I have to admit that I enjoy opening the packs and laying out the series' cards on a grid on the kitchen table and watch that grid fill up as the series became more complete. I used to do that when I was a kid and bought a whole box of the newest series from the drug store where I bought them. Whether I unwrap packs that come from Target or from FedEx, I still get the same sense of excitement.
The thing is that in those days and in the days of maybe the first half of the ANS sets, "collect 'em all" was possible. The sense of excitement pretty much dies if you KNOW you're NOT gonna "collect 'em all." MOST of the time, IF you bought enough, you could get ALMOST a full set and actually trade for a few cards you wanted from the subsets. And that's okay. BUT there have been exceptions. For example, the 2023 set offered coupons, rainbow foils, and more AS EXTRAS doled out in the packs like they were gold. Even if you wanted to collect only one of those chasers, collecting all of them was impossible unless you bought thousands of dollars worth of sets. And then you were stuck with lots of base sets that no one wanted. In this 2024 set, the variants were supposedly 1 in 6 boxes. I bought 10 and received NO variants, and from what I've seen on the forum, their presence was extremely lacking; in fact, I doubt the 1:6 boxes statistic is even true. However, I wasn't too upset because the variants and foils didn't do much for me because they didn't add much if anything to the Wacky Package itself. That's why I was elated that the coupons were part of the base set in 2024 because I love reading the coupon backs. True, I was missing a few cards from the subsets, but there were enough of those cards in circulation to trade.
Personally, I need some assurance that what I'm collecting is possible to attain. If the original series had contained 100 cards plus three desirable subsets plus variations of all those cards, and you would only get a few of those desirable cards in each box, my 10-year-old self would have been VERY frustrated and probably would have quit collecting very quickly. Which may be why Topps can't get a whole lot of new, young collectors. I have given some new Wacky Packages as gifts to kids and they still love 'em! In the original series days, Topps said "Collect 'Em All"--AND YOU COULD--without going to the poor house! In the early days of Wacky Package collecting, there was a base to collect and you COULD find them all, even if some had been "ceased and desisted." In the early days of Wacky Package collecting, Topps still had a few cards that had less of a print run, but at least they WERE attainable.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on collecting: Make what you want your customers to collect attainable, and we'll crack those packs to our heart's content.
