Kouki Saitou signing at Baltimore Regionals

It was definitely rough for people including those that did play in the event like I did to try and get an autograph. Went in early saturday and already knew it was gonna be a crap show seeing the first group just cut their friends in and some even actually just typed in other numbers to get into the signing. Sunday was very upsetting as my group got there right after 3 and we were just 3 people away from the cut off they did which didnt surprise me at all. was hoping were were gonna be able to make it but sadly didnt. It was good to see people take pics of the line to make sure no one was cutting in but also made it a pain since a group didnt want to leave the line even though they cut just to have a cop/security escort them from the line so that delayed things also. I did notice a lot of people were from vendors or whatnot content creators too. someone sold their spot on the line for 2k which was crazy

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I was better prepared sunday after missing out Saturday and was near the obvious line jumpers that got booted. We thought a few other girls manged to cut in as well but the 2 that got booted were very obnoxious and obvious about it.

The girl was very bratty and intitaled guess she has some level of instagram followers telling the guys behind them basically to shut up and let them jump since she would go live on insta as if that was supposed to be a threat.

Very glad they got booted. Wish they could perma ban the people that used fake screenshots and typed 2nd phone numbers in the que. Create a proper punishment to prevent this from happening in the future.

Prehaps they sign up with a play pokemon account ID and a
Show proper id to match it or something going forward.

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They should drastically raise prices but I already see the argument being made here I expected about well what about the people who can’t afford that… well they can’t afford that then. That is life. “But I want a Lamborghini, it should be a price I can afford because I really want one”. Supply/demand is a thing.

Day of signing why don’t they ya know do some third grade math as well… Signer can sign a certain # of signatures per hour. Pretty easy to figure out, a baseline has been established now. If it is an 8 hour event at 25 sigs/hr well then 200 people however you want to allocate them are all that can have signings done that day and there is no remote need for anyone to not instantly know if they are in or out of that group of 200. Every hour or half hour auction off a guaranteed slot to the front of the line and let the market set the price. Send the excess to charity if it feels too high. (Buying line spots happened anyways sounds like)

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I talked a little bit about this on voice last night. Since they didn’t seem to do any test runs before hand (as far as determining how long Saitou took per person) after the first day everyone knew he was averaging 7mins/person. This length was because Saitou put serious passion into every single sketch. Any pokemon, multiple colors, you name it, he was open to it. Amazing; keep that part but look at how many people you can get through in your signing period. Friday was a bit wild west, but Saturday and Sunday was much more strict on how long Saitou signed for. 9am-11:00am, 11:30-1, 2-4:30. That’s 360 minutes of signing, or 51 people through the queue on average.

51 people out of 500 spectator passes, and ~1100 players. So 3.1% of attendees got signatures, which is probably accurate because it was the same ~50ish people who got through the queue each day.

Is that good? Is that bad? Would Saitou have been ok with that? He wasn’t willing to sacrifice quality for speed which I agree with, but would he have been open to 2 sketches per person or even one and that’s it? If we had gone from 3 sketches to 2, that’s an additional person through the queue per every 2 people or a 50% increase in folks getting signatures.

There should have been a hard cap that once reached you immediately knew if you were in or not; sitting around for 12 hours with a pit of anxiety not knowing if you’d get the queue text and getting cut was rough.

Panel passes were worth their weight in gold if you got one in the first 45 seconds they were live on the site; 5 guaranteed signatures, no getting up at 2am, no doubt you’d get anything after a day of waiting, no BS with people fucking around with the queue. In my opinion those should have been more limited. Should you have been able to buy multiple days? Should you have been able to buy multiple panel passes? Maybe not in the spirit of spreading out who got sigs. 2 panel passes were worth more sketches than getting through 2 days of queues (which was nearly impossible as someone who got through 1 queue in 3 days).

At the end of the day (my favorite phrase for those in voice yesterday) - if Saitou signed 1000 cards over the weekend - let’s say 150 or so per day for general and 525 over all three panels (35 panel attended x5) + a little more for averaging out; those 1k sketches went to MAYBE 70 different people total. The same people getting through each days queues had panel passes usually, and besides for the e4 folks helping others get at least 1 sig, everything was extremely consolidated to a small group.

The staff did a great job of streamlining the PROCESS throughout the weekend, improving each day, but nothing changed as far as addressing the speed or number of individuals who were able to get a sketch.

Fuck you if you waltzed up to the front of the line each day
Fuck you if you got all your cards “personalizd” to pokemon to resell on ebay
Fuck you if you cheated the system
And fuck you specifically, to the tatted girl and ginger man bun who went twice friday; we all fucking saw you, you pieces of shit

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Emotions ran high for a straight 72 hours, and I think this was a very valuable learning experience for Overload in the future. In my opinion, issues began all the way back to registration and panel ticket sales. We can dissect all we want but this could’ve been a catastrophe and it ended with, from what I can tell, a majority of e4 collectors leaving with at least one autograph that included a breathtaking sketch by Saitou.

I was fortunate enough to get there around 7am Friday and 4:45am on Saturday to secure my spots in the regular queue. I ended up with 5 autos for myself and 10 for friends over the three day period (and one irreplaceable autograph from Ken, the interpreter! He was such a kind and patient guy this whole weekend!)

I will steal some words from @Coop13 from when we were talking earlier; Kouki Saitou has cemented himself on the public signing Mount Rushmore, and we will likely never see an event of this caliber when it comes to unique sketches and artwork again. I am beyond grateful to have gotten what I did, and heartbroken to have still not gotten all I wanted to for several friends. I am now going to go hibernate until next Spring.






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Well said

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The fee for signatures will only go up.
Unlike PSA which can hire more staff to grade the cards and therefore the possibility that grading costs can drop, for signatures, the artist is only ONE and cannot increase. There will be more and more demand while the supply is only ONE.

I really don’t think increasing the price will do much of anything unless you bring it to hundreds of dollars each.

Really the solution is just to get more events going and saturate the supply side.

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por qué no los dos

More signing would definitely be ideal. I think another solution is ID verification? Since people had to line up anyways when called. May as well use the staff to check ID/phone verification since when signing up for the SMS queue we need to put our name in anyways.

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I’ll elaborate a bit. I was there all day Saturday, only about 10% of the line got though. The 10% that did were a lot of E4 member or just generally people I recognize that are seriously tied into what’s happening in the hobby. Raising the price would deter some of the 90% of causal people who tried to get through but the core 10% of people that got the majority of the spots would pay almost anything unless you’re getting to the multiple hundreds or thousands each.

The demand is SO extreme that you can’t simply optimize the equation by price. Increasing the supply side gives more opportunity to meet the demand and also reduces the secondary market price, reducing the number of resellers. But that’s not really a button anyone can press to make it happen.

I genuinely think the only solution today is just to restrict access. A fair lottery (hard to pull off) before the event that grants access is probably an ideal way to remove the aggressive demand at the event. Even at this event, the panels were the most chill and positive part (but I think it’s an example of an unfair lottery in this case so that could be improved)

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This was my idea when we were sitting in the chairs

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We sat in a lot of chairs if I’m going to be real with you. Maybe you were inspiration. Or maybe great minds think alike. Or sometimes a great mind and a much weaker mind think alike. On the margin does it even matter? :smiling_imp:

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at the margin… you are handsom,e .//…

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I agree in theory that given current restraints and feasibility (supply/signing events will not magically increase overnight, personalizations will not go away, artists will not charge market value) restricting access may be the only option. However, I question how you do this in practice. I have yet to see a small-scale online lottery system that consistently avoids bots. Making people travel to enter a lottery in person likely massively diminishes the number of attendees and is arguably less fair than a first-come, first-serve system. I also fully believe that no matter what system is implemented, whales and flippers who have money will be able to game the system to at least significantly increase their odds of winning a slot. Not to mention the complete guesswork that would go in to deciding how many slots to lottery off.

We’re in a no-win situation right now. Every option you pick to “improve” the situation, whether it’s lottery, first-come first-serve line, no queue resets each day, massive price increases, or reducing the number of autos, screws someone. You can make a legitimate argument for and against everything. You will never have a perfect event and people will always be disappointed in something.

As people look to improve signing events, I would say that seeking improvement is great, but things should not be changed just for the sake of changing things. Perfect should also not be the enemy of good.

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You will always leave people disappointed. This is a situation of having 10,000 rabbits and 100 carrots. The issue is when the disappointment arises from a situation perceived to be unfair. Like 20 rabbits getting 80 carrots and watching them flip their extras on Fleabay.

A fair lottery is not impossible. Most sites don’t care much to avoid bots. Most bots also only work if the interface is known. If the goal is a fair lottery, it’s doable. Require a phone number and do text confirmation. Require accurate ID at the event. Remove all entries with IP addresses appearing more than once. It just takes some slightly creative thinking. I’m sure there are companies that already make solutions available because it seems like a common use case.

You can even charge per entry and threaten anyone caught doing improper things lose their entry and money. Then put the money to the event.

Overall I definitely am not as pessimistic as you are about this 4th :blush:

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I think i would rather wake up at 2am

Sorry for yet another detailed account of the weekend, I want to share my thoughts on the event overall and document them while the memories are still fresh in my mind. Feel free to skip to the TLDR at the end of the post.

I have to start by thanking @Alec who endured an endless line of fans who were not always understanding or pleasant, Saitou’s interpreter (I didn’t catch his name but he was a trooper and extremely nice), the whole Overload staff team who did their best with unprecedented demand that they did not expect, and of course Mr Saitou himself who went above and beyond! The insane time, effort and patience they all put in for fans and collectors was unbelievable and all done with a smile. I cannot express my gratitude enough.

Shoutout to all the E4 members who I met on Saturday, everyone was so kind and welcoming to me even though I am relatively new to the forum. Putting faces to usernames was a surreal experience.

My heart goes out to everyone who waited in line and went home empty handed. Especially if you were really close, that is rough. Luckily it seems that not all of the community is immature or dishonest. I heard many stories of people giving up one or more of their 3 card slots to friends. True acts of kindness like those remind me that it’s not all bad news.

My friends and I didn’t get any panel tickets so we were determined to wake up early everyday and try to be first in line. I’m thankful I was able to make it in on Friday and Saturday by waking up early and getting in line before the crowds formed.

Sunday was an unbelievable demonstration of desperation from both the honest and dishonest people. Simultaneously the most hectic yet organized day of the event. Everyone has heard by now about the individuals who were removed from the line but not enough people are talking about how they were removed. People were not letting ANYTHING go unnoticed. I arrived at 3am to be around the 50th person in line. At this time everyone had been documenting the line with photos and video. If someone wandered to the front to talk to a friend, someone kept an eye on them. It was a true community effort to keep the line straight and honest. If someone sold their spot in line for $ it was made public information. Bonds were formed, people spoke up and worked together, it was pretty amazing to see. I was among the 60 people to sign up in the SMS queue but they alerted us that only the first 50 would go through. Thankfully Saitou was gracious enough to allow us last 8-10 people 1 card each.

TLDR: Overall this was a sleepless weekend that I will never forget. So many great memories with friends, meeting new faces, and of course having the opportunity to meet a legendary artist in Kouki Saitou. I do fear the negativity will surround this event and potentially leave stain in the future of signings, not even mentioning what happened in Ocala on the same exact weekend no less. But the kindness, joy and excitement that came from meeting so many other people who share the same passion as me made it an overall positive experience for myself and I can’t wait to attend future events (signings or not) and see many of you all there again.

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The only thing that truly mattered from this weekend. The Richmond crew will understand

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Wholesome hooman beans





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