Is something up with Target that we know about? Target is still 100% empty shelves and hooks with a computer paper sign saying Pokémon cards are limited 5 per customer. This Saturday I went and saw three Battle Style boosters hanging from pegs. It is the most amount of product I’ve seen there since pre-covid. I couldn’t believe I was even seeing stock at all. There used to be two Pokémon sections — a peg board with all the other TCG boosters and a 4 foot section in the toy aisle that had stuff like tins and boxes. That secondary location is completely empty now. They’re not using it for anything at all.
Here in Norway, the scalper thingy is by no means over. Total crapshoot if something is in or not.
Many shops are emptied of everything. Well, almost everything. Even for the average norwegian Toyota stonker, Crimson Invasion at 9 bucks a piece is pushing it.
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I feel like the main problem is secret rares. Now that 20 plus come in each set you feel the need to open a ton of boxes because you get 1 a box. Buying singles is always cheaper and more efficient. I haven’t opened many packs at all sinse hidden fates and I lost interest in modern again. Plus the price points have no logic. How is it $200 plus for a alt art or a chase Zard but a PSA 9 of Wotc holos are $200 for the less popular ones. With the real popular Pokemon being in the $500-$1000 range usually. Most of the time these PSA 10 chase zards go for around that same price
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Then getting 1st edition sets will be impossible because every distributor/store/vendor would just never sell them OR they would just sell just enough to get their cost back.
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Really don’t see how 1st editions would solve the scalper problem and not just exacerbate it. Regardless, the scalper issue is already being solved with increasing supply. I can find packs a decent amount of the time at target and I’m pretty sure it’s just being bought out by collectors that aren’t reselling.
I am personally not sure where the “scalping is done/ scalping isn’t happening anymore” people are coming from. I haven’t been able to purchase JPN booster boxes under $120 since like May (excluding Sky Scraping Perfect) and the English has still been incredibly hit or miss in my area (with emphasis on miss lol). I agree with the sentiment that 1st edition would likely only cause more problems at this point.
@genosha I honestly didn’t even think of that; people with more spending power in the hobby would probably just buy it all out and lock it in a storage unit lol
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Japanese isn’t due to scalping. You are just paying market value due to current supply and demand.
I haven’t seen a single pack of Pokemon cards on sale in any card store/supermarket/convenience store in Japan for probably 8+ months… they get restocks but are instantly bought out by the people who know when/where they’ll be stocked. Prices are coming down on the secondary market, and I know it’s more a symptom of high demand rather than nefarious characters hoarding everything, but personally I wouldn’t say there is no scalping happening
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i meeannnnn-- idk i agree to an extent. I don’t really have any way to prove any causation, but some anecdotal reports from people living in Japan suggest there is pretty widespread shortages of product. Mix that with a relatively healthy volume of boxes on eBay for $140, kinda leads me to believe there is some scalper action going on there. Not trying to come off as salty or anything, I just think that writing off any scalpage in this situation doesn’t really make sense to me.
The japanese situation is an influx of demand. Japanese distributors have more orders than ever. That is the core reason.
For the reasons mentioned above, this sounds like an awful idea.
yea, i totally agree with you, but like doesn’t the core reason for all scalping come down to demand
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What’s the difference between a target buyer buying low and reselling for profit and an online buyer buying low and reselling for profit?
I loved what Scott said months ago. Scalping? No biggie. Just improvise,
im not necessarily saying it’s some huge problem or anything, just acknowledging that it does seem to be happening despite some people saying its not lol
Then if scalpers target the 1st edition printing, maybe Pokemon can make an Alpha 1st print run to stop that happening
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And when scalpers reach the Alpha 1st print run layer just release a Topsun Alpha 1st print run and everything will be solved till this new Topsun solution is scalped.
stop buying modern crap, vintage is on sale. The same vintage that everyone was crying about being too expensive just a few months ago
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If that doesn’t work they could do a Alpha 1st non-alternating print run, and if that doesn’t work then maybe sample cards? Uncut sheets? Non-alternating 1st sample cards?
Solid point that I could make a whole post about honestly. Waaaay too many secret rares. The market is just saturated rn with “rare” cards that arent rare at all because hype twitch streamers are cracking open cases at a time to pull it all.
Imagine how cheap EX cards would be if back then we had modern day Twitch 
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I think Japanese is mostly scalping, since they literally had to redo how they sell products on their site, due to the amount of people trying to bot products (new raffle system).
The demand is absolutely there, no doubt, but the bots are specifically hitting Japan really hard right now, and have changed how the Pokemon company has to sell product for the forseeable future.