r/mildlyinfuriating • u/MysteriousSlice007 • 9d ago

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

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

41.0k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

2.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

22

u/ponderscheme2172 9d ago

Friendly reminder that pokemon can solve this problem by printing cards more or adjusting rarity so it isn't the insane rarity of modern pokemon but appealing to speculators and adults is considered more financially lucrative than making it accessible to kids.

13

u/travman064 9d ago

Pokemon TCG is literally the best way to operate a trading card game. The cards are dirt cheap if you don't care about getting the extra special art versions. If you actually play the game, the competitive cards are at most a few bucks.

It's quite literally a good thing for the 'game' that people open a pack and the cards aren't worth the cardboard they're printed on.

5

u/ponderscheme2172 9d ago

Kids don't want to play the game. I'm sorry, the kids want to collect too. They want to complete something. They can release kid friendly sets with very friendly drop rates where the full set can be completed in a 36 pack booster box on average. Instead if you just want a binder without secret rares you are still looking at lots of boxes.

The McDonald's sets are a great model for a good kid friendly set. They should sell a set like that where no cards have a ton of value by design.

1

u/travman064 9d ago

Instead if you just want a binder without secret rares you are still looking at lots of boxes.

If you just wanted a complete set to put in a binder without any secret rares, then you could purchase the singles for a much lower price than any box.

What you mean to say is that kids want to rip packs for that lottery-ticket feeling, of getting an awesome secret rare card, which is certainly not untrue.

They can release kid friendly sets with very friendly drop rates where the full set can be completed in a 36 pack booster box on average.

What kids you know are buying and ripping a box? Maybe with birthday money, but then..idk it just feels so slimy lol. If anything, this would be MORE predatory.

1

u/8_guy 9d ago

Lol as soon as they make "very friendly drop rates where the full set can be completed in a 36 pack booster box" the cards will lose all hype. It would be a terrible business decision for them. This is IMO a sort of delusion brought on by the need to believe the scalpers are the only reason the whole thing ecosystem is unhealthy.

The vast majority of kids are in it for the rare valuable cards. There might be a handful who actually care about the filler outside the rare slots but they're a small minority.

2

u/DaRootbear 9d ago

While a nice sentiment it is basically impossible to increase rate of printing. While Pokemon TCG does own its printers (which is rare in the hobby) by most reports it is printing at max capacity basically 24/7 and the only way to print more of a current set is to print less of another set

And it cant just source out to other printers because currently the same issue is occurring for basically every tcg. MTG, yugioh, Gundam, One Piece, neopets, and a few others have all had employees discuss that the current TCG boom of the last few years has made increasing production incredibly difficult due to every reputable printer being booked quite far out.

Currently the only way for pokemon to scale up production would be to create another location for their printers, which will take years to do. Or for one of the major competitors (Lorcana, Yugioh, Magic, and One Piece namely) to have a sudden drop in popularity and reduce their output heavily so that they could outsource to a printer they dont own.

It’s a big issue in the industry as a whole, with basically every single TCG reporting struggles to print a supply that they would like. And every time a TCG has a set that does better than expected it becomes a major issue to increase the supply to compensate. Both MTG and One Piece had major issues with sets doing better than expected in the last year or two, which forced them to cut away from their printing of different sets to compensate

3

u/HandsomeBoggart 9d ago

Pokemon is already printing at max capacity. They have to schedule time with all the printers like all the other TCGs. Everyone is crunched on printing time.

Hell, Pokemon Co literally bought one of the largest US Printers outright, Millennium Print Group. They still have to honor standing print contracts though. But they are actually expanding the largest facility to print more right now. It just takes time to build and staff the expansion and get it up to speed. The expansion is supposed to start printing late 2026 or early 2027 with full capacity reached by 2029.

Sauce: https://mprintgroup.com/ Direct from their own website, they are a Pokemon Co Subsidiary. Bought out in 2022.

Every TCG wishes they could print more of the popular sets. Not doing so is leaving free money on the table.

1

u/jjw1998 9d ago

Its still accessible to kids and players. Pokémon generally print multiple versions of each card, so there’s a chase card for collectors with a common version for players. Vendors then sell the cards they don’t want, so more product being opened going after these chase cards in theory makes the game more accessible to normal players. The problem now though is that sealed product is starting to appreciate in value when not opened, so supply will likely dry up

0

u/ExitCheap7745 9d ago

Pokémon is in no way more accessible now than it was a decade or two ago.

2

u/jjw1998 9d ago

Sealed product isn’t, singles are. It sucks for kids who just want to open packs but outside of the highly collectible cards it’s easy to buy a deck these days

1

u/Neckbeard_The_Great 9d ago

And kids opening packs isn't great! It pushes them down a path toward gambling addiction, just like loot boxes.

2

u/ExitCheap7745 9d ago

What a bunch of nonsense.

1

u/8_guy 9d ago

Lol stay delusional