canada card was like $5, pretty good card, while his 91-92 releases were almost commons outside of New Jersey, no matter the condition.
