re: What Caused the Trading Card Market to Bust?

The condition craze also hurt the card market. Mint cards often were priced way over book and with the plethora of holders and cases the market (especially post 1980s cards) were flooded with mint condition cards then they went to grading and supposedly someone was an expert who knew the difference between what made a 9.5 and a 9.9.

Another thing is that a lot of the star cards of the 80s (Gooden, Stawberry, Clemons, Mattingly, McGwire) tanked in price due to drugs or juice or just not being that good over a career. I knew people who had hundreds of mint Mattingly cards that are now just priced a little above commons.

The best card of the recent era to get is the 89 Ken Griffey Upperdeck in my opinion. The Gretzky rookie (Topps) and the Jordan rookie are also still good buys as the Magic Johnson and Larry Bird rookies since they can be hard to find in mint and in one piece instead of broken up. I'd also recommend the Jerry Rice rookie.