Good.
They weren’t being used as a nice bonus for the staff working pre-release events anymore. So their purpose was now pointless.
10 Likes
Yeah people ran them through the ground 
maybe we will see even prize cards?!
Damn Charizard collectors/investors ruining everything
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It’s a shame that LGS owners weren’t sharing them with their staff. They know TPC wanted them to be shared. I don’t know how they can feel good about holding them all and selling them on the second-hand market. Then again, I guess the same can be said for almost all unethical practices in this hobby.
It certainly wasn’t always this way.
When I was a kid there was an official WOTC store at the local mall. I went there for Pokemon League. I remember when Legendary Collection came out the employees didn’t know what to do with all the box toppers from the booster boxes they were opening. So they just handed them out to all of us at the league for free. That’s how I got my LC Charizard box topper. I traded with a few friends to get like 4 of their box toppers, too.
That would never happen nowadays!
About time too!
Hopefully we get an event organizer system like Japan and a few other Asian countries now have - that way cards like this could be sent out individually to home addresses rather than in bulk to stores for shady individuals to pocket instead of distributing.
3 Likes
It’s always disappointing when Pokemon diminishes its already scarce English promotional card distribution. There are a lot of creative alternatives that could be introduced, but I’m sure we will actually just see one less collectible card to look forward to.
PokeBeach really does this news a disservice by shoe-horning in a conversation about their use in the aftermarket. That’s a biased plug that takes one of the few visible news sources and reinforces a negative narrative to Pokemon when in reality, these promos have been a huge relief to many of the businesses that have sacrificed to offer Pre-Releases as Pokemon repeatedly reduced organizer incentives over the years. The expectation that people will show up and sell your product for you for free is ridiculous. This doesn’t hurt stores in metropolitan areas. It hurts small stores that keep Pokemon relevant in less populated areas that are servicing statistically low-income communities. And our big complaint is that after selling Pokemon’s product for them and taking on an enormous financial burden to create physical spaces in which this hobby can proliferate, they have sold a promotional card that was given to them in exchange for their efforts and it went for $1000. This happened for the first time in literally 4 years. And we resent them for that? Grow up.
This boogeyman of the greedy store owner is a small cross-section of a massive global community that is being used to Trojan Horse further store abuse from an ungrateful community and unsupportive brand. Pokemon taking away more support from its malnourished Play program isn’t a place to celebrate or be happy. This bizarre relationship in Pokemon that people submit to where Pokemon is a daddy that gets to punish its fan base, play system, illustrators, and more for enjoying the hobby the way they want to instead of the way Pokémon!™ wants you to is literally the most fucked up collecting relationship I’ve ever seen between a producer and collecting base. A reasonable company would lean into how people enjoy their product.
12 Likes
To be fair, I never got any staff promos during my brief stint as a PTCG judge (quickly stopped because I hate how much the punishment system encourages rule sharking for a gosh darned children’s card game).
One LGS in my area was infamous for giving less than the minimum prize packs out. The managers openly asked everyone to pay cash “so [they] wouldn’t have to report it.” I don’t wish for businesses to fail often, but…
Sadly, I have only been able to find one wholesome LGS in the DC-metro area, and their core customer base is MTG only T_T
I agree with a lot of what you said Charlie, but the only issue I have with this process is that *allegedly* some stores were not giving these promos out to the judges running these events like they’re supposed, in turn throwing them online to make a quick buck.
It’s unfortunate because probably 90% of LGS do everything correctly, but are getting penalized by the LGS that are greedy and only care about increasing the top line. This happens across many things in life though. The few people that are against the rules screw everyone else over trying to follow them.
I think a better solution would have been to penalize the LGS’s that are not following protocol rather then penalizing all the LGS’s AND the judges. Meanwhile they’re also screwing over the collectors that enjoy collecting these promos (me included)
one word. rarity
im sure covid also made tons of store owners just sell them since there wasnt that many in person events if any…
Just to clarify, in my last post I was only saying it was shameful if a store owner was failing to share their staff cards with their staff. TPC want the staff working at the pre-release event to get those cards, otherwise why would they send more than 1 staff card to the store? The store owner isn’t supposed to keep them all.
I don’t care if all of them sell their cards on the second-hand market. I think it’s wonderful if they are able to make a lot of money doing so. What I have a problem with is a store not sharing the cards with their staff, and the owner keeping all of them. I view it the same as I view a restaurant owner not letting their staff keep all the tips that they earned.
If the financial incentives for the store are really so bad that the owner feels compelled to not share cardboard with their staff, then that’s a different problem, a serious one, which absolutely should be addressed.
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The solution is Pokemon retains the ownership of all cards and takes a cut of each secondary market sale XD Future of Pokemon TCG! Means they get a cut of all sales lol. They Can’t bitch and moan looking at the crazy money switching hands and be like “damn we need a slice of that action!” anymore then.
From when I started in 2012 until now, it seems like Pokemon just continues to reduce their Play! support at the local level. Every few years judges and organizers and players lose some form of prize-support or yearly rewards. This is all despite the playerbase growing and gaining livestream traction.
Hopefully this is temporary, and they return once pre-releases are able to be held in person across the globe.
5 Likes
TPC has given a bad example themselves.
During the Evolutions prereleases the London office kept all Charizard staff promocards and didn’t send a single one to the organisers. Months later they dared to distribute them at a regionals to the judges.
That’s not were they should have ended. They were meant for the people who staffed the prereleases.
That’s also the reason the distribution was changed.
So please don’t talk about “how good” “how honest” TPC is, they aren’t.
They showed organisers what to do when a charizard is printed as staff card —> keep it.
Thats the message they did send out.
Thanks for the detailed explanation. I appreciate all the info.
I actually had no idea how these events were organized. I haven’t been to any TCG events since 2004 when I originally left the hobby. At that time it seemed to me that events were run entirely by the store employees. It sounds like a ton has changed since then. Also I imagine the store I went to was very much the exception to the rule, since it was an actual Wizards store in a major metropolitan area.
Once this pandemic is over I’m planning to find an LGS in my area and offer my support as a customer. I’d like to get back into the card game as well and attend future pre-release events.
I too hope these recent changes are only temporary, and TPCi brings back staff pre-release cards in the future.
Could it just be Pokemon temporarily trying to disincentivize in person play because of the covid spike? So far its nothing but rumors. Hopefully it is something temporary, as LGS/TO’s are already on life support.
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Could be, but why would The Pokémon Company ‘butt in’ in on international regulations which are different per country at the moment? In some countries, it’s possible to organize a pre-release event with the necessary precautions (mandatory facemasks, plexiglass shields between the players). The stores that are able to do so, are now being penalized with one less incentive for the volunteers at these events.
But yeah, it’s nothing more than rumors at the moment. Let’s hope it’s all temporary. I really enjoyed chasing those STAFF cards. 
Selfishly I’m really pleased at the news, the staff cards are usually the hardest and most expensive cards to get to finish the set!
Would be nice if we got similar quality of promos to the ones in Japan. They introduced English Pokémon center promos. Maybe they will shake things up and make other changes.
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I can confirm this information, our distributor here received the same mail.