The Question of the Day is a way to facilitate community discussion to help members ponder the unanswered questions of the world that are somehow relating to the hobby. Questionsj are many times open ended and up to interpretation. Feel free to post your thoughts in as much or as little detail as you’d like.
Helpful Considerations may or may not help some people focus their answer, these are blurred to not bother those who have their own ideas.
Well that ultimately depends what freebies the store is willing to give for such difficult task. 72 hours isn’t nothing if the price is right, screw Pokemon I just want the red bucket with store logo. /sarc
I’ve never been in line for Pokémon cards, except maybe 1-2 minutes as a kid at the toys store.
One thing that does came to mind however, was standing in line at the Worlds 2022 in London for the Tsunekazu Ishihara signatures on a poster, as well as a picture to be taken on your own camera/phone. They had a system in place where there were basically two lines (or three to me more exact): one to throw a dice, and only when you got a 6, you were allowed to go to one of the other two lines: one for Tsunekazu Ishihara, and one for Junichi Masuda. You were given a poster to be signed, so you couldn’t let anything else, TCG card or otherwise, be signed by them.
Of course, if you threw a 1-5 you were allowed to go back into the back of the line to try again, although both Ishihara and Masuda would only be there for a couple of hours, so if you were there pretty late or had extremely bad luck with your throws, you could still be left out with nothing in the end. Iirc it took me four tries to finally get a 6, totaling to about 40 minutes in the first line, and probably another 10 minutes in the second line for Ishihara with fellow 6-ers.
Since I went there with a bunch of people I met at Worlds, like pfm, lookaclara, HaggisCollects, binx345, berndos, and we were basically talking about Pokémon, or cheering when someone we knew threw a 6, the 50 minutes didn’t felt that long tbh.
I also got Leonart, PokéChloe, and MisterFuji to sign my Jumbo Base Set Pikachu while waiting in the same line.
Physically I wouldn’t wait for more than a minute. If someone else is browsing the card aisle and are in the way, I’d wait for them to be done looking.
I guess most of us waited in the Pokémon Center queue for up to an hour. Sadly I’ve waited in the queue far too many times not even knowing what the queue was for, thinking it may be something I want
0 minutes. I’d rather pay more money on the secondary market (within reason), then waste time in a line. Now that wasn’t always the case ( I camped out for xbox360 in high school), but waiting in a line is young person’s game lol.
In print sealed at pre-covid LGS prices? Maybe an hour
Vendor with an incredible selection of vintage cards that I’ve been hunting for years? Maybe 5 hours
Mythical time capsule treasure trove of sealed MSRP WOTC boxes? Honestly, pull up a camping chair and book some time off work because I’d probably wait a week.
(These times all depend on some kind of ticket confirmation that I’ll actually be able to get what I want after lining up though.)
The only time I recall lining up for anything Pokemon related was to get Mitsuhiro Arita’s signature. Thankfully there was a queue so only had to line up for an hour or two to get my number. Then had to wait a day and a half before it was my turn, but I was able to do other stuff in the venue or even go home and rest.
On the other hand, lining up to get a new Pokemon set on release date…yeah I’d rather just pay extra and purchase it online.
Iirc it took me four tries to finally get a 6, totaling to about 40 minutes in the first line, and probably another 10 minutes in the second line for Ishihara with fellow 6-ers.
