It’s not gambling if you want to open packs because it’s fun. Someone people actually enjoy doing it. I’m sorry that you are probably one of the 5000 what not or eBay seller who whole business is selling cards online but for the people who don’t want to spend 700 on a raw card from a set less then a year old. They enjoy opening packs, it’s never been this toxic until the last couple of years. The more supply the less the demand, if you walk into any store go on eBay, go on player you can blantely see there is product. Every wannabe influencer post Covid has turned Pokemon a family hobby into a corporate bubble, I’m allowed to have an opinion and I work in finance so I know how to read charts and see scam and market manipulation
Didnt answer a single thing about the main idea and simply attacked the gambling comment, which means that there’s probably no counterargument for the main statement I made. Also most people here sell cards for a living and I don’t even sell the expensive ones. Just ask @thundermoo or @nikoreps or @smpratte. And also more supply does not equal less demand like at all, and being in finance you should probably already know this.
Ive thought about this for some time, and my idea will always make sense in my head. Instead of printing product to demand just update the different ways they print. IF, and I say IF a couple weeks before a set releases and they print a limited amount of SINGLES (lets say 3) to demand per registered and indentified individual, and charge a small premium via the pokemon center website for them, etc then the following happens.
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Collectors find ANY card they want for their collection, but there is still a price to pay. (The card will still be in packs, so prices across the board comes down)
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Kids, and parents can find cards for their kids as scalping issues decrease, and theft declines.
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“Investors” and “investing” becomes irrelevant. (Win)
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Turns the gamblers away which is healthier for everyone overall.
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Scalpers stop because their is no incentive.
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Corrects the current market.
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Pokemon ends up making more money because they now become a secondary market (primary?), and the bad actors are replaced with good actor customers.
There may be more upsides to this, but to actually make the call isnt possible. Its one of my pipedreams though!
If anyone has any questions, or wants to discuss it. Im always down to discuss others opinions.
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You start to lose me a little bit when we start talking about price charting modern booster boxes.
As for your original idea about printing to some sort of preorder demand, although a great idea in theory, there could be a lot of issues. What happens when the sets don’t have a lot of speculation on the secondary market? Would everyone cancel their preorders? Would Pokemon hold your money without the ability to cancel? ( I don’t even know the legality of that). If you are locked into a price and the secondary market on these crashes you would have a giant pissed off mob at your door.
As much I don’t want to defend tpci, Its hard to satisfy your customers and predict demand when the market seems to be fueled by hype. If you are looking for someone/something to blame then we can go down a philosophical rabbit hole about late stage capitalism creating a bunch of gambling addicts and get rich quick schemes but thats just my .02
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….Even if they made a gold star Deoxys card?
Always assume that Deoxys is the #1 things that piss me off.
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This specifically is what I don’t think is realistic
Gone are the days of booster box cases being readily available for MSRP, because in the last 5 years the percentage of people in the hobby sealed collecting/investing has skyrocketed because the regular joe has taken notice of the realized gains. Before sword and shield, sealed collectors were far and few between. Once people noticed how reliable the growth patterns are on retired sets, specifically booster boxes, everyone wants a piece of that pie
I have thought about print to order products/singles as well.
What about guaranteed pre orders? Didn’t they try that in 2024? With like a box limit of x per person? They should continue with that so people are guaranteed one or two boxes, and they don’t need to over print
print less junk
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Ya know, sports card manufacturers are vultures that nickel and dime their customers at every corner, but I think the one thing they may have gotten right is the creation of “choice”, “breakers delight”, or other just-the-hits products.
Sure, its strips away any argument that opening packs is anything but gambling, but at least it removes monumental amounts of bulk that are just a waste of resources.
Just ignore the fact that these just-the-hits products go for more than regular boxes even if they have the same odds 
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Print to demand is a myth when the cards people desire are locked behind an insane pull wall.
Especially when values are basically a floor price of expected pullrate + desirability.
Stuff would be worthless if we went back to XY seeds.
Not sure how you guys aren’t getting the cards you want. I have every single chase card by just casually shopping online. Are some of you guys perhaps…greedy?
It may be wishful thinking on my part, but I’d like TPCI to handle its own distribution and prioritize brick and mortars that actually focus on games.
Bizarrely, my dad’s local pharmacist is selling modern product at 3x MSRP or whatever the market price happens to be when they get stock in. I visit regularly, and they’ve had the same stuff collecting dust on their shelves for ages. Granted, they don’t carry much, but no one who shops there knows or cares about pokemon. Yet somewhere there is a distributor allocating product to them. I don’t get it.
bulk is worthless until u can grade energies from evolutions and sell em for 350 bux if they hit a 10 
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a large part of the problem is pokemans operations is stuck in the 90s… why do they need all these useless 3rd party distributors just sell directly to consumers walmart killed that model 30 years ago
and get rid of all those useless vending machines just sell everything online direct to consumer
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The problem with the TCG is that it’s sold as a game but also as a collectible. What makes most successful collectibles successful is the chase which usually includes a degree of rarity and scarcity. If nothing is rare or scarce then you may as well just go collect seashells or rocks because it’s hard to value something (not just from a financial sense) if it’s easily obtainable. Printing to demand would likely lead to less interest and a collapse in said demand.
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100% agree. This exactly would be the reason a print to demand doesn’t work. Especially if you’re talking about months upon months to receive the product.
The amount of headaches and increased customer support needed for chargebacks if market ended up being less than the locked in print to demand price.
I think it basically boils down to Pokemon wanting to print more SKUs that satisfy both big box and LGS. Whereas booster boxes only are a LGS SKU (and distribution seems to be playing games/being greedy in that realm). The pounding of collection boxes/ancillary products IMO is smart to get packs into the hands of people. Most scalpers don’t want to buy and ship massive collection boxes.
Increase chase pull rates and they won’t need to print to demand, rather just stop over-fuelling gambling addiction
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TPCI will do whatever brings them maximized profits while operating as lean as possible. But I think it’d be interesting for them to consider that demand for cards and certain sets exceeds its time in competitive rotation.
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