People have been addicted to cards for a long time. More to the point, card magicians have been doing card collecting as a side hobby for a long time as well. Kind of makes sense I think. It certainly wouldn't surprise me if their are coin magicians who also get into coin collecting. Go search for some Marlo clips on youtube. He seems to have different decks in his hands all the time. I have never heard that he was a collector, so I am not implying that he was, but I think more different brands of cards were available off the shelf back in the day. The predominance of Bicycle Rider backs on store shelves, and almost exclusively among magicians, is a trend that has only emerged over the last two decades. I realize that dates back before most of you were born so most of you didn't really see that shift. When I was a little kid playing card games with my grandparents Hoyle was a much more common deck.
Long and short is that I think it is great that Lee Asher, Theory 11, and Ellusionist(in no particular order) have reignited an interest in card collecting among young magicians. Some magicians may consider it frivolous but in the end it has created a market for more variety in cards which has inspired a monopoly company(What USPCC is in North America) to start producing variety in their inventory. If you know anything about basic economics you know that monopolies in general stop bothering with things like variety and quality.