Again I have nothing to say on if weighing packs is immoral or not. That’s not my point. My point is on if justifying something is needed, to me that says you have a personal hangup with the issue. I don’t need to justify why I donate money, nobody is questioning the practice, I’m not questioning myself if it’s the right thing to do.
However, when someone has to ask, ‘is this okay?’. My immediate response is, ‘ask yourself why are you asking if this is okay’. There’s almost always something underneath the surface.
I agree with you in the sense that if you don’t have to ask yourself if something is okay (and assuming minimal ignorance), then it probably checks all the boxes.
On the other hand, I think it’s more productive and informative for someone to ask if something is okay rather than not asking it/leaving it to themselves to figure it out. It gives others a chance to input their thoughts and stir up a constructive debate (such as this thread) that might change the person from wondering “is this okay” to understanding “it’s okay” or “it’s flat out not okay” or “it’s okay, but only if XYZ.”
Anybody who sells a pack with less than the random assumed chance of getting a Holo, stated or not, is either a thief or an accessory to a theft.
Anybody who buys a pack for any reason besides a pack collection is either stupid or has money to burn.
This all makes sense to me today but I may feel differently tomorrow and really get angry at the practice lol.
I learned my lesson — as an honest seller — the hard way.
I sold unweighed shadowless booster packs to somebody who knew they were unweighed.
Later the buyer told me they had weighed the packs, kept the ones with holofoils, and sold the ones without holofoils on eBay — but without mentioning in the auction descriptions that the packs hadn’t been weighed.
The act of weighing packs itself is immoral and should not be done except in very limited circumstances. The fact is, by weighing packs (whether or not you disclose in the auction/listing that they’re weighed) it skews the proportion of non-holo packs, thereby cheating people out of the chance they pay for when buying a booster pack. While sellers aren’t responsible for what people do after they buy an item, it’s all too easy for someone to buy your disclosed weighed packs and then turn right around and sell them as unweighed/undisclosed and make a profit. This is enabled by the first person who did the weighing to begin with. That’s why the form has a blanket prohibition on weighing packs, by doing it to begin with you’re contributing to the problem.
I think weighing packs is fine if you’re opening a box for personal pleasure and want to keep some sealed packs in your collection or PSA grade those packs. But once you start getting into transactions with weighed packs, especially on eBay where you don’t know the intentions of whoever buys your product, it’s getting into very shady areas whether or not you disclose that the packs are weighed.
So say “Johnny” buys an ultra prism booster box to fulfill his dream of not just owning, but opening himself a full art Cynthia and then he opens it on the first pack after in the first pack opening a random bulk holo. No scales involved nothing but random chance. We and they now know that the remaining 34 packs have a less than random assumed chance of getting a holo or chase card as two have already been opened with no light packs being opened. The true odds of opening two holos to start a box at random are 1/9 so this is a completely reasonable scenario.
Johnny accomplished his only goal so he then decides to sell the other 34 packs on to his buddy, “Billy” who just needs a few regular Cynthia trainers for his deck and some random reverse holos to complete his master set as he already owns a Cynthia full art. Billy is also an adult and is perfectly fine paying the $50 that Johnny is reasonably asking for the last 34 packs since he pulled a $70 card out of two packs. Billy understands he’ll get two less chase cards than is typical for a box.
Johnny is a thief? Billy is stupid? A bit silly to state or think that isn’t it?
Sure in a parallel world Billy could be a scheming dirtbag. He could sell those “tainted” packs on to “Timmy” as unweighed and legit. Timmy will be in the unfortunate circumstance of having been lied to and overpaying for cards with a less than true random as advertised pull rate. Again I just don’t know how you put that on Johnny, or even call him an accessory.
Just to be sure, is Pokemon booster boxes truly standardized to the point that the packs ratios are all guaranteed/exact in the box? My experience with Yugioh boxes was that the ratios are more or less correctly, but sometimes there’s one less in a box sometimes there’s one more. When I opened my evolutions I remembered I got two FA, while my friend got three FA in one booster box. The holos per boxes were slightly different too.
Actually I edited 2 huge chunks of my opinion out because I think they add nothing much to the conversation aside from derailing both you and Gary’s opinion even further.***
I do think if Pokemon is guaranteeing the odds of the packs at exact ratios per booster boxes, they are not doing their jobs properly because scenarios like you mentioned would make things problematic for even store owners. This would make it so that if I was buying single packs from a card store and I see my friend opening a FA, I will have to wait for the store owner to open a brand new booster box before buying any more to increase my odds at pulling a FA
@ditto I’ve opened hundreds if not a thousand boxes new and old. Whether or not they are meant to be fully standardized I know that in practice they aren’t perfectly standardized. I’ve opened base set boxes with anywhere from 10-14 holos. I’ve opened an aquapolis box without any crystals. Neo Destiny boxes with anywhere from 2-4 shinings. The 1:3 packs doesn’t always hold for new boxes either as I’ve gotten similar to base anywhere from 22-26 non holo packs leaving probably 10-14 “premium” packs. I actually took a look at an ultra prism pack last night after this whole debate has been going on. Nowhere does the pack anymore state the odds of getting a premium card in a pack whereas with early WOTC it did used to say 1:33 cards or something like that.
Your analogy doesn’t even include an analog to pack weighing. The moral decision in your analogy is whether or not you should be transparent about damage with your product. But the real moral question being asked is should you adjust an item you’re selling to become an inherently deceptive product to benefit yourself. And if you disclose the fact you’ve done this, does it make your actions okay?
Having your AC damaged on your car is out of your control. There’s no benefit to the seller to purposefully go in and damage the AC unit. Additionally, it’s also not hard to check yourself to see if the AC is working as a buyer but when it comes to weighed packs, you can only go by the word of the seller.
But what your analogy does say is that selling a defective product deceptively is wrong. Although I think everyone can already agree that if you sell weighed packs without disclosure, you’ve acted immorally.
Thank for for making an attempt but I think we have different tastes when it comes to making comparisons. To prevent this conversation from devolving to further pettiness I think we might just have to agree to disagree.
I mainly agree with pkm and I do think weighing is a dirty practice. That said, if the market is scummy and you’re never going to be given the benefit of a doubt that you dont weigh your packs, I can empathize with people who say “fuck it, I’ll weigh my packs and label them as such since no one’s going to pay a premium for them actually being unweighed anyhow”. While we’re all pretty annoyed that weighing is something that can be done, (and lol @ the E4 user that brings a scale to walmart to measure packs, that’s next level grimey- may as well be punching kids in the playground or trading them stickers for holos) this is a WOTC/Nintendo flaw that they should have accounted for better over the past 20 years. First they couldn’t figure out how to make packs unweighable, then they started putting them in a box in an order that could be accounted for making it easier than even weighing.
In short, while I think it’s a scummy practice, if we’re all in agreement like Gary and others said that “all loose packs are weighed packs and should be treated as such”, then its tough to come down on people like OP for saying “fuck it then, I may as well weigh my packs and sell only the weighed ones”. There’s a bit of a double standard here. You can’t penalize people on prices assuming that they dont weigh, yet be mad at them for weighing and being transparent about it due to the fuckery in the market.
The difference is that the probability of having the gun or knife you sell be used purposefully in the murder of someone innocent is exceedingly low. Whereas the probability of a weighed pack you’ve sold rehitting the market is relatively high.
If even 10% of all knives or guns sold were used to kill someone innocent, is there still no moral issue with selling these items?
My answer here was mainly to address Tem4Elf’s question rather than make a statement on pack weighing – hence why I made no mention of it in addressing the question. If you also look at Q2, it has no bearing on the pack weighing discussion as well, but I thought I would answer it for the sake of being thorough.
@pkmnflyingmaster I guess I’m having trouble finding an analog to the actual act of pack weighing because I don’t see it as inherently bad as so many on the forum do and again so many on the forum also don’t. Quite the divide but interesting to have the debate and talk through both sides of it every now and again.
I guess the whole thing comes to a more basic question of who is the burden of proof on? Is it on me to prove that it is moral or is it on someone to prove that it is immoral? I would say the latter while clearly many would say the former and arguably there is no right answer.
I guess that likens it to something more like abortion or gay marriage as it is something that happens and isn’t illegal but obviously many people oppose both while the other half would argue they are inherent rights that affect no others in a negative way. I am not stating my views on abortion nor gay marriage as I don’t think a Pokemon forum is appropriate for that I am just using those hot button divisive issues to liken them to our hot button divisive issue. Please nobody discuss those two issues other than with respect to the analogy. Please don’t take this as me equating pack weighing with being a gay marrying abortionist.
Getting back to my bad analogy PFM, to me choosing to put on a scale a product that you own is as innocent as having your car deteriorate to mother nature or father time but again now that I’ve walked through the opposing thought process more I still can’t say I agree with it but I think I at least understand it a bit more.
It comes up multiple times a year, and always ends in the same way…gray area or the worst thing in the world. I have a feeling there are some less than honest people in here on what they would do in certain situations to appear “moral”. I have a hard time believing if many people had purchased a single 1st edition “unweighed” base pack for say, $500 and wanted to open it, they would just risk it and open. I think MANY people would see if its heavy, if it wasn’t, sell it without letting the next buyer know.
But at that point it wouldn’t be a gray area since I think the opinion is unanimous that selling a weighed pack without informing the buyer is unethical. I think the divide is on the pure act of weighing the pack at this point.
If you’re buying booster packs in hopes of pulling a base 1st ed holo card, you’re doing it wrong. I don’t even have to get out the scale to know it’s weighed.
This is 100% true. I hope it isn’t true with any forum members and I don’t even think it is true of anyone here who is clearly against the practice. But there are definitely people out there in the world who talk down an act such as weighing only to do it themselves in secret. Back to the abortion analogy we had a senator resign last year after a career staunchly against abortion he suggested his mistress get one when he though she was pregnant. (Source) THESE people are without a doubt the scum of the Earth and the bottom of any morality hierarchy when it comes to any topic like this and I think we can all agree on that.
