[larksimian]

This sounds good but doesn't actually make sense, like most corporate money-grabs. If cards accumulate in value, everyone is essentially playing for free(or indeed being paid to collect cards since generally the market rose faster than inflation). Everyone can sell their collection and if the secondary market is healthy they can get back what they spent on it and more.

This is the fundamental scam of the game-piece idea: it kills the secondary market and basically means instead of having the option to recycle your old decks into new ones you have to always pay $50/deck or whatever Hasbro is selling decks for.