Didn’t notice any posts about this yet but I figure a lot of people here will be happy to hear this. Looks like they’re bringing a new facility online soon.
Operating in 2028, the tcg will probably be in mid-cycle gen 10 by then. Products this year, 2026 and 2027 will still remain in supply catch-up mode if demand hasn’t dropped
Meanwhile I’m expecting the Apr 2025 - Mar 2026 total cards printed to be a new record
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yeah sadly, I dont think this solves the issues for sets like Surging sparks - Destined rivals. Unless pokemon does a big reprint once the factory is up and running a few years later. But I sorta doubt it.
Its funny to think future generations may refer to this era as relatively “low print”
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Look, they know they have to be ready for the 35th anniversary 
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Same comment applies
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Oh I’m super late! 
It deserves its own thread anyways
Agreed this topic definitely stands on its own.
Probably easier to keep the chaos contained too
Awesome news.
With Pokemon/Millennium now expanding and recent news of PSA expanding as well, the foreseeable future looks exciting for the hobby. Strong signs of growth and long term commitment is always welcome!
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Yep. This is great news but it’s suggesting current printing capacity simply isn’t cutting it with evolving demand. Printing more is definitely needed, but one of my criticisms of the blanket “print moar” request is somewhat manifesting here. It’s like okay yeah we need to print more, but specify what you’re expecting here because you simply cannot quantify the exponentially growing demand each cycle. There’s no proof that it’s physically feasible for TPCi to print enough in current circumstances where previous, current, and future-gen products are all suffering record demand. Other than additional facilities being added or a fundamental change to the pull rates/cards themselves, the only thing that would allow printing more in the current environment to solve the issue is simply a reduction in demand itself. In this era, it is not enough for one side of the equation to outweigh the other; we must have both a lowering of demand and increasing supply for full resolve. In the past where printing more has resolved the issue (the most recent good example being JP where they just decided to stick tape over the PRINT button in 2023) those instances coincided with a marked reduction in overall market demand. If it doesn’t coincide, printing more popular product with limited facilities just “feeds more to the scalpers” as it were. This announcement seems to be an admission of that. BUT not to take away from it - yes excellent news. I’m hoping they’ll decide to allocate a portion, if not all, of the new facility to “catch-up printing” that will allow them to satiate demand for older products.
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Most of the demand for sealed products is because of the illusion that it is limited. The minute sealed product is readily avaialble on all websites at MSRP, demand will magically drop off 50%
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An observation I made about the purchase of millenium in the first place, was that this move didn’t actually change pokemon’s capacity to print cards at all. A bit late to make this move, but does it mean much? I have no idea of size of the building, compared to their current one. It sure sounds big. But I wonder what else it implies. I can imagine a world where they start moving more of the packaging material manufacture around. I was under the impression they still had to seek outside companies for the packaging for collection boxes and the like. So this might not be for card printing if my assumption is correct. Or it could be for cards. I dunno.
Yep, the issue (ie the point I was rambling on about) lies with the specifics of getting to the point of being able to consistently supply the majority of products at MSRP in an era of record demand, regardless of the cause of that demand. Unfortunately it’s becoming more apparent, as per this announcement, that current facilities are insufficient to satisfy nuage levels of WANT, therefore they cannot get to the stage of making people realise that product is not actually limited by supplying enough at MSRP. What will get them to that stage is similar to what we’ve seen in the past; consistent printing, expanded facilities and a natural, cyclical decline in the demand over time will all go-hand-in-hand to getting the hahbee back to that point. We could then dissect each of these factors further because there’s so many variables, eg how cyclical demand is related to consistent printing habits vs wider economic landscape, but it’s a futile exercise because the point is, supply habits have to adjust with evolving markets if TPCi want to be able to get us back to “normal”, and it’s not enough to just say print more.
“investing” in sealed product has always been the most braindead move ever 
for one like 90% of the sealed boxes dont have the value in them when u open then up and for two ur end consumer is always gonna be the gambling bro oh forgot the third one which is their is no ebay protection for when the buyer claims the box is “resealed” 
Not a ‘braindead move’ at all. If someone invests in sealed booster boxes, they are a planning on selling at a later date for more money(still sealed). If they’re buying booster box to open then they’re enjoying the hobby(or gambling depending on how you view it) and that is not investing so youre second point doesnt even make any sense. Third point is not even a common occurrence that it should not prevent someone from investing as there’s many services that will sell your sealed boxes on your behalf with no risk of return for you, you get paid no matter what.
If you had picked any popular set from each era during the era or heck even after, bought a few booster boxes at market price, and put it in your closet for 5/10/20 years, you had made one of the best investments with your money.
well you could stash them in your closet for 20 years i suppose… and still lose all your money when u go to sell them and the buyer claims resealed
no idea of the “many” services that would want to take on that risk without charging exorbitant fees (for eg. goldin and HA will do it but charge you like 20-25% for that). compare that to slabs which you can sell on ur own and the most youll ever pay is 12% and it has 100% seller protection
if you have ever tried to sell like a 20k+ box youll know that ppl will wanna pay g&s, want some sort of guarantee that its legit (which unless you bought it directly from a distributor there is no 100% guarantee that it isnt resealed, you can look around ig and see how many of the supposed experts have been scammed with resealed boxes and find out years later even pwcc cant tell a real box to save their life)
What you’re talking about does not happen often. Has never happened for anyone ive ever met or dealt with in this hobby. If you fear that the 1% chance that it may happen 20 years from now so much then like I said you can sell through any consignment service. Sure bad apples may exist but that should not stop people from investing in sealed boxes.
Depending on how much the box sells for(using the 20 year time horizon you’re looking at a possible $10k+ box) you actually get better rates by selling through a service than you would by selling yourself. dcsports, probstein, goldin, ha, fc, rc, maybe even landry, offer lower than 12% rates on sealed items worth thousands.
We are talking about sealed boxes not slabs. You are free to ‘invest’ in whatever you want. The reason sealed is proven to do well over time is sealed will always go down in supply as boxes are opened, singles/slabs will go up in supply over time as boxes are opened. Less supply a box has especially from a popular set, the rise in value. An amazing investment. And has been since pokemon was created.
You’re talking about private sales, not well-established low-risk paved roads of goods being sold. If I have a $20k booster box the last place I would go to sell is on instagram. I would message a sales rep on a popular auction site, negotiate a good rate, and sell it. Not some buyer/reseller on instagram.
You are making a lot of hasty generalizations and clearly have your mind set on those so it’s pointless to continue.
the point is that slabs have literally a 0% of getting scammed vs however small % you think selling sealed is. anyone can go on ebay rn and buy a sealed booster box claim inad and the seller would be sol unless they really know what they are doing (even then its not guaranteed and the buyer will always get their money back anyway) because ebay doesn’t guarantee the authenticity of booster boxes. also the maximum rate that you’ll pay on slabs is 12%, if you are actually comparing the same values say for a 20k box vs a 20k slab the rate is more like <5%
you can sell on one of those auction platforms but there is no way they would get even close to that low of a percentage. have u ever tried selling on goldin or HA? if you ask for 12% which is half of their bp they will just laugh in ur face no idea about the ebay sellers you mentioned if they even still take sealed but they are primary sports sellers and may or may not have accusations of shills. the other places you mentioned are totally rando houses that will get a fraction of the views so they arent even worth considering. cosigning sealed product also doesn’t give you the option to list fixed price anywhere afaik, who even wants to do auctions anyway.
as for the ROI of sealed boxes its not even that great compared to just buying the chase cards in psa 10 condition outside of extreme outliers like evolving skies/team up. and most of the comps for those will just be whatnot sellers buying them so they can sell them for even higher prices on a per pack basis to their degen audience the ROI will likely get worse in the future anyway coz every “pokeinvestor” nowadays decided it would be a great idea to hoard pallets of SV/SWSH boxes in their basement