Collecting sports cards has been one of the leading hobbies for many decades. Starting off with kids buying a pack to see if they could find a card of their favorite icon and putting the rest in the spokes of their bike tires, if they got the card they wanted or not wasn't a big deal because you also got a good piece of bubble gum. This was mainly how it was until the early 90's when everyone started buying up all they could get because they saw what high prices vintage cards were selling for. Card companies saw the rise in the number of collectors and started making endless supply of cards. With each company making millions of each card it got harder to sell out of the low end products so they started making premium products that they could charge more for each pack. This product war idea got everyone comming up with ideas of how to make a better product. Many new companies joined the market and many new gimmics started. Cards started to have gold-foil, serial #s & parallel versions to add to the appeal of the item. Once everyone was doing the same thing, better gimmics had to be started which costs each company far more to make each product. This made many companies go bankrupt, leaving just the more popular companies that have been around longer. Today, there is mainly 3 big companies and a couple smaller ones making cards, but each makes dozens of different products each year. Cards have evolved to very limited productions with insert cards consisting of autographs, printing plates, game-worn memorabilia cards, 1-of-1's, endless parallels, proofs, and much more. Signed cards and game-used cards lead the way in what people are wanting to get from packs. Companies have been putting pieces of everything they can on cards to make you buy them like; jerseys, helmets, pants, shoes, score boards, benches, seats, turf, goal posts, jackets, hats, balls, bats, checks, dirt, everything but the kitchen sink can be found on a card today. Pack prices have got outragous from the 1 cent & 5 cent to the $500+ prices today.