I’m not sure if it’s true but I could see it happening. Everyone thinks they can make fast money but the truth is there is no such thing as fast money without consequences.
I’m also getting a legendary dogs vibe from this too but does it matter when modern pop reports are so high anyway?
It does matter because now the integrity and legitimacy of every modern set’s pull rates will be questioned. Did an employee steal an obscene amount of hits from the set prior to seeding and that box you just bought now doesn’t have any? Are pull rates even accurate if an unknown number of sheets straight-up disappeared from the factory? If it’s confirmed as happened once before, chances are it’s happened multiple times at multiple locations. The ES photo would further suggest that, although it’s unconfirmed (regardless, having that high a concentration of Umbreons and Rays is already a red flag to a lot of people). Who wants to buy a box that might not have any hits in it? No one does. And the only way to tell if the box was a victim to a security breach/oversight at the printing facility, is to open it…thus destroying any value the box may have had. Open one of these boxes and you’d have essentially thrown your money down the drain. Sell one of these boxes to someone else and even though you weren’t the cause of the issue, it still won’t help you or your business in any way.
This entire situation is a mess. It puts millions of boxes and packs into question. And it also forces us to question the supply of these chase singles, the graded POPs, and their respective prices. Personally, my relatively low enjoyment of opening packs doesn’t outweigh my aversion to this kind of risk. I’m glad I didn’t “invest” in these singles. Hopefully this brings modern stonkers down a peg or two.
Similar but some differences:
Gold stars are muuuch muuuuuuch rarer than any modern card, so having hundreds of mint copies pop up out of nowhere is massive. 500 espeon alt arts wont make as big a dent on price, at least I wouldn’t expect it to make much a difference… The pull rate may be lower than gold stars, but there are infinitely more copies out there than even the beast trio.
Theres also the fact that the gold star hoard came to be years after Unseen Forces was out of print (~2015 I believe?) . Theres a lot of Fusion strike out there still being opened and its not entirely out of the question that it wont get another reprint or pop up in product for years to come. The point being that its hard to know what effect, if any, this could have when the set is ~1.5 years old.
If there are large movements in the prices of swsh alt arts I wouldn’t expect the movements to be a result of this or other supposed hoards, rather the result of short-term race to the bottom “fireselling” and “boogeyman” fears of more hoards.
(i wouldnt be opposed to umbreon tanking though 
)
if you look closely, it seems most of those umbreons have damage on the bottom right corner. good thing to look out for if you see one on ebay or something
Makes me wonder if the batch failed QC and were supposed to be destroyed.
This picture is the death of fun things. This whole situation could really harm the health of the hobby. @enigma articulated those feelings very well.
The cockpit is where stonkflation goes to die 
could see that, although i can’t think of a scenario where one specific card out of a sheet would get the same damage, unless the entire batch all were smashed there somehow. idk.
It’s probably like the other one, they grabbed most of the sheet, sorted it, but for some dumb reason didn’t bother to sleeve it or take any care of it and then dented it themselves through their lack of care.
This is a real bad look for TPCi though.
I was also thinking that this might be problematic for tpci about the lawsuit against the person who stole them. I believe they can’t state that cards worth million dollars were stolen since, if i’ve understood correctly, the cards basically can’t have any significant resale value in their statements since otherwise packs would have to be treated as lottery tickets with clearly informed odds of winning etc, not sure how much other law or tax issues it would bring but afaik for tpci the individual cards are basically worth what a pack is worth. If someone with more knowledge can confirm, add to it or correct me you’re very welcome to do so
I expect Pokémon USA to ignore this public reveal and at best put out a generic vague corporate press release if social media made it a larger issue.
People can speculate these cards were separate from the ones intended for booster packs, but it’s entirely possible and in my mind likely that basic holos were swapped in to the rarity seed feeder by the employee(s) to cover their ass so no one would ask hey why aren’t there any cards in this feeder. Multiple employees besides the person who attempted to sell could have been involved. I think we deserve clarity. Just looking at the pic and calculating pull rates, this is roughly 35,000 booster boxes worth of Fusion Strike that could have been unfairly missing their special art vmax. And that’s not even counting the rainbow boxes.
I have a little more faith in Pokémon Japan / the umbrella TPCI. I don’t think they’d want a Japanese consumer base to see that this is how the global Pokémon brand treats some of their customers, assuming these were indeed meant for booster boxes (Pokémon themselves may claim this to cover their own ass without providing any explanation or transparency). With that in mind I shared this story on my Twitter as a thread (nearly all my followers are Japanese since I tweet in Japanese). To my surprise it has really blown up. I can’t even attempt to read all the quote tweets to see how people are reacting, it would take me all week and it keeps getting shared more.
So you are telling me all those “investors” who stocked up on ES, kept them sealed comparing them to a 401k might actually be sitting on a pile of duds? 
10M+ views hopefully enough for a response
I recall that Pokemon bought the printing company they had been using. It might make sense that they did so in response to this malfeasance.
I, for one, will not be desperately waiting for the prices of Moonbreon to fall so I can acquire one at a more affordable price.
(really though, I think this person needs to be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law, there are enough scumbags in this hobby in the wild, we don’t need any coming from within)
I hate that you’re probably right in Pokémon USA ignoring the situation and having to tweet to the Japanese audience to maybe get Pokémon to act on it. But hopefully it works. And given scarlet and violet pull rates, seems like it’s hopefully no longer anywhere near as big an issue.
“Fusion Strike” is one of the highest trending topics on Twitter right now lol
This thread has also gotten almost 2k external clicks so it’s definitely a story hitting the mainstream
I’d just like to say hello to all my fans out there!!
You’ve gotten more views about a stack of Pokemon cards on a person’s crotch than there are citizens in 165 of the world’s countries. 
