The sketches have always been a motivator for most collectors. When OLDS4 was released opening it up for all characters I felt this was the end for sketches because everyone can get most of the characters. Then ANS10 & 11 allowed all characters. Now with Leslie exiting the sketch collecting the prices have hit rock bottom and we have now seen the PCs and binders not selling out. The sketches aren't the draw. In the past you could feed your collecting habits by selling off the color sketches for big bucks. It was like pulling a golden ticket. Those days are done.
I see things a little differently. I don't think it was so much which sketch titles are available in a release, I think it's primarily how many sketches are out there. There are now 10s of thousands of sketches. I remember back in the olds1 days, a color sketch was a rare thing. It was a prize & commanded a premium. That has been so diluted by the glut of sketches in every wacky product or series that the rarity is totally gone. When you initially think you can get a hand drawn sketch of a character you like by a wacky artist, your first thought is WOW (or at least mine was). When you scroll through ebay & see thousands of marginal sketches by a long list of artists, the WOW factor is gone.
In addition to the glut, the ratio of nice or "prized" sketches to average or doodle class sketches is (IMO) about 10% to 20%. As the number of artists have increased, and the sketches per release has skyrocketed, the overall quality of the sketches has declined (IMO). Think about the sharp 100% Jay Lynch olds1 sketches. Even the ones Jay did 200 of are much nicer than the majority of newer doodles. The blue line fiasco of OLDs2 foreshadowed what was to come by showing how hard it is to put out the quality the collector expects in a quantity Topps needs to make a profit.
The large number of titles has some effect. Since skyrocketing the number of titles makes it impossible to collect a sketch "of each title" Topps has undermined the very nature of many, not most or all, but many wacky collectors - being a completest. I can only speak for myself, but not being able to collect 1 of each title, or 1 of each character started to undermine my drive to collect. I love wackys, but primarily the vintage ones. I collected ANS etc.. wackys because I love vintage ones & the new ones were there - they were nice & it was a challenge to keep up & "collect 'em all". I did it for many years. I collected the new ones more on autopilot because they were wackys & because they were there.
ANS11 was the nail in my completest coffin. There were just too many exceptions to reasonably collect 'em all. Starting as far back as the flashbacks I became ok with having 1 gold example. Then having 1 sketch was ok for ANS7, then 1 red Ludlow in ans10. Now with the back variations, red ludlows, gold borders, artist autos & so many other sets it takes a long master list to track them, I just opted out. I could no longer devote the time (I used to substitute time for $$ by buying & selling to manage the cost of collecting which has gotten progressively more difficult, if not impossible) and I had no desire, nor the available funds to spend thousands of dollars chasing all this stuff. I had a little withdrawal. I broke down & bought an ANS11 base set, more out of momentum than anything else. After I bought it, it did nothing for me. The completest spell had been broken. The wacky emperor had no clothes.
Since then, I have ended up taking 1 step further & decided to sell all my post 2004 wacky collection to focus on the vintage side of collecting - the part that makes me feel like a kid again. New wackys were a fun ride, but for me, it's time to move on...
In a nutshell, Topps took 4 steps in breaking my ANS wacky spell (in descending order of importance)
1. Glut of items including sketches (too much stuff),
2. rarity of many items making completism impossible (not possible to collect 'em all),
3. continually increasing prices with continually decreasing value (financial squeeze i.e. collector cases, binder release, ltd editions increasing in number & cost...)
4. declining ratio of nice sketches to overall sketches (quality decline)
Brad, do you have any idea why Leslie is dumping everything? Is she also dumping her vintage stuff too?