Is there any truth to the 'you can't lose something you never actually had' idea?
When LI's stock price dropped, it's not like somebody showed up and plundered the shareholders' bank accounts. It's never safe to treat stocks like money.
OPs analogy still holds in my opinion. Their compensation was baseball cards, and it's unfortunate for them that it crashed, but the value behind them was terribly abstract.
If Google's stuck took a hit like that I'd be out a significant part of my compensation.