I'm actually for it. I love great sketches and would love to grab them at great prices. The problem is if its really nice it will get a respectable price but there hasn't been many in the last few months. On the other hand if I want to sell a sketch I have a pretty good idea what it will sell for and so a lot of times I opt to not to sell even though I may have two of the same variation. It's just not worth it. That is why we need artists to mix it up a bit. If you do 50 of the same sketch then it's not unique.
I know there are several OLDS4 boxes still at Topps but the sketch collectors are afraid to touch them with so many subpar sketches with the series. This is another example of people will only pay for good stuff. I think Topps may understand after this, if not then the next series will fail bad. I've heard rumors that the artists have been paid peanuts for sketch cards (actually it was one of our non-regular sketch artists). If that trend continues with Topps then we all lose interest. It's not fair to the great artists we have here on the forum and its sad.
I find that it is good on one hand that I can get a nice sketch for a reasonable price. On the other hand, when you buy a product directly from topps, the chances of getting a sketch at the break even point are becoming less & less. Most sketches won't get you anywhere close. Then the issue becomes - buy from topps & get burned, or buy on ebay, spend the same or less money & get exactly what you want. If everyone opts for that choice, it becomes a stalemate because no one wants to take the hit by buying from topps, so the product sits. I wonder if that's the reason for the extended delay of olds5... It's how I am feeling about this binder release too. Seeing the binders sell for $50 for the set & the puzzle prices all over the place while topps is charging $260 makes it a tough choice for me even though I already have $520 into half the set.
Most people aren't in the hobby to flip, or as a business, but economics does play a role, because the value you can get for a sketch determines the amount of currency you can use to "trade" (in cash or wackys) to get the title, artist or design you want for your collection. Although I appreciate the nice sketches, I have long since lost interest in the sketch game since there are just too many of them & they lost that unique & rare quality they seemed to have when they were just in the small postcard releases & the initial, pre "blue-line" glut of olds2. it's kind of ironic that when the color sketches were commanding $1,000 prices, many (myself included at the time) yearned for the reasonably priced color sketch. Now that it's here, I probably couldn't care less.