I have a question in regards to ‘scalpers’ buying pokemon merchandise in bulk, from participating outlets ! .. The internet is full of videos, showing shelves being stripped bare & removing the opportunity to purchase cards to progress your collections ! .. Do you think that they are making it much harder to collect the newer set’s .. in search of a quick, cash grab incentive ? .. I’d love to hear you’re thoughts & opinions !
Scalping could ‘easily’ be mitigated by TPCi/TPC printing more product, and being able to accurately forecast the popularity of products.
Scalping is a problem, for sure, but there is genuinely more organic demand for product than there basically ever has been (which is partially driven by high prices, which could be mitigated by printing more product). And yes, public interest in something because it is valuable or potentially valuable counts as organic.
The problem with increasing production by a significant amount is that one day you will have to cut back on production, and cutting back on production is bad for stock prices, bad for investment, and a bad look all round because capitalism.
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Thankyou, for you’re clear & concise answer to my question 
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Yea scalpers suck.
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Yes, they’re part of the problem in my opinion. I’m also not entirely convinced by the “print it more” solution because:
-the cards are out there right now, but artificially & temporarily removed from the market
-you risk destroying collectibility, since these are already printed in the billions, with many already fearing a junk wax era
-like Milhouse said, once done cutting back would be difficult
It’s just that the demand is inflated and people are frankly bulimic in their consumption: when it used to be enough buying a box or a couple packs, now they want at least five each. 1 to open, 1 to collect sealed, 1 as a backup, 1 to flip on facebook, and 1 to invest long term. This was not the norm.
Feel free to scale these numbers by an order of magnitude when it comes to serious collectors, wannabe LLC, and so on.
I also think scalpers are a problem beyond card scarcity. They contribute to the shitty vibe of the hobby, and it simply sucks that grown ass men can’t behave at all.
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Scalping can be fought with boycotts. Scalpers are only half the problem. Accepting and paying stupid prices is just as much on the community.
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I get annoyed at scalpers ruining the S&P500 and bitcoin by preventing me from buying them at lower prices, darn scallywags.
Nah but false equivalencies aside, to answer the question exactly as it’s phrased, i.e. does the practice ruin the experience for collectors?: usually, yes. Exceptions obviously include those occasions where collectors deploy similar tactics as the “scalpers” themselves to buy product.
As with all things in life, there’s a few nuances to consider here, especially since “do scalpers ruin X” is usually predicated on the underlying idea that people are morally incorrect for buying more of something than someone else in a free market environment. If that’s the implication, then that’s the part I disagree with, particularly since it then unravels into further lines of questioning such as “how are we defining scalper?”. If the title isn’t just limited to the short-term flipdiprippers and is more broadly applied to be people who buy product in order to sell it for a higher price at a later date, then 95% of E4 are scalpers. Additionally, as nightvulture pointed out, how do you reconcile with the notion that prices can only inflate if people are paying them?
TL;DR: yeah, scalping creates a shittier experience for people who want to collect; but no, there’s nothing fundamentally morally reprehensible about the practice.
On “jUSt PReEnt MOar”; how much should be printed? an extra million boxes of each set? has the demand been numerically evaluated to come to the conclusion that printing more will prevent scalping? If so, what exactly is the printing capacity TPC/i have access to? Enough to quench demand? How are we addressing surplus product waste? How should TPCi account for this in potential red on their books? What about distribution and logistics bottlenecks, not to mention individual retail store sales practices? Additionally, how do you account for the lagged impact that diluted value across all cards and products might have across the perception of collectibility of the TCG (of which scarcity and “the hunt” is a big part)?
Just print more is simply not a well thought-through solution.
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Pros of scalping
- increased demand from scarcity
- Increased value from scarcity
- increased fomo
- Increased supply of modern
- Increased investment by pokemon company
Cons of scalping
- loss on interest from lack of presence
- increased pricing
- Lack of availability
- Poor social image
- Availability lessened on older products
- Culture focused on top value and rarity
What am i missing in either category?
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Printing more of older sets, like a collector printing when a set is out of rotation, would make investment scalping unprofitable in short term. If it was known that pokemon would devalue its product by releasing more of it at a later date then most scalpers would never touch it.
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While I’d welcome it, unfortunately this approach is still susceptible to similar flaws. How much should be printed, over what timescales, do TPC/I have access to the capacity to afford them business continuity while performing the very luxurious and business-unnecessary task of placating the secondary market?
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I think saying they ruin the hobby is a bit dramatic. There’s a lot of different ways to engage with the hobby and opening modern packs is only one of them. I’ve had a lot of fun with Pokemon cards over the last 24th months, looking through my binders, playing casual decks with friends, scouring eBay for collection deals, buying cheap singles, looking at the newly released art, etc.
I do miss being able to preorder collection boxes or go into a store and buy a pack on a whim but I know it wont be like this forever. The 8985th post on social media complaining about scalping is probably not going to solve the issue though.
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No, scalpers are not ruining the hobby. The practice of getting into fights at Costco over Blooming Waters and buying out an entire store in front of kids is certainly cringey, clownish, and morally dubious, but as @Josh mentioned there’s nothing inherently wrong with participating in the free market. Problems with scapling are often imagined rather than directly emergent from people buying large amounts of product with the sole intention of reselling.
First, many people often blame low stock and difficult-to-obtain products on “scalping” when high organic demand often results in the exact same things. You don’t have to look far to see people blaming “bots” and “scalpers” for why they couldn’t get a Charizard UPC at retail price when it’s one of the most anticipated products from collectors and is limit 1 or 2 per order almost everywhere. The people camping out at Gamestop for the latest releases, are they actually “scalping” a limit-1 Booster Bundle for a $10 profit or are they just eager collectors?
Second, scalping is a symptom of the larger market imbalance between supply and demand. Pushing a moral argument for why scalpers shouldn’t scalp or claiming that buying any product over MSRP is “supporting scalpers” are pointless, because there is always going to be a next man up at a free money stand.
Third, blaming “scalpers” for “ruining the hobby” points the finger at the symptom rather than the problem. I am surprised to see the derision towards “print more” because this is literally the solution. It’s not as easy and quick as some make it sound, but fixing a supply/demand imbalance requires that you increase supply. Pokemon is able to print more, and if they want their products to be available at MSRP then they should. We should not be responsible for figuring out the TPCI business side of printing more, but clearly printing more is the only way to fix things outside of demand miraculously drying up.
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Solutions to kerb demand in addition to printing more:
- Increase chase card pullrates
- Oversaturate the number of popular chase cards so 1. it’s impossible to keep affording and 2. the more there are, the less special they become → exhaustion
This year TPC is starting to do both
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Nah, they can do whatever they want but realistically we control our own wallets, nobody is forcing you to buy modern at an inflated price. I’d personally say it’s the fans themselves ruining it by impulse buying every product they see, we create the scarcity not the random people on eBay. Personally I don’t think the community is in a healthy place right now, everyone has hysteria and is blaming it on others. It’s either your a fan who loves Pokemon or your not a fan and you hate Pokemon, it’s all black and white. Anyway we can’t change it so for now I’ll let it sort itself out and when the time comes maybe I’ll buy modern again
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Thankyou for you’re insight & opinions on the subject ! .. In hindsight, my choice of words [ruin] should have been better thought through & I’d like to apologise for any offence caused ! .. Thankyou, for you’re replies
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No need to apologize. This forum is one of the few (if only) places where you can get some nuance to the discussion instead of the same argument over and over again against scalping that you find on reddit or youtube.
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Very true, Pokemon is just way too big and unwieldy. It can be effective in hobbies that are 0.1% the size of Pokemon, where the body politic will treat scalpers like malignant tumors.
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Pokemon is such an odd franchise where they act like they don’t own the ip to their product. Every single scenario presented as a problem is solved by printing more. It’s happening live right now in Japan. 2023 saw the same issue, scalpers everywhere. Now everything is normal because pokemon remembered they owned pokemon and printed more product. 
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With a simple, yet profound phrase, I was reminded of my own statement “Paradox Rift was the last fun set to open”. This, due to pull rates. Even if they are printing to capacity its so much junk. 1 more IR, and 1 more SIR per box and this issue is massively alleviated. Go back to Paldea evolved 1.5 SIR per box, and maybe 4 IR per box and its all good. But printing less junk solves our problems, and yet printing more junk solves pokemon company’s problems.
Print Less Junk.
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Alternatively…
Retire all full art, IR, SIR, master ball holo, etc cards.
Return the hobby back to pre-Black & White days. Make the hobby “boring” again.
Sure, making your product “worse” is a reliable way to kill interest in it but also it does disincentivize scalping as there are fewer buyers 
All that said, I do wish that we had fewer secret rare kind of cards. The “bulk” feels extremely underappreciated now and many of the regular full art cards feel the same way. Heck, they could make a booster pack slot that guarantees a full art / secret rare card and I think that would be a positive change.
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