The annual print volume of the last 4 years capped at approximately 10-11 billion cards, even before this boom started and with the inclusion of Simplified Chinese in late 2022. I believe they are at full capacity but because they’re spread so thin while keeping up with the schedule, they have to change some things so they can allocate the fewest number of packs to as many people as possible. This requires lotteries and ancillary products to ensure fairer distribution of at least something on release.
By TPCi’s logic, 6 people theoretically getting 6 packs is better than 1 person getting 36 in a box; and the other 5 to wait for their 36 packs or miss out. The booster box method with the current printing limitations in this boom isn’t working out. In Japan, lots of stores issue pack purchase limits as well, no booster boxes
One could say it’s greedy to expect AR/SAR for every Pokemon in super quick-time given that they technically only started as a generation just 1 generation ago, but still, in that time multiple overexposed Pokemon have got multiple special arts.
At the rate they are going, we’ll probably take like 10 years or something to get them all. And by the time that last Pokemon gets its special art, the likes of Charizard, Pikachu, Greninja, Zeraora etc will have 50 each.
This also goes for Supporters. The rate of these is even slower and it can take 1.5 years of sets to finish new characters, so to then repeat older characters is mad. This one will take even more than 10 years to ‘finish’ even just each era’s Gym Leaders and E4.
I don’t like the gigantic boxes that have like 2 booster packs in, where everything else just goes straight in the bin. Same with ETB’s in a way, you end up with just stuff you don’t want if you’re just after the packs.
But I guess those are popular because booster boxes are so difficult to get nowadays