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I used to collect baseball cards, and apart from some 1950s Bowman cards, there was exactly one rookie card for baseball players until 1981.
Starting in 1981, there were three... Topps, Fleer, Donruss.
Then you throw in Sportflics, Score, Upper Deck and even Bowman again by 1989.

So, while we complain about comic books having too many variants in the 21st century, we were already looking at 7 or 8 rookie cards for the same player before 1990.
In the 1990s, it because a "chase card" (just like comic 1:XX variants) game so there were even more rookie cards within the same brands. Topps, Topps Chrome, Topps Chrome Refractor, etc.

Fast forward all the way to the year 2000, and you get to Tom Brady's rookie year for football cards.

Two points:
1) This card just sold for $250,000 http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/2229 ... 50000-ebay

2) This statement from the article about a collector who "has all 135 of Brady's rookie cards, most of them in the best grade."

All 135 of Brady's rookie cards.

... and here I was thinking that five first appearances for Divinity in 2012 was too many.

ya and he was a super low pick that year others had over 400 some now a days had 500 between the different autos sigs jerseys auto jerseys ect

Great point and...

that's nuts!

theres still normally only 2 or 3 accepted as a rookie the rest get left to the way side ironiclly baseball figured this out theres a spacific set of rules they made when they saw this coming where most people only have 10 to 20 rookies still too much but its a imrprovement

Didn't baseball recently go back to only one company producing cards, Topps?

Yes, but they make multiple sets with multiple "chase" cards.

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panini still makes baseball even though unlicenced topps makes about 20 sets a year and then all the inserts its better but i like 2 companies fighting it out 1 just can do safe stuff and theres no push to improve product in a hard monopoly

Does anyone think the bigger issue is CCG's killed sports cards, like Magic, Pokemon, etc?

sports cards death lead to overproduced comics lead to overproduced magic like fallen empires all crashed then slowly creept back

early magic and pokemon are great but now both are back to over production

I fell out of sports cards completely following Topps first Stadium club set. It was a gorgeous set at the time, but the price point pushed me out. Now ot seems that set building is as confusimg as modern comics renumbering.

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Yeah. I fell out around the same time and for roughly the same reason. My card shop also started getting comics around that time and my focus shifted there. I know longer had to rely on what I could find in those Walmart comic packs.

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Multum In Parvo

Those first three years of Upper Deck sets were amazing. I still remember that I pulled the Griffey out of a pack in '89. Then, that Christmas my Dad got me the '89 Upper Deck factory set. I think it cost him like $125 or $100 at the time. Back then for a new Factory Set that was unheard of. I've still got it.

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That was a great set. I got a box of Upper Deck cards for Christmas. I think they all but guaranteed at least one Griffey card per box. I did get one Griffey card. It was my prized possession for awhile. Then I let some card dealer at a card show convince my pre-teen self that I should trade it for two Bo Jackson rookie cards around the time of his career ending injury. Last time I looked that Griffey card was worth about the same as it was back then. The internet has certainly made it easier to track down what at that time was hard to find cards.

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Multum In Parvo

Not to rehash this dead thread, but I'm sure I have a bunch of those factory sets somewhere and you see them locally online for sale dirt cheap. Just so abundant and not a lot of demand.....I feel sportscards is very speculative driven, there's a monthly comic and card show I do as a dealer, at least half the guys there are cards and it feels like all the buyers/sellers are speculators - I could see that crashing at any time (hoping for it actually because the comic dealers are struggling for space despite a number of large and diverse sellers).