First of all - thank you, all of you, for your comments regarding the atmosphere I work to create here. I find open, honest, thoughtful exchange much more enjoyable to read and write than hollow, childish whining. And no, I'm not accusing any other website of such behavior - I'm just describing my personal preference in conversation, which I'm glad many of you share.
There are Hondas and their are Lamborginis there are also the types of people who buy Hondas and the types of people who buy Lamborginis. Both are great cars at very different prices. Does the price of the Lamborgini put Honda out of business, no? What puts a car maker out of business is a crappy car no matter what the price point.
The Card Collecting "bubble" only applies to Card Collectors. 6 out of 10 people who purchase my decks are NON card collectors.
There is still a comic book industry a very successful one and the successful ones are the ones that make great comics. The Death of Superman killed the age of Big Corp Comic Books. It also exploded the number of NON comic book people into the industry and hobby. I for one started collecting comics when I saw Doomsday Kill super man.
The prices are going to go up and they are going to go down, and bubble will be formed and popped. In the end the people who are making a quality product will remain and the ones not will gripe about the bubble.
I love the HIVE deck. It is going to sell very well to cardcollectors or NON card collectors, we have just decided to give the card collector's the first dibs at it. 
I've I have always said, don't buy it if you don't think it's worth it. Save your money for something that feel is worth it. Your biggest words come from your wallet.
I do understand that there are Hondas and Lambos. I'm actually saving for a new car at the moment! But what happens in a market where there are far more Lambos than the market will bear and not enough Hondas? Let's not even get into all the Yugos lying around...
The card collecting bubble does affect the market overall. I think you'd notice if you suddenly lost 40% of your customer base, and you wouldn't be thrilled about it, especially when it's the portion of your customer base that tends to spend the most on playing cards. Their buying power is probably closer to 50%, 60%, etc...
Not every person who purchased comic books before, during and after the bubble were collectors, but collectors did dominate the market, and just like card collectors, they purchased more than the typical consumer. As far as the comic book industry - the comic book itself, like magazines and newspapers, is nearly a dead art form, a pale shadow of what they used to be in terms of sales. The things keeping the industry going are graphic novels sold in bookstores, motion pictures based on their story lines, the merchandising of their trademarks and digital distribution (especially when a product that costs nearly nothing to distribute still fetches the same "cover price" as the physical object shipped from the publisher to the store you frequent) - without them, there would be no comic book companies, only a string of bankruptcies. Some successful "comic book" companies don't print a single comic book, in much the same way that some successful deck designers are successful because they don't use the mainstream printers, opting instead for smaller, less-established companies making a product that's not quite as good quality-wise but acceptable to the typical non-collector. If you are still buying the staples-and-paper comic books, you're the exception, not the rule.
I think a bunch of very valid points have been made by everyone, and I remember mentioning to a few people just a few months into collecting that this reminded me of Comic Books and Sports memmorabilia's insanity at it's peak.
In my opinion, just observing, and this discussion has been had before, it seems the people doing the most screaming are speculators. Those same people that you mention Don selling off there collections. you look at what there selling and a lot of them are in for multiple bricks of any given deck. So their complaint isn't really about high cost, its about profit....for them. When did that become the responsablity of the designer? I don't get a lot of so called "Collectors", I really don't. One in particular has gone way out of his way to critisize, just to finish his rant with a "....but I'm in for 2 bricks" Is that a show of support? No, its greed.
Everyone is entitiled to their opinion, and Don, I actually commend you. Since day one, you've stuck to your plan and been pretty steady on how and what you buy. You know how to pay a compliment and offer a fair opinion without making the purchase based on your buying "Rules".....If more people were like that we wouldn't be having this discussion.
In the end, I choose how much I want to spend on what. As a "Collector" I'm happy with 1-3 decks of something, so I may be willing to bend the rule on occasion for a given new release. But you'll never hear me cry that I can't buy a brick or two because they are priced too high. I can see why magician and cardists buy bricks, and why price is a huge issue for them.........but those "Collectors" crying, I feel confindent in saying that a huge % of them are "Speculators" and that's why there all in a tizzy.
Just my opinion of course
Speculators as you know them have actually become a rare breed. Before Kickstarter, it was commonplace for collectors and speculators to buy decks in bricks, enough to build an impregnable paper fortress in their bedrooms. Back then, there were perhaps a dozen or two dozen decks released in a year. Now that's accelerated to about that same amount every month - and if some have their way, it'll be that many each week, I'm guessing!
Everyone in the collecting hobby is buying less than they used to of any one deck, even if some haven't reduced their overall spending like most have. There's a strong "gotta get 'em all" mentality to collectors, while speculators look for anything that could go up in price, so as the market expanded, they had to spread their resources further to get a piece of as much of the action as they can (no smart investor places all their eggs in a single basket). People who used to buy several bricks often now buy one. If they bought one brick, they get three packs now. If they bought three packs, they might be down to two or one - or none, depending on available resources.
People probably once thought, when the Black Ghost First Edition deck was selling for $400 on eBay, that a set of them will put their kids through college. These days, while they've recovered from their low of only $50 a pack, they're still only trading for a fraction of that initial cost: generally between $75 and $100. And that's only because Ellusionist recently ran out, having given away their last deck set aside for distribution. Sounds like some of the same people who bought Superman #75...
Trust me, there are non-speculating collectors who are taking notice. I'm one of them. I'm the furthest thing from a speculator I know. I tried once, just once, to tread that path and the results were less than expected, and that was a few years ago. It's not about profit for me - I'm not earning any! It's all about reaching limits. The price point for a new deck is reaching Lamborghini proportions - a brand where the cheapest model is enough to buy five to ten "standard" midsize cars. They start at nearly $200,000 and top out at over $500,000 - more than even many homes in New York or San Francisco (two of America's most expensive housing markets).
I'm for more Hondas and Toyotas, fewer Lamborghinis. The insurance on them is phenomenally high anyway - I had a friend who had a friend who owned a Countach in the '80s, and I was told the car was $250,000 and the insurance this guy was paying in New York was equal to the cost of the car annually!
Having said that, as Sparkz pointed out, I can recognize beauty and good design when I see it, even if it isn't to my tastes or is simply out of my what-I'm-willing-to-pay price range. I try to keep "snob" out of the vocabulary of anyone describing me!
+1 for Don's ability to make a constructive remark with out verbally vomiting useless gripping or whinning. Why on earth do you think that I still visit the Discourse?
I tip my hat to you, sir. Thanks. We should talk soon - I'm home all day tomorrow, getting caught up on chores.
Thank you for visiting the Discourse. We know you have a choice when it comes to airlines, so we're glad you decided to fly with us!
Sparkz and Jackson nailed it. Don sets a great tone for the Discourse.
Im in Don's camp. As I have said before I pass on decks that enter the market as rare collector items. I have a hard time accepting limited production as an added value. The production of playing cards is standardized so unless a different technique is used there is nothing material wise to differentiate between decks. The rarity of a collectable i feel needs to be a side effect of it's Origin story not part of it's marketing . The Xbox One David Blaine decks would be a good example of this.
Sure I will pay a premium for the art but in the end a deck of cards is only a box of paper, and in the long the paper in a wallet stands as a much better investment.
With all that said im not trying to put down KWP. I really like the decks but like Don continuing my silent wallet protest against a trend. I think these topics always come up with KWP decks because they are just so damn hard to pass up. I really hope you guys don't feel attacked. It is just so easy to pass up on things like the "will blow your mind into tiny pieces and then glue those parts back together with awesome" decks of ellutionist.
Thanks Sparkz, for some reason I never thought of speculators. Things are making much more sense now :j
I also agree with Jackson. It is very nice to come to a place that doesn't have incessant complaining. I was especially impressed with Don's constructive criticism on the Shannon Young Derby Deck.
And a tip of my hat to all of you as well, good people.
The Discourse is what it is because of the people who participate in it - I don't do it all by myself. You're all due credit for that. I do what I can to keep the quality of the conversation high, but there's no way on Earth I could do that alone. You are the engine that drives the conversations here - I'm just the lubricant!
I'm going to attempt to break this topic off of the one for the Hive deck and give it a name. Wish me luck.
EDIT: Success!
2ND EDIT: been thinking more on the car metaphor. It's probably more like this:
Yugos (cheap junk cars) - the cheapo decks from the dollar store made of cardboard - and recent-issue Mavericks.
Hyundai Excel (old economy car, compact or smaller) - cards from makers like MPC or most of Cartamundi's output
Hondas, Toyotas, etc. (more affordable and economical; basic transportation) - Bicycle Standard, Bee, Tally Ho, Hoyle, etc.
"Big Three" (midrange cars from GM, Chrysler and Ford) - USPC-made custom Bicycle decks, a few bells and whistles.
Luxury (Cadillac, Lincoln, Lexus and the shallow end of the German car pool) - a top-of-the-line USPC-made deck or any good deck from EPCC or LPCC.
Supercars (Lamborghini or similar) - any deck made in quantities below about 1,000-2,000 with a higher price point, such as Hive, Zenith, or a deck not made for sale and exceptionally rare, like the test-run Zen/Zen Pure or the Blaine deck from the Xbox One interns' party.
So instead of comparing Hondas to Lambos, it would be more apt to compare a Chevy Malibu or a Cadillac ATS to a Lambo when comparing a typical collectors' deck to something like the Hive. The typical collector's deck, frankly, wouldn't really be a Honda in this case...
