Between Definitions and Reality: How I See the Hobby

[Orongo]

Hi! New user here.

Have you ever felt that the attributes and categories we use to describe cards are not immutable — that they are constructed, adjusted, and sometimes subtly shifted over time? All the gray zones and edge cases...

Well, you’re not imagining it. Even official sources, when defining parallels, inserts, or card types, rely on cautious wording: you'll notice words like usually, typically, often.
Which quietly suggests that the boundaries we rely on are real, but not perfectly fixed.

For a long time, I thought I was simply collecting cards.
I’ve realized that I’m mostly paying attention to how they are defined.

I PC Brendan Gallagher, but I’ve come to realize that this serves a second purpose — perhaps an even more important one: I’m drawn to collect differences between cards.

Many collectors focus on value.
I’ve noticed that I tend to focus on nature. I chase accuracy in variations, not value.

The hobby works - most of the time.
Its categories are practical, its conventions broadly accepted.
But they evolve with the industry, with product design, and with marketing narratives and license shifts.

So that's who I am and that's what I'd like to find here...

I’m the kind of collector who cares whether a Young Guns is technically a subset, not an insert or a parallel — even when that distinction barely matters to market value.
To me, those distinctions feel meaningful in themselves.

If this sense of nuance, drift, or definitional blur sounds familiar, we’re probably looking at cards in a similar way.

And I’d be genuinely interested in connecting with others who notice the same things.

I'll put a few examples over time in this thread - feel free to discuss them and add your own.

[Orongo]

One distinction that increasingly matters to me is the difference between what a card is at the production level and how it is later presented or distributed.

Take the cancelled 2020-21 Upper Deck ICE set, which was eventually released inside 2021-22 ICE products as bonus packs.

At the moment of design and printing, these cards clearly belong to the 2020-21 ICE identity.
But at the moment of distribution, they appear in a different temporal and commercial context.

So how would you define them?

Are they fundamentally 2020-21 ICE cards?
Or do they become, in some sense, part of the 2021-22 product because of how they entered the market?

Is the defining attribute their production identity, or their distribution context?

A similar question comes to mind with 2013-14 Upper Deck Series 1 – MVP Rookies.
On paper, they exist within a flagship UD product, yet their conceptual identity is tied to the MVP line.
Production logic and distribution logic seem to overlap — but not fully coincide.

MVP is usually a Set... but during 2013-14, an MVP Rookie card was then... a subset (Rookie) of an insert (MVP)?

I’m simply trying to understand where others intuitively draw the line between what a card is and how it arrives in the hobby.

[Satan]

these posts were sponsored by ChatGPT