Card of the Day: 2007 UD Black Quad Patch Auto Roy Halladay

A lot of people in the collecting world would consider this a great card, but I consider it to be a part of the hobby's demise.

Quad patches and products like UD Black are slowly ruining the card industry.

The demand for patches and autographs are driving the desire for base cards and 1:5 inserts to the same intensity as the desire for 1990s commons. They've also helped make those 1990s commons even more obsolete than they used to be.

With SRPs of some products now reaching $300+, how are kids supposed to get into this hobby in this day and age? Even worse, to be a collector and make trades online nowadays you pretty much need to have game-used and autos.

I remember, I got my first card of the like when I was probably 15 or 16 years old, but now kids are getting this when they are 10. This is a problem because the next era of collectors will have forgotten about "bad" base cards because of the early age they started getting these supposed "good" cards.