Sometimes in the late '70's or so, you could get the whole set of trading cards for something like seven bucks by just ordering them from someone. You didn't have to do what you used to have to do to get full set or particular hard to get cards. Everyone who wants to can get all the cards they want. No scarcity, no value. So, kids, and adults, gradually lost interest in doing all that piecemeal buying and trading, and the culture simply withered away. No toil, no trouble, no value, no interest.

Not entirely true. I still gathered the damn things by the thousands, piecing together sets as if that really means anything. It does to me and, apparently thousands of other immature adults whose hypoism has resulted in huge stockpiles of mostly worthless cardboard with picutures of dudes on them. The wife simply tolerates it.