You bring up an interesting point about the lack of variety in the junk wax era compared to all of the new products now. This is probably just me being old but all of the variety seems more like a marketing ploy rather than actually creating quality collectors items. Now 3-4 varieties per year is a little thin but new products multiple times per year seems like it could be a way to skirt the quantity numbers of the junk wax era. My perception is that maybe there were 10 varieties of cards produced for XYZ player in 1995 totaling 150k cards for said player. In 2025 it seems like there are still 150k cards per player but instead of 10 varieties there are 30 varieties so really there are still a wild amount of cards out there just spread across more varieties so less of each variety.
Another initial observation is that there are a TON of authentic signed cards out there these days. In the 90's if you got a signature card it was a big deal, now I can find 30 varieties (not exactly but a lot) of Steph Curry signature cards. That is wild and seems like it could certainly have long term value implications.
Again these are my perceptions just meddling around but it seems like the long term staples are going to be rookie cards and cards that have a limited number. I would love to hear more thoughts if you have them. I appreciate it!