I wondered the same but then thought of this about Yugioh, they (card manufacturer) are producing cards but don’t own the rights to the characters. That belongs to whoever owns Yugioh. They probably had an agreement with YugiohCo to print a certain amount of each card and that would mean keeping rare cards rare. I guess the same thing could apply to baseball cards too. Between the card manufacturer and MLB. But I honestly have no idea.
You’re not far off. Any license for collectibles certainly restricts the print run to ratios determined by the licensor. The person granting a license doesn’t want the person using the license to devalue it.
I wondered the same but then thought of this about Yugioh, they (card manufacturer) are producing cards but don’t own the rights to the characters. That belongs to whoever owns Yugioh. They probably had an agreement with YugiohCo to print a certain amount of each card and that would mean keeping rare cards rare. I guess the same thing could apply to baseball cards too. Between the card manufacturer and MLB. But I honestly have no idea.
You’re not far off. Any license for collectibles certainly restricts the print run to ratios determined by the licensor. The person granting a license doesn’t want the person using the license to devalue it.