Yeah this really is crazy. I reflected on a few PC pieces the other day and realised I paid about a 10th or less than what they go for today. You can still pick up nice cards relatively cheap prices, you have to be quick and look outside of the mainstream channels to purchase from. That being said, overall... it's probably never going to be the same for us who have been collecting football cards for years. Personally I only get PC stuff so I'm not too concerned about how much Messi, Mbappe etc sell for. What annoys me more than anything are cards that aren't even remotely close to RC year being considered RC's. I first noticed how inaccurate this was with Aaron Wan Bissaka in impeccable. This not only wasn't his debut season, Manchester United are not even his first premier league team. Then we move on to 2018 cards of Marcus Rashford being considered RC...wrong again. I am sure there are examples from many other clubs like Adama Traore in Prizm however these are just a few clear examples of an uneducated market dictating what is a "market based" RC. It's the Prizm based boom of basketball transferred to football.
" We'll consider anything from Topps etc to be inferior even if from their genuine debut season, the first Prizm card is the hobby RC"
But this is a better money spinner for Panini as the world game has finally transitioned to the world hobby.
In one way it's great, more demand = more releases for football cards, the downside is all the crap attached to card collecting has now infiltrated football cards.