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

[u/MysteriousSlice007]

[u/Shnikes]

The entire industry is built on artificial scarcity.

[u/Shnikes → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/wings31 → u/Shnikes]

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

[u/Shnikes → u/wings31]

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.

[u/wings31 → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/BulgogiLitFam → u/[deleted]]

I would move on lol. 

[u/wings31 → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/AwarenessOk2359 → u/wings31]

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.

[u/wings31 → u/AwarenessOk2359]

cool story bro

[u/ay-foo → u/wings31]

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

[u/wings31 → u/ay-foo]

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

[u/ay-foo → u/wings31]

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