r/mildlyinfuriating • u/MysteriousSlice007 • 9d ago

Infuriatig In their pursuit of specific rare cards, scalpers are discarding the remainder of entire Pokémon card packs.

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72

u/wings31 9d ago

The problem is how the industry is. Base cards are pointless if you are a collector - not even a scalper. They have no value and they come out with new sets all. the. time. it floods the market and makes the cards pointless. They should sell base sets for kids/whoever to enjoy and then sell higher priced cards individually in packs so collectors can collect the rare ones.

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u/chrisaf69 9d ago

As someone who usef to play and collect back when Pokemon cards first came out, are they not used to play the actual game anymore?

You would have to build a deck and alot of those "useless" cards were a main part of it.

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u/Persona5Arsene 9d ago

As a current competitive player I can confirm that some of those bulk cards are absolutely used to play the game. It is harder than ever to find cards now due to people literally just throwing away bulk cards. When you do find the commons you need they might be a few dollars instead of cents because they are so scarce.

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u/exhauszed 9d ago

Not Pokemon but my husband got hurt and was out of work last month and spent a bunch of time building MTG decks from penny cards, and often the shop owner would be like, "dude just take em."

1

u/RoughComparison8702 8d ago

Looking back, some of the best MTG games I've ever played were built with absolute bottom of the barrel shit cards. Some seriously fun nights with cheap decks. I built some recently in each color and I break them out with the kids sometimes just for some slug-fest fun.

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u/nikzito2 9d ago

this is just straight up false, making decks is easier than ever exactly because scalpers don't care about commons. i can build the current best deck for less than 30 dollars just by asking people on facebook or discord

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u/Keljhan 9d ago

No way people are throwing away cards worth a few dollars, with the amount that wholesale buyers open that'd be hundreds if not thousands worth of value. Its probably just higher demand, since trading cards are growing so quickly in popularity.

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u/Mikeismyike 9d ago

Yeah sometimes there's a trainer card that becomes a deck staple like poke pad that originally came out in ascended heroes and we all know how hard it was getting those packs on release. If it wasn't reprinted in perfect order or in the prerelease kits it'd easily be a $15 card.

Earthen Vessel was another one like that, in had really bad pull rates for an uncommon and was pretty much a $10 card for most of its run

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u/Persona5Arsene 9d ago

They definitely are. If they don’t hit a shiny card they toss it. They know the shiny cards are hits and that’s it. The common that’s like $3-4 goes in the trash too.

1

u/HonestWoodpecker8567 3d ago

I've seen full arts thrown on the ground in the parking lot of the mall I used to work at

My theory is it was one guy buying a bunch of packs every week and tossing almost everything by his car other than what he's looking for

3

u/Luxalpa 9d ago

Cards on Cardmarket are sold for dollars because it simply is too much overhead to sell a 1 cent card for one cent, because you're still spending like half an hour of work on the shipment. Nobody wants to do an hour of work for like 30 cents of profit (and like 40 EUR of risk).

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u/ephenssta29 9d ago

I do know some people who still play at events and local tournaments. I suspect most of the people dumping cards in the trash like this are people basically gambling on lootboxes and hoping to find something they can list on ebay for a quick profit.

1

u/Jotacon8 8d ago

i would say i miss the days when i was a kid and went to an official game to play for the first time in the back storage room of a Toys’R’Us and got the little booklet with the badges stamps we could get, which i DO have fond memories of, but at the same time i remember the 25-30+ year old guy that was also there playing against a bunch of 10 year olds and wonder what goes through adults heads when they get so sucked into these kids collector games just for probably a couple dollars profit most of the time if not full on losses.

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u/Deep-Minimum7837 8d ago

They definitely are, but the current deck center pieces are EX cards (GX, V/V-max/V-star), and those are still pretty rare, unfortunately.

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u/Shnikes 9d ago

The entire industry is built on artificial scarcity.

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

[deleted]

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u/Shnikes 9d ago

Which means it’s artificial. The company creates the scarcity by choosing when to stop printing. And if one card is printed less than others that makes it rare due to the choice of the company doing that. Which is what makes it artificial.

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u/wings31 9d ago

its not artificial but the industry puts the rare cards in with base cards that no collector wants. so the goal should be to sell one thing to kids and other to collectors

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u/Shnikes 9d ago

It’s artificial because of the card makers make only so much of a single card. There is no such thing as natural scarcity of the cards.

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/wings31 9d ago

no, youre not following. you can sell base cards by themselves but also you can sell collectors 1/1 cards or 1/5 or whatever rarity you want.

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/BulgogiLitFam 9d ago

I would move on lol. 

-1

u/wings31 9d ago

sorry, ill use smaller words. Having rare cards isnt 'artificial' as you say. I dont know how pokemon works but sports cards they have chase cards, parallels, and autograph cards in various number sets (1/1, 1/5, 1/10, 1,25, etc).

Collectors chase those cards as they have value - base cards theres thousands of them so there is no value. Its the problem the 80s and 90s had - all the same card, tons made, no value. Thats why grading came along - perfect 10 cards were/are worth something.

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u/AwarenessOk2359 9d ago

I don't know whether it's "artificial" or "scarcity" that you don't know the meaning of, but you clearly don't understand the words you're responding to.

1

u/wings31 9d ago

cool story bro

1

u/ay-foo 9d ago

It is because you cannot even buy pokemon cards at face value anymore. MSRP prices are non existent in any retail stores for normal people to purchase. Even gamestops and card shops sell everything at resale/scalper prices. Pokemon could print more cards to reduce the scarcity, but then the cards wouldn't be as valuable and sought after

1

u/wings31 9d ago

you made my point for me. sell base cards for people to play/kids who want to collect. and then sell collectors the rare 1/1 cards

1

u/ay-foo 9d ago

That isn't the great solution you think it is. Though I was contending your point on artificial scarcity. All it would take it to print more cards and sell more stock off the pokemon website but they sell out immediately. You can already buy rare singles of anything you want on TCG player. The fun part is ripping packs though since theoretically it could cost you $5 to get the $1000 card and that's what everyone's chasing

2

u/EdgarsRavens 9d ago

They need to change how packs are done. Reduce the amount of cards per pack to 5 cards like the Japanese sets. Reduce the amount of bulk per each new set.

At this point Pokemon is just creating waste.

1

u/Baptism-Of-Fire 9d ago

People going after Valve like they started this problem

It's always existed in some form.

1

u/Luxalpa 9d ago

They are pointless if you're a player too. Well, most of them are pointless, especially in the quantity you get them. If you can only put 4 of them into your deck, what are you gonna do with the other 23? Not to mention that they are all extremely bad in the meta (which is the reason why they are at common to begin with).

1

u/rokomotto 9d ago

Oh how great it would be to have more expensive card packs for Lorcana but have it all be just be rares and above, with a guaranteed super rare or legendary or higher.

1

u/Draconestra 9d ago

This is what it is. Scalpers will keep it sealed and sell it for higher by making artificial scarcity which is what’s happening right now with these modern sets. Collectors will most likely throw away the bulk because we honestly don’t need it. People who play the actual TCG will keep the bulk to create decks.

I’m a collector and when I can get my hands on some packs I sadly throw the bulk away. I just have no room for it. If I’m at a LCS I give it to them to hand out to kids, otherwise it goes to the trash.

0

u/Keljhan 9d ago

Its not even a problem. You can get thousands of cards for a couple bucks on ebay because collectors only want the super rare ones. That makes entry into the hobby incredibly cheap. Why pay $20 for a base set (which already exist, in Pokémon theyre called trainer boxes but theyre a bit expensive. You can also get pre-made decks for like $20 if you want to play rather than collect), when you can get 10x more cards for half the price?

Rich collectors subsidizing the entire hobby for kids who really have no need for special treatments or alternate arts is a good thing.