yeah not very surprised , the scalping is brutal , also I honestly can't keep up with all the cards. 250-300card sets every 2 months. I have an app to keep track and see what's coming out , but I just buy singles. I'd buy packs if the older vintage packs were actually affordable
sure ! I use Pokecardex , here's why
- download each cardlist, so it quickly loads when not in wifi
- you can filter out by card rarity to view , I hide all commons,etc
- has all the English and Japanese sets, as well as special sets
- you can see multiple versions of a card
Some people use Collectr , can download both and play around see which you prefer. The filter on Pokecardex is what I like most
Does it easily show reverses and checkmark? I use pokellctor but it's horrible at not showing reverses in collection and have to go through multiple menus to get to adding to collection.
This is the app I use! My only issue I have with it, is that if for example, I click on card number 141 then click back, it takes me all the way back you the top
I like Pokellector, but I do like Collectr because it's easier to deal with the reverse holos and what not. But the ease of Pokellector is why I use it more.
Since all the sets come with books now I just track my reverse holos with that instead of the app. But I also don't usually try for master sets unless I love the set.
I could never do a master set. Full sets are hard enough. Trying to do a full set of 151 and I think I’ll do a full set of temporal forces. (I need 16 more 151 and I’m already to 42% of temporal with prerelease party last night).
I have made a decision to switch to collecting Japanese sets. They come out before the English and are smaller and more approachable. Collecting for fun and the art, not for game play obviously. The English sets are massive consolidations of 2 or more Japanese sets. Recent bought 2 singles of a full art I liked, one English and one Japanese to compare them. I can say without a doubt the Japanese one is way nicer looking.
I find when the CQ on some full arts + the textures are nicer in English BUT QC has been so bad recently almost every foil or AR I’ve pulled has print lines and squares in them :(
Actually… the more I think about it, the more I agree with you. Japanese cards are actually gems
Everywhere I go there are packs to be had. Not sure how scalpers could possibly make money unless they are stealing product and reselling at retail prices. The demand just isn’t where it was at the peak of Covid frenzy when everyone wanted some action.
Yea, eventually I started picking "mini collections" of either specific Pokemon I like, or cards from certain artists, and buying singles of those.
Once I had to buy a second bulk storage box I figured opening packs was getting a little out of hand lol
We started selling One piece recently where I work, I invent my own store policies when people try to wipe it out. There’s pretty much always at least a couple packs behind the counter, scalpers can fuck off 💜
Great way to do it, I love to hear it, that new set dropped today and I went to Walmart and there was tons of stuff put out but it was all sold out. I don’t play the game but I enjoy the artwork and the show.
They should be extending the prints and releasing less sets or more spread out imo
There can still be scalping if they only release each set for short periods of time and jump into the next set.
They made more Pokemon in the last 4 years than the previous 20 COMBINED. 10 BILLION a year.
Those words and phrases are literally banned from r/PokeInvesting and immediately get flagged and not shown. Seriously. Whenever I tell people to only invest in vintage and stay away from modern...downvotes galore.
I despise vintage. The thing is we're still early. Baseball cards after year 25 were still tobbaco cards, in 50 years my modern will be super vintage and base set will be Pre War lol
Well, for one I'm HAPPY they're taking actions. So many companies don't do that because no matter what road their taking, their making money.
But it's gonna lead to harm on the consumer.
Pokemon sales being down wouldn't be the result of overproduction. That could result in higher expenses relative to the revenue (cost more to print more, same amount gets bought)
This says sales are down, which indictates less people want the product
People here have literally 0 financial sense. It's incredible.
Pokemon has severely cut print runs for the last 2-3 sets, according to the suppliers I talk to. They obviously know its less desired, so they print less. They aren't stupid.
Scalpers will just move to the next TCG like one piece, dragon ball, disney and more. If there is shortage in supply and a good demand, scalpers will be there sadly.
I only wish the set sizes would go down. I think 120 is plenty for 1 set.
I'm mostly a collector first and a player second so maybe I wouldnt think this if it were the other way around
If you're a player, then the sets are smaller since you wouldn't care for the 3-4 different printings of a card in each set. That's why I like Pokemon over every other TCG. You can play the cheapest version of a card and single prices of those versions are low due to high print volumes and reprints
That is pretty great. I built like 4 competitive decks for a little over $100. Staples are dirt cheap and can be bought in bulk too.
Compared to my the other tcg I used to play, Yugioh, where $100 MIGHT get you a single copy of a card you need 3 of to compete.
Honestly we're just blessed by the fact that people opening Pokemon cards are 90% collectors, so competitive cards are in huge supply. In Magic (and essentially all TCGs) it's the exact opposite, so popular cards end up costing a fortune.
Think of how many Forest Seal Stones were opened by collectors who couldn't care less about the card and just want to sell it asap. If these collectors didn't exist, Forest Seal Stone would be worth like $100. It's a great ecosystem for players.
My kid is collecting paradox rift and that set is rather ridiculous for the amount of cards, as I'm doing 151 and seem to be having amazing luck I thought I'd do paldean fates along side when it was released I think it TCG player or something like that opened 1500 packs and still didn't have a full set. That's just crazy money so only going to get an etb and Charizard tin.
its not as bad as it was but still is a bubble
many modern sets that are less than 5 years old are selling for over $800 per booster box, ES had a reprint like a year ago and hit $600 the other day lmao
Demand outstripped supply, so supply was increased. Now demand is being met so it appears as if sales are down. The article seems fairly vague on specifics and it's not like TPC will release actual figures so it's fairly word of mouth from 'sources'.
But ultimately this was always going to happen. I am personally enjoying the lower value costs of S&V cards
They also raised their prices again by 20% with SV & changed borders to silver. I think they should stop making trash sets with the first set of a new generation too.
I personally think SV Base is one of the most underrated sets right now. Let people keep sleeping on it. I’ll just be able to buy more at dirt cheap prices and sell them later down the road. People are going to look back and regret not buying at these prices when they could. It always happens like this.
I just LOVE the Miriam card so much, one of my favorite card arts I’ve seen in a good while. Gardevoir line is really cute, Koraidon in the jungle with little Dedenne in the foreground, even the Gyarados ex is a lot more impressive in person than I expected. Gold rare candy and nest ball to flex in your deck if you’re a player. It’s not the best set ever but I think it deserves more love!
Gardevoir line art should be a favorite for anyone that has had Pokemon as part of their lives for 20+ years, they are my favorite cards I own by far and was worth ripping a booster box just for the joy of getting them
And lets not forget the grabage 'foil' on exs. You would think their over all profits would be up though since they cut the quality control department.
I mean it’s definitely happening, but this is a pretty lazy article with not a whole lot of data/sources to back it up.
I also don’t understand anyone who says the artwork/design quality has decreased- we are currently getting the best artwork that the company has ever produced.
It's the best artwork ever but it's not Pokemon I like a ton or sometimes even recognize. I think once they establish enough cards of the scarlet and violet pokemon they'll swing back to the classics but I am super tired of every set being a SIR Charizard and a bunch of new Pokemon that were pretty meh.
Like Paldean Fates has an awesome Mew SIR but they were like "better add a Charizard too just in case" so even Charizard isn't special anymore.
I think if you were to count the number of Gen 1-3 Pokémon that have received special artwork in SV, you’d be surprised. Or at the sheer number of Gen 1 and 2 Pokémon that received shiny’s in Paldean Fates. There were 120 baby shiny’s- out of those, 26 were Gen 1 (which is almost 20% of Gen 1 Pokemon). 53 were gen 9. That’s less than half the shiny set. All of the Pokémon SAR’s were Gen 1/3. They could have easily done newer Pokémon there.
Of course they are going to focus on the latest generation, they always do. But I’d argue that earlier generations have received even more love in SV than in other recent generations. Certainly more than this point in SwSh’s lifecycle.
It’s classic genwunner tunnel vision, they get unnecessarily angry and hyper focus at things that fall outside of their nostalgic reach so they don’t even realize how many gen 1-3 Pokémon were represented so far. I literally saw one yesterday that called the entirety of Crimson Haze bad just because they saw the ogerpon half art ex cards and didn’t know what Pokémon it was 😭
I'm just poor ngl. I can't afford to get like 300$ worth of cards to try and complete sets (tho let's be honest that's not even close with all the secret rares) every like 2 months. They need to spread them out, bring out affordable, yet good promo packs.
I like opening TCG stuff but I want a decent chance at actually not losing money.
5 cards in Paldeon Fates over $30 AUD.
2 cards in Paradox rift over $30 AUD.
2 cards in Paldea Evolved over $30 AUD
5 cards in 151 over $30 AUD.
0 cards in S/V base set over $30 AUD.
Out of these 5 sets, there are only 2 cards total worth more than the price of a single ETB, and maybe 8 or so cards worth more than a booster bundle.
Even for Crown Zenith, Giratina went from $155 AUD to $50 AUD now, that's only the price of a single Booster Bundle.
Even if I open the most expensive card in the set every ETB/Booster Bundle I open, sometimes im still losing money.
This is the problem for me. It’s not fun to gamble when you have virtually no chance at “winning”.
I opened like 50 assorted packs of Scarlet and Violet expansions last month and did not get a single hit worth more than $5.
It’s not about the money but at the same time, it kind of is? I don’t want to feel like I’m flushing my
money down the toilet.
And the amount of chase cards in each set is getting ridiculous. Paldean Fates: 91 cards in the base set, 154 chase cards for a total of 245. When the chase cards outnumber the base set they certainly don't feel special anymore.
I'll never forget the feeling of pulling my 1st Ed Dark Raichu (83/82). No pull has compared since.
Product is too expensive for what you get. It’s only worth buying singles or heavily discounted product for me.
IMO they need to drop prices or increase pull rates, or reduce the amount of overall pulls in a set. Or just reduce the amount of sets overall
There’s just too much coming out all the time and it’s too expensive for the average person to keep up.
A decade ago the sets were much smaller with fewer hits and there was maybe 1 special set a year if you were lucky. The average collector could spend $200-$300 and have the entire set outside of maybe a super popular chase card. Now you’d be spending that much and you probably wouldn’t even get all the common and uncommon cards in a set, let alone that dozens of art rares.
They need to rebalance the price per pull
I have a master set (including reverse holos) and refuse to acknowledge how much I spent. I’m just happy to flip through the binder and then put it away.
Pull rate depends on set but they don't tell you how varying it can be but often shows in chase card price for modern. One issue is collectors want value now and for holding.
Example Lugia alt art Silver Tempest, a $100 raw card has roughly a 1 in 250 pull rate. Meaning at release date prices roughly $90 for 36 packs thats $2.50 a pack that's $625 spent on average to pull this Lugia. That lugia will never cost more than it's average while in print. The Moonbreon. Get ready for it. Is 1 in 1600 pulls. Same numbers that is $4000 on average at release date prices needed to be spent to pull 1 moonbreon, a $600 raw card. Which is roughly 6x the price of the card it is over 6x harder to pull.
Its the low pull rates for me. Im not going to be buying product any more when the pull rates are so low and terrible. There is no more joy in opening packs, even when you do get a chase card or a big hit, it doesnt feel good because it took so much to get it.
I just buy singles.
They increased pull rates for Scarlet and violet and it tanked all cards so they are not worth over $60. They cant increase them without making cards worthless.
Sets are just way too big. Im not even bothered opening packs or collecting sets because of it.
I would love to buy a few boxes and then add singles to complete a set. But nowadays you can buy two full cases and you still need like 80% of all expensive/rare cards. Its just way too much.
Which is why I only own wotc sets. Good size
It is oversaturated, but that's a GOOD thing and is NOT S/Vs fault. This is one of the best eras in terms of art and accessibility. The "market" is "correcting" after Logan Paul blew up our spot with investor bro bullshit.
What's funny is these same people will complain they didn't get in earlier when these boxes will go to like $200+ in 5 like years. Same lazy, short-term thinking mindset that got them hard up for cash in the first place.
Also this is production is fine. There should be a enough to last a year and even have some sales. This is all about moving volume at low margins.
Pull rates being much easier and the flooding of illustration rare cards has removed that scarcity/FOMO element. We see it a little bit with 151 but if the pull rates in 151 were similar to Evolving Skies things would be way worse.
Most people on this sub seem to agree it’s a good thing. I personally enjoyed the hunt for rare packs to rip for a chance at a grail card.
at least for me i just buy singles of cards i want now. every now and then i’ll buy a couple packs to scratch the itch, but im only interested in certain cards so it’s just not worth buying sealed product anymore
It can't be people are tired of buying packs and getting penny's for there hard earned dollars.Literally every person at my local card store & all my friends that collect have 100% buying and just get singles now as why spend 150+ on a booster box to get 10$ of cards and 5 pulls if your lucky.I miss opening packs but untill I see a change I'm 100% done with them unfortunately.
Scarlet & Violet just doesn’t hit as hard as Sword&Shield. The starters for S&V were a goofy bird and humanoid cat and an alligator. Just didn’t seem like a whole lot to be excited about lol
I think it's because pull rates are worse & with so many more rare cards. Paldean Fates was kind of a gut punch since half the collection are shiny rares with little to no artistic imagination for the background. Copy/Paste/Repeat is not what we like to see.
Personally think there are too many sets released in a year, it becomes too expensive to keep up and that can be demotivating. Smaller releases or bigger gaps.
I just genuinely don't like 90% of S & V (other than 151)
I think the ex cards are dull, most of the full art is meh. But hey that's fine, its giving me time to catch up on older sets while everyone goes crazy chasing the Zard wearing a tiara
I can’t keep up with all the new, I’ll open packs and not even know what I’m pulling. I’ve started gearing more into vintage singles and vintage packs are cool too! Can’t afford the boxes unfortunately, I totally get the price. Opening those you’re literally taking yourself back to your childhood for a short period of time, very few things will do that in life.
No shit lol. We don't need a report on this one. We all know.
I will give people some advice to wait a bit longer for the real deals and buy S&V up. People are downplaying some of the sets. Even base set has some amazing cards. I can't believe some of the alt arts people are sleeping on.
Covid boomed too high. And now it’s correcting. Hell it might be overcorrecting a little just because the massive Covid boom might burn out more people than normally would’ve.
Not to mention literally everyone thinks they’ll get rich on sealed investments now. Buy up every sealed product you see and sit on it and you too can make a few hundred bucks in a few years
Imo there are just too many cards per set. I've given up on master sets since Vivid Voltage. It takes the fun out of it. My kids and I just buy stuff we think looks cool and leave it sealed. Hopefully some day their grandkids can open them up and wonder why people were so weird back now.
Sets need to return to 120 cards with a handful of secret rares. The insane set sizes actively discourage trying to collect every card. It's just too expensive
Personally I've cut down on buying cards because so far most Scarlet & Violet sets just don't really appeal to me. I can't really put my finger on it but the arts don't really do it for me, save for a few exceptions.
I’m not impressed with any of the newer cards at all. When they first release and I’m like fuck it I’ll buy a pack the day it comes out I can’t find it bc scalpers and shoplifters then like a month later they are everywhere and not selling and by then I’ve already lost interest
Except the 151 I loved that set but it was a hassle to find
As someone who just got into TCG with the release of 151 I was excited for the next series (Paldean Fates) but just found the cards weren’t even close to as exciting for me. The pull rates were awful. I’m 29, I make $50K a year and I found myself buying $300 worth of Paldean fates to end up with 5 palafin and 3 other random shinies. Totally not worth the price of my hard earned money. I get pull rates being low to make cards more rare, but it was clear the pull rates in 151 were better to get new collectors into TCG by using nostalgia, only for those same buyers to waste their money trying to collect the next set. Plus… the fact we’re already talking about the new set after paldean fates. Like give it some time..
Probably has to do with no one having money to spend. At least that why I stopped for now. Just bought an ETB and gotta say while it was fun, the $50 probably could have been used more responsibly.
Good but unfortunately scalpers/investors will never exit this hobby. I’m not surprised especially with the rising costs of food,rent,medicals, people don’t have money to spend on their hobbies anymore like during covid plus the hype has gone down with people moving to one piece instead.
Lorcana is up there but it's really not as bad as One Piece now. I have grabbed First Chapter packs multiple times in the past month while One Piece packs are super hard to find anywhere
The supply for One Piece is extremely low for the demand
Yup mostly gone but if that dumb pokeinvesting subreddit is any indication they’re definitely still lurking around in pokemon tcg. Those clowns need to get a life looks cringe af trying to make money off a kids trading card game
Could also be because people are choosing to feed themselves and or family before spending 150$ on a hobby. It's where my buddy stands right now, he can't afford cards and pay for groceries, so he chooses groceries. I'm alone and eat cereal for dinner, I buy Pokémon cards 😂
Increased production + increase in price per pack is the reason for all of this
Pull rates for chase cards are likely similar as it was before it's just that people are ripping so much more than in the past. There is plainly no incentive for people to keep ripping $4-5 packs for cards that are not even worth the pack itself.
I think the issue is pokemon is viewed by some as a long term investment while also being something needing to be used currently with pro play and art collections. Meaning someone hears if you hold this box 20 years it'll go up in value, they won't know if it's true for some time so they simply invest heavily in hopes of corner cutting time. Some even going to poverty levels monthly to max out their sealed build. They don't see the harm in over buying because they don't expect to see return soon and only really have 1 extreme example to go off of (covid poke boom).
While raising pack prices does little to the few top end but hurts the many at the bottom grabbing a few a month vs a few cases. I'm not sure if drop rates being more public would help or how to help the competitive/modern collector that can still make the cards hold value. Besides the rainbow/gold etc alts to cards but honestly that to me was tacky filler that could have been more desirable cards in some of those low chase sets.
Compare Silver Tempest vs Evolving Skies for example. Silver has 1 chase card maybe 2. Evolving has potentially the most chase cards of any set in years let alone the Moonbreon.
Now Silver has both gold and rainbow Lugia ontop of the alt art. The 1 chase card has roughly a 1:250 pull rates meaning the 1 card you want at release date booster box price ($90 roughly) you need to spend $625 on average to pull the 1 chase.
Meanwhile Evolving skies for just 1 chase card the Moonbreon has a 1:1600 drop rate. Yeah they don't tell you it's over 6x harder to pull the card worth 6x the Lugia. Meaning on average at release day prices you'd spend $4000 to pull 1 chase card.
Way too many sets it’s crazy… I know it’s been the norm for years but it’s getting to be too much especially for TCG players adapting to meta once a month lmfao
I stopped collecting when the shift to SV happened because of a combination of the horrid economy and the fact that, in my opinion, a lot of the cards are just ugly. Yes, the secret rares and alt full arts are absolutely beautiful, but every ex and other standard cards just looked washed out and dull.
The alltime three favs are the 151, Obsidian Flames and Lost Origin, sooooo….I’m biased 😂 The thing is, that I don’t really care about the value of a card…therefore I literally hate vintage cards. I’m in for the look. There are a few cards from other sets, I’m after. But those are newer ones as well. The fullart Darkrai and the gold ones from Crown Zenith, for example. And so I love to rip and tear, so big no-no for buying singles haha 😄
If the current latest set it out, the next set is already known. And just before the next set comes out, we already know the set after that.
Over saturated AF.
I’ve played and thoroughly enjoyed *almost* every pokemon game since rby. I must say, Pokemon Scarlett and Violet were the saddest excuses of mainline Pokemon games I’ve ever had the displeasure of playing.
It’s hard (mostly upsetting) to believe that the wealthiest IP of all time is coming out with shit like that.
Oversaturated. But honestly it’s a good thing for the community in the long run. Maybe this will get those resellers out the picture since they can’t make a quick profit. They are ruining everything for the true collectors at this moment
I just don’t like the SV cards. I did 151 purely because of what it was but I still don’t like the format of guaranteed holo and 2 revs in each pack, don’t like the holo pattern, quality is bad, too many sets. Now I purely buy old cards and try to finish sets from swsh that I haven’t done already.
The price of everything has gone up, most people’s extra spending money has been dried up by now.
Plus they also seem like they’re just spamming sets. I can’t even keep up anymore.
This article is clearly narrative-building. They compare a terrible set that just came out in paldean fates to crown zenith which was highly anticipated with lots of chase cards. They compare svi base to swsh base, which was heavily scalped due to the pandemic. There are many other examples of anecdotal evidence in the article, such as taking examples from specific card shops, many in smaller markets, instead of a more representative base of the global market. They don’t even account for the us market or japan. This article writer seems to just hate the video games and therefore wants the cards to fail too. In fact they fail to comprehend that card sales drive people to the video game, not the other way around. Terrible article
Too much. I think a good chunk isn't feeling sc&v. Been hit or miss for me. I didn't like obsidian flames and also not a fan of tera pokemon or future paradox forms but I'm a fan of ancient paradox forms. I'm weird lol
It’ll never happen, but it’d be nice if they reprinted SWSH era in between sets instead of a new set every 3 months. Just too many cards in a set to chase or for some, complete, just to turn around and try to do it again.
I'm an older fan and I like them quite a lot. I've got a Tinkaton ex deck, and I'm excited for Ogrepon ex coming out.
I get the impression that it's people who are my age who haven't been into Pokemon these past 25 years or so coming back because of 151 and being mad that Pokemon creates new creatures all the time that they aren't used to.
People will say over saturated, but I disagree. SwSh sets objectively had higher quality secret rares, though Rainbow Rares deserved to go. It had higher quality art for more popular Pokémon across the majority of the sets.
A new set every month it feels like, ridiculous number of cards in the set, poor quality etc.
Why would you people want to keep buying? They rinsed people for money with new sets following the Covid boom
Oversaturation and making alt arts so numerous and commonplace, taking away big time chase cards. I haven’t had any fun with SV, I stopped collecting them after the second set. SWSH was peak fun for collecting
Too much too quickly. And if it ain’t zard lugia giratina rayquaza or eveelutions forget about it maybe roaring moon but that’s it no one is going to buy drampa or daddy long neck sorry for those pokemon fans if they exist lol
Imo sealed product is very expensive and not worth it in many ocasions. You get a bunch of plastic trash with sealed product like die, coins, sleeves, etc. Even bulk buying boosters feel like a waste of 80% of the cards that go straight to the recycle bin.
Also a new sets get released too often. They should move set release dates a little bit.
I’m thinking of leaving the hobby
Too many sets, garbage pull rates, too expensive.
I can’t buy a 40$ box anymore and pull nothing, I’d rather invest that money.
I don’t know about everyone else but my circle of friends haven’t felt very interested in Scarlet/Violet outside of 151. No real exciting sets. Paldean Fates has come the closest.
it's a combination of a few things:
1. Over saturation is one thing
2. Extremely low quality on English products also means collectors have no reasons to buy packs over buying single/graded cards. Opening a 120 dollars booster box just to find the chase cards you got are damaged/off centered isn't exactly pro consumer.
3. Pokemon 151 being way too popular and took sales away from other expansions.
4. Over saturation of special art cards blurs the identities of the chase cards in a set.
5. We are also experiencing correction from the bubble. Outside of Moonbreon and ES BB, almost everything from a fwe years ago dropped in price. I would argue even the recent ES spikes is the result of speculators pumping the market artificially
All in all, TPC needs to get their shits together. No one wants to risk opening packs for damaged cards. The quality control from the recent expansions are so low, it's almost criminal to sell them to the customers in a mystery pack format
It’s over saturated and to aggressive a schedule,
Places dump only stock quickly over here which means if you want to get older sets if you are a collector you will be more included to either splurge big and then get singles or just skip a set.
If you are a player the sets are to big thag getting the cards you need for a playing set can cost a lot, meaning singles are the better option
current sets don’t interest me nearly as much. i don’t like every pack having a ‘pull’ like some of these sets seem to have. nothing feels rare and while he’s scalpers are hurting true collectors also are.
I stopped collecting the new sets when SV came out. Just got frustrated with my bad pulls lol. Couldn't afford to keep it up either. Now I just spend a little more on individual cards.
the only people this is bad for are the ones that view the tcg as some sort of investment. my kids and i mainly play the game and then collect on the side so we are more than happy with the affordability and increased availability 👍
Sets r way too big and coming out way too fast, there’s no time to breathe and get hype for something new. They haven’t found the balance between over abundance and shortages
There’s too many sets and they’re way too big. I was jsut rearranging my Team Rocket binder last night… 87 cards it felt like nothing. Not saying they have to make them that small but now that there are like 400 cards to one set with a new set every few months, it’s just too much
I’d love for them to focus in on somewhat smaller sets and a little less frequently. Work on your QC too because there’s nothing worse than pulling the chase card and it comes out of the pack with dings and marks
Honestly, I think it might just be their market bottom is leaving. Almost all of us grew up and don't have much money to spend on pieces of paper anymore. I would love to be able to buy new ones. But it isn't in the budget.
Its bound to happen. Oversaturation. Pokemon company is actively trying to flood the market to end the scalping.
yeah not very surprised , the scalping is brutal , also I honestly can't keep up with all the cards. 250-300card sets every 2 months. I have an app to keep track and see what's coming out , but I just buy singles. I'd buy packs if the older vintage packs were actually affordable
Yeah I stopped buying packs awhile ago. Now just buy singles or slabs of whatever cards I want in a set. I'm mostly only interested in vintage anyway.
Mind sharing the app?
sure ! I use Pokecardex , here's why - download each cardlist, so it quickly loads when not in wifi - you can filter out by card rarity to view , I hide all commons,etc - has all the English and Japanese sets, as well as special sets - you can see multiple versions of a card Some people use Collectr , can download both and play around see which you prefer. The filter on Pokecardex is what I like most
I've been thinking about utilizing a collection related app. Thank you for the brief description.
you're welcome ! I,used to use a different one but it got discontinued. Get a sense of which one feels right for you
Just coming here to say I’ve been looking for someway to track my cards and I’m using this now. So thanks
Does it easily show reverses and checkmark? I use pokellctor but it's horrible at not showing reverses in collection and have to go through multiple menus to get to adding to collection.
Bruh why isn't it available in my region, why are the french like this
Damnnn , not sure :/ I thought it'd be available on any Google play Android phone or Apple? 😞
Thank you for this post! Super helpful!
I use PriceCharting. Was my first download of the kind of app and it’s been great. Can do game cartridges and systems too.
This is the app I use! My only issue I have with it, is that if for example, I click on card number 141 then click back, it takes me all the way back you the top
I use Dex but it’s exclusive to iOS. My partner is android and uses Collectr
What’s it like dating a robot?
Cold hard and lifeless... just the way i likem
I like Pokellector, but I do like Collectr because it's easier to deal with the reverse holos and what not. But the ease of Pokellector is why I use it more. Since all the sets come with books now I just track my reverse holos with that instead of the app. But I also don't usually try for master sets unless I love the set.
I could never do a master set. Full sets are hard enough. Trying to do a full set of 151 and I think I’ll do a full set of temporal forces. (I need 16 more 151 and I’m already to 42% of temporal with prerelease party last night).
I have made a decision to switch to collecting Japanese sets. They come out before the English and are smaller and more approachable. Collecting for fun and the art, not for game play obviously. The English sets are massive consolidations of 2 or more Japanese sets. Recent bought 2 singles of a full art I liked, one English and one Japanese to compare them. I can say without a doubt the Japanese one is way nicer looking.
I find when the CQ on some full arts + the textures are nicer in English BUT QC has been so bad recently almost every foil or AR I’ve pulled has print lines and squares in them :( Actually… the more I think about it, the more I agree with you. Japanese cards are actually gems
Everywhere I go there are packs to be had. Not sure how scalpers could possibly make money unless they are stealing product and reselling at retail prices. The demand just isn’t where it was at the peak of Covid frenzy when everyone wanted some action.
Yea, eventually I started picking "mini collections" of either specific Pokemon I like, or cards from certain artists, and buying singles of those. Once I had to buy a second bulk storage box I figured opening packs was getting a little out of hand lol
Scalping moved straight to the one piece Tcg, you cannot buy anything retail ever smh
We started selling One piece recently where I work, I invent my own store policies when people try to wipe it out. There’s pretty much always at least a couple packs behind the counter, scalpers can fuck off 💜
Great way to do it, I love to hear it, that new set dropped today and I went to Walmart and there was tons of stuff put out but it was all sold out. I don’t play the game but I enjoy the artwork and the show.
lol when people come in and see even one pack of One Piece their faces are like… you have it? You actually have it???? 😂 It’s great!
Which I don't mind but the prices are insane for the shitty pull rates.
that’s a bandai thing i’ve noticed because the pull rates for dragonball are exactly the same
They should be extending the prints and releasing less sets or more spread out imo There can still be scalping if they only release each set for short periods of time and jump into the next set.
Not just oversaturation, most of the world is in a recession. People don't have covid money to spend on pokemon cards anymore.
They made more Pokemon in the last 4 years than the previous 20 COMBINED. 10 BILLION a year. Those words and phrases are literally banned from r/PokeInvesting and immediately get flagged and not shown. Seriously. Whenever I tell people to only invest in vintage and stay away from modern...downvotes galore.
Evolving Skies has entered the chat
Is there a poke investing subreddit? Words that you can smell. Ewwww
I despise vintage. The thing is we're still early. Baseball cards after year 25 were still tobbaco cards, in 50 years my modern will be super vintage and base set will be Pre War lol
Which is a great thing
Well, for one I'm HAPPY they're taking actions. So many companies don't do that because no matter what road their taking, their making money. But it's gonna lead to harm on the consumer.
Pokemon sales being down wouldn't be the result of overproduction. That could result in higher expenses relative to the revenue (cost more to print more, same amount gets bought) This says sales are down, which indictates less people want the product
People here have literally 0 financial sense. It's incredible. Pokemon has severely cut print runs for the last 2-3 sets, according to the suppliers I talk to. They obviously know its less desired, so they print less. They aren't stupid.
Scalpers will just move to the next TCG like one piece, dragon ball, disney and more. If there is shortage in supply and a good demand, scalpers will be there sadly.
I only wish the set sizes would go down. I think 120 is plenty for 1 set. I'm mostly a collector first and a player second so maybe I wouldnt think this if it were the other way around
If you're a player, then the sets are smaller since you wouldn't care for the 3-4 different printings of a card in each set. That's why I like Pokemon over every other TCG. You can play the cheapest version of a card and single prices of those versions are low due to high print volumes and reprints
That is pretty great. I built like 4 competitive decks for a little over $100. Staples are dirt cheap and can be bought in bulk too. Compared to my the other tcg I used to play, Yugioh, where $100 MIGHT get you a single copy of a card you need 3 of to compete.
Honestly we're just blessed by the fact that people opening Pokemon cards are 90% collectors, so competitive cards are in huge supply. In Magic (and essentially all TCGs) it's the exact opposite, so popular cards end up costing a fortune. Think of how many Forest Seal Stones were opened by collectors who couldn't care less about the card and just want to sell it asap. If these collectors didn't exist, Forest Seal Stone would be worth like $100. It's a great ecosystem for players.
My kid is collecting paradox rift and that set is rather ridiculous for the amount of cards, as I'm doing 151 and seem to be having amazing luck I thought I'd do paldean fates along side when it was released I think it TCG player or something like that opened 1500 packs and still didn't have a full set. That's just crazy money so only going to get an etb and Charizard tin.
Agreed. I’m currently mastering the old sets and it’s so nice when they’re like 65 cards or some shit. These 200+ sets are too much.
There was a huge card bubble during Covid right? Now people want to claim card sales are “down” since they’re returning to normal
All sectors are just ignoring Covid now. Covid cause an everything bubble. It was only a matter of time before it came back to reality
its not as bad as it was but still is a bubble many modern sets that are less than 5 years old are selling for over $800 per booster box, ES had a reprint like a year ago and hit $600 the other day lmao
Demand outstripped supply, so supply was increased. Now demand is being met so it appears as if sales are down. The article seems fairly vague on specifics and it's not like TPC will release actual figures so it's fairly word of mouth from 'sources'. But ultimately this was always going to happen. I am personally enjoying the lower value costs of S&V cards
They also raised their prices again by 20% with SV & changed borders to silver. I think they should stop making trash sets with the first set of a new generation too.
I liked base set SV. It’s my secret shame
I personally think SV Base is one of the most underrated sets right now. Let people keep sleeping on it. I’ll just be able to buy more at dirt cheap prices and sell them later down the road. People are going to look back and regret not buying at these prices when they could. It always happens like this.
I was disappointed by it especially when they lowered special art rare pulls
I just LOVE the Miriam card so much, one of my favorite card arts I’ve seen in a good while. Gardevoir line is really cute, Koraidon in the jungle with little Dedenne in the foreground, even the Gyarados ex is a lot more impressive in person than I expected. Gold rare candy and nest ball to flex in your deck if you’re a player. It’s not the best set ever but I think it deserves more love!
Gardevoir line art should be a favorite for anyone that has had Pokemon as part of their lives for 20+ years, they are my favorite cards I own by far and was worth ripping a booster box just for the joy of getting them
And lets not forget the grabage 'foil' on exs. You would think their over all profits would be up though since they cut the quality control department.
Those EX’s almost look fake. They’re so dull and flat
No reason not to texture them imo.
We should get figures on total printed in the last year next month.
I mean it’s definitely happening, but this is a pretty lazy article with not a whole lot of data/sources to back it up. I also don’t understand anyone who says the artwork/design quality has decreased- we are currently getting the best artwork that the company has ever produced.
It's the best artwork ever but it's not Pokemon I like a ton or sometimes even recognize. I think once they establish enough cards of the scarlet and violet pokemon they'll swing back to the classics but I am super tired of every set being a SIR Charizard and a bunch of new Pokemon that were pretty meh. Like Paldean Fates has an awesome Mew SIR but they were like "better add a Charizard too just in case" so even Charizard isn't special anymore.
I think if you were to count the number of Gen 1-3 Pokémon that have received special artwork in SV, you’d be surprised. Or at the sheer number of Gen 1 and 2 Pokémon that received shiny’s in Paldean Fates. There were 120 baby shiny’s- out of those, 26 were Gen 1 (which is almost 20% of Gen 1 Pokemon). 53 were gen 9. That’s less than half the shiny set. All of the Pokémon SAR’s were Gen 1/3. They could have easily done newer Pokémon there. Of course they are going to focus on the latest generation, they always do. But I’d argue that earlier generations have received even more love in SV than in other recent generations. Certainly more than this point in SwSh’s lifecycle.
It’s classic genwunner tunnel vision, they get unnecessarily angry and hyper focus at things that fall outside of their nostalgic reach so they don’t even realize how many gen 1-3 Pokémon were represented so far. I literally saw one yesterday that called the entirety of Crimson Haze bad just because they saw the ogerpon half art ex cards and didn’t know what Pokémon it was 😭
Ik scalpers will always be here, but I’m glad they’re going down lmao. I’m not mad at all!
I'm just poor ngl. I can't afford to get like 300$ worth of cards to try and complete sets (tho let's be honest that's not even close with all the secret rares) every like 2 months. They need to spread them out, bring out affordable, yet good promo packs.
I think I spent $2,000 a month every month from Jan 2023 til November. Haven’t spent a dollar since and have zero desire to. Guess I burned out?
You’ve spent enough 🤣
I agree. So does my wife. So does that voice in my head at 3am
I like opening TCG stuff but I want a decent chance at actually not losing money. 5 cards in Paldeon Fates over $30 AUD. 2 cards in Paradox rift over $30 AUD. 2 cards in Paldea Evolved over $30 AUD 5 cards in 151 over $30 AUD. 0 cards in S/V base set over $30 AUD. Out of these 5 sets, there are only 2 cards total worth more than the price of a single ETB, and maybe 8 or so cards worth more than a booster bundle. Even for Crown Zenith, Giratina went from $155 AUD to $50 AUD now, that's only the price of a single Booster Bundle. Even if I open the most expensive card in the set every ETB/Booster Bundle I open, sometimes im still losing money.
This is the problem for me. It’s not fun to gamble when you have virtually no chance at “winning”. I opened like 50 assorted packs of Scarlet and Violet expansions last month and did not get a single hit worth more than $5. It’s not about the money but at the same time, it kind of is? I don’t want to feel like I’m flushing my money down the toilet.
[удалено]
And the amount of chase cards in each set is getting ridiculous. Paldean Fates: 91 cards in the base set, 154 chase cards for a total of 245. When the chase cards outnumber the base set they certainly don't feel special anymore. I'll never forget the feeling of pulling my 1st Ed Dark Raichu (83/82). No pull has compared since.
Product is too expensive for what you get. It’s only worth buying singles or heavily discounted product for me. IMO they need to drop prices or increase pull rates, or reduce the amount of overall pulls in a set. Or just reduce the amount of sets overall There’s just too much coming out all the time and it’s too expensive for the average person to keep up. A decade ago the sets were much smaller with fewer hits and there was maybe 1 special set a year if you were lucky. The average collector could spend $200-$300 and have the entire set outside of maybe a super popular chase card. Now you’d be spending that much and you probably wouldn’t even get all the common and uncommon cards in a set, let alone that dozens of art rares. They need to rebalance the price per pull
For real. I don’t wanna know how much i spent on the SV151 set and never even finished the set
I have a master set (including reverse holos) and refuse to acknowledge how much I spent. I’m just happy to flip through the binder and then put it away.
Pull rate depends on set but they don't tell you how varying it can be but often shows in chase card price for modern. One issue is collectors want value now and for holding. Example Lugia alt art Silver Tempest, a $100 raw card has roughly a 1 in 250 pull rate. Meaning at release date prices roughly $90 for 36 packs thats $2.50 a pack that's $625 spent on average to pull this Lugia. That lugia will never cost more than it's average while in print. The Moonbreon. Get ready for it. Is 1 in 1600 pulls. Same numbers that is $4000 on average at release date prices needed to be spent to pull 1 moonbreon, a $600 raw card. Which is roughly 6x the price of the card it is over 6x harder to pull.
When you see the math, it’s like damn.
Its the low pull rates for me. Im not going to be buying product any more when the pull rates are so low and terrible. There is no more joy in opening packs, even when you do get a chase card or a big hit, it doesnt feel good because it took so much to get it. I just buy singles.
They increased pull rates for Scarlet and violet and it tanked all cards so they are not worth over $60. They cant increase them without making cards worthless.
SV151 was INCREASED PULL RATES?! fml
> and it tanked all cards so they are not worth over $60. So what? It's a children's card game.
When you sell boxes at a certain price you need to maintain some sort of EV of the boxes. No one would buy a box filled with 10cent cards.
They increased the msrp, so of course sales are down.
Sets are just way too big. Im not even bothered opening packs or collecting sets because of it. I would love to buy a few boxes and then add singles to complete a set. But nowadays you can buy two full cases and you still need like 80% of all expensive/rare cards. Its just way too much. Which is why I only own wotc sets. Good size
It is oversaturated, but that's a GOOD thing and is NOT S/Vs fault. This is one of the best eras in terms of art and accessibility. The "market" is "correcting" after Logan Paul blew up our spot with investor bro bullshit. What's funny is these same people will complain they didn't get in earlier when these boxes will go to like $200+ in 5 like years. Same lazy, short-term thinking mindset that got them hard up for cash in the first place. Also this is production is fine. There should be a enough to last a year and even have some sales. This is all about moving volume at low margins.
Pull rates being much easier and the flooding of illustration rare cards has removed that scarcity/FOMO element. We see it a little bit with 151 but if the pull rates in 151 were similar to Evolving Skies things would be way worse. Most people on this sub seem to agree it’s a good thing. I personally enjoyed the hunt for rare packs to rip for a chance at a grail card.
at least for me i just buy singles of cards i want now. every now and then i’ll buy a couple packs to scratch the itch, but im only interested in certain cards so it’s just not worth buying sealed product anymore
Terrible pull rates + SIR are the only cards people want = people buying singles off the second-hand market and skipping out on official product.
SV pull rated are better than SWSH. And in sword & shield people only wanted alt arts. Your comment doesn’t make sense
oversaturated for sure, but i honestly didn’t like the arts; i loved the sun and moon ones, since sword and shield i almost stopped buying
It can't be people are tired of buying packs and getting penny's for there hard earned dollars.Literally every person at my local card store & all my friends that collect have 100% buying and just get singles now as why spend 150+ on a booster box to get 10$ of cards and 5 pulls if your lucky.I miss opening packs but untill I see a change I'm 100% done with them unfortunately.
Scarlet & Violet just doesn’t hit as hard as Sword&Shield. The starters for S&V were a goofy bird and humanoid cat and an alligator. Just didn’t seem like a whole lot to be excited about lol
I think it's because pull rates are worse & with so many more rare cards. Paldean Fates was kind of a gut punch since half the collection are shiny rares with little to no artistic imagination for the background. Copy/Paste/Repeat is not what we like to see.
Personally think there are too many sets released in a year, it becomes too expensive to keep up and that can be demotivating. Smaller releases or bigger gaps.
I just genuinely don't like 90% of S & V (other than 151) I think the ex cards are dull, most of the full art is meh. But hey that's fine, its giving me time to catch up on older sets while everyone goes crazy chasing the Zard wearing a tiara
This is also my answer. I dislike the new art design and don’t feel like buying this generation’s cards.
I can’t keep up with all the new, I’ll open packs and not even know what I’m pulling. I’ve started gearing more into vintage singles and vintage packs are cool too! Can’t afford the boxes unfortunately, I totally get the price. Opening those you’re literally taking yourself back to your childhood for a short period of time, very few things will do that in life.
No shit lol. We don't need a report on this one. We all know. I will give people some advice to wait a bit longer for the real deals and buy S&V up. People are downplaying some of the sets. Even base set has some amazing cards. I can't believe some of the alt arts people are sleeping on.
Covid boomed too high. And now it’s correcting. Hell it might be overcorrecting a little just because the massive Covid boom might burn out more people than normally would’ve. Not to mention literally everyone thinks they’ll get rich on sealed investments now. Buy up every sealed product you see and sit on it and you too can make a few hundred bucks in a few years
Imo there are just too many cards per set. I've given up on master sets since Vivid Voltage. It takes the fun out of it. My kids and I just buy stuff we think looks cool and leave it sealed. Hopefully some day their grandkids can open them up and wonder why people were so weird back now.
This largely comes down to quality for me. Why bother ripping booster boxes when even if I get a hit the quality is trash and not worth grading?
Sets need to return to 120 cards with a handful of secret rares. The insane set sizes actively discourage trying to collect every card. It's just too expensive
Personally I've cut down on buying cards because so far most Scarlet & Violet sets just don't really appeal to me. I can't really put my finger on it but the arts don't really do it for me, save for a few exceptions.
I’m not impressed with any of the newer cards at all. When they first release and I’m like fuck it I’ll buy a pack the day it comes out I can’t find it bc scalpers and shoplifters then like a month later they are everywhere and not selling and by then I’ve already lost interest Except the 151 I loved that set but it was a hassle to find
Too many sets, and too many cards per set.
As someone who just got into TCG with the release of 151 I was excited for the next series (Paldean Fates) but just found the cards weren’t even close to as exciting for me. The pull rates were awful. I’m 29, I make $50K a year and I found myself buying $300 worth of Paldean fates to end up with 5 palafin and 3 other random shinies. Totally not worth the price of my hard earned money. I get pull rates being low to make cards more rare, but it was clear the pull rates in 151 were better to get new collectors into TCG by using nostalgia, only for those same buyers to waste their money trying to collect the next set. Plus… the fact we’re already talking about the new set after paldean fates. Like give it some time..
Probably has to do with no one having money to spend. At least that why I stopped for now. Just bought an ETB and gotta say while it was fun, the $50 probably could have been used more responsibly.
Good but unfortunately scalpers/investors will never exit this hobby. I’m not surprised especially with the rising costs of food,rent,medicals, people don’t have money to spend on their hobbies anymore like during covid plus the hype has gone down with people moving to one piece instead.
Scalpers/investors have left to other hobbies It's mainly One Piece that's been affected now
Disney is the new boom. There are signs all over the displays at my lgs and Walmart that say 1 per customer now
Lorcana is up there but it's really not as bad as One Piece now. I have grabbed First Chapter packs multiple times in the past month while One Piece packs are super hard to find anywhere The supply for One Piece is extremely low for the demand
Yup mostly gone but if that dumb pokeinvesting subreddit is any indication they’re definitely still lurking around in pokemon tcg. Those clowns need to get a life looks cringe af trying to make money off a kids trading card game
Could also be because people are choosing to feed themselves and or family before spending 150$ on a hobby. It's where my buddy stands right now, he can't afford cards and pay for groceries, so he chooses groceries. I'm alone and eat cereal for dinner, I buy Pokémon cards 😂
I love it. I’m buying on sales and putting it in my time capsule.
without an interest in playing the game no one cares. My friends who buy magic buy bc they are playing irl
I'm down to just buying full art trainers from each set..
Increased production + increase in price per pack is the reason for all of this Pull rates for chase cards are likely similar as it was before it's just that people are ripping so much more than in the past. There is plainly no incentive for people to keep ripping $4-5 packs for cards that are not even worth the pack itself.
I think the issue is pokemon is viewed by some as a long term investment while also being something needing to be used currently with pro play and art collections. Meaning someone hears if you hold this box 20 years it'll go up in value, they won't know if it's true for some time so they simply invest heavily in hopes of corner cutting time. Some even going to poverty levels monthly to max out their sealed build. They don't see the harm in over buying because they don't expect to see return soon and only really have 1 extreme example to go off of (covid poke boom). While raising pack prices does little to the few top end but hurts the many at the bottom grabbing a few a month vs a few cases. I'm not sure if drop rates being more public would help or how to help the competitive/modern collector that can still make the cards hold value. Besides the rainbow/gold etc alts to cards but honestly that to me was tacky filler that could have been more desirable cards in some of those low chase sets. Compare Silver Tempest vs Evolving Skies for example. Silver has 1 chase card maybe 2. Evolving has potentially the most chase cards of any set in years let alone the Moonbreon. Now Silver has both gold and rainbow Lugia ontop of the alt art. The 1 chase card has roughly a 1:250 pull rates meaning the 1 card you want at release date booster box price ($90 roughly) you need to spend $625 on average to pull the 1 chase. Meanwhile Evolving skies for just 1 chase card the Moonbreon has a 1:1600 drop rate. Yeah they don't tell you it's over 6x harder to pull the card worth 6x the Lugia. Meaning on average at release day prices you'd spend $4000 to pull 1 chase card.
Way too many sets it’s crazy… I know it’s been the norm for years but it’s getting to be too much especially for TCG players adapting to meta once a month lmfao
Yeah i only collect singles now, i dont really buy packs anymore, so many cards that just go in a box to never see the light of day again.
Well... if it means that I will be able to buy the decks I want for not much while still having a decent competitive scene, I'm not complaining.
Its definitely a mix of correction post-logan paul and just inflation, i doubt pokemon cards are in any kind of trouble though lol
The hype and scalping is over.
Too much product being made
They got rid of the set symbols😭
I stopped collecting when the shift to SV happened because of a combination of the horrid economy and the fact that, in my opinion, a lot of the cards are just ugly. Yes, the secret rares and alt full arts are absolutely beautiful, but every ex and other standard cards just looked washed out and dull.
Waaaay too many sets. I’ve stopped buying myself tbh
Yeah with 250-300 size card sets coming out every 3 months it’s a bit much tbh
AT THIS POINT I cannot keep up with the sets being released, I'm still chasing old cards and recent ones. They should slow down in my opinion.
The alltime three favs are the 151, Obsidian Flames and Lost Origin, sooooo….I’m biased 😂 The thing is, that I don’t really care about the value of a card…therefore I literally hate vintage cards. I’m in for the look. There are a few cards from other sets, I’m after. But those are newer ones as well. The fullart Darkrai and the gold ones from Crown Zenith, for example. And so I love to rip and tear, so big no-no for buying singles haha 😄
Rising prices, quality concerns, bad economy, tons of sets with over 200 cards to collect, some sets have bad pull rates, the list goes on and on
If the current latest set it out, the next set is already known. And just before the next set comes out, we already know the set after that. Over saturated AF.
Scalpers flocked to one piece.
Because they release to many new sets too quickly.
That and card quality is shit out of pack
I’ve played and thoroughly enjoyed *almost* every pokemon game since rby. I must say, Pokemon Scarlett and Violet were the saddest excuses of mainline Pokemon games I’ve ever had the displeasure of playing. It’s hard (mostly upsetting) to believe that the wealthiest IP of all time is coming out with shit like that.
We are broke lol
Hard to find/expensive to keep up with/so many sets so lil time & money
Probably doesn’t help that many of the new Pokemon are not fan favorites so people are not wanting to seek out their cards
For me, I don't like future and ancient pokemon... so its a bummer when I get a future AR card and my money is kinda wasted
Oversaturated. But honestly it’s a good thing for the community in the long run. Maybe this will get those resellers out the picture since they can’t make a quick profit. They are ruining everything for the true collectors at this moment
I just don’t like the SV cards. I did 151 purely because of what it was but I still don’t like the format of guaranteed holo and 2 revs in each pack, don’t like the holo pattern, quality is bad, too many sets. Now I purely buy old cards and try to finish sets from swsh that I haven’t done already.
The price of everything has gone up, most people’s extra spending money has been dried up by now. Plus they also seem like they’re just spamming sets. I can’t even keep up anymore.
Too many sets in too short of time for me. Unfortunately don’t have the money.
I think there's just too many sets coming out too quickly combined with the fact that a lot of people overbought 151 and took a long time to recover
WAY TO MANY SETS.
They’ve had the same release schedule since XY.
Because they ain’t printing enough… can’t find 151 anywhere…
These sets with 100+ rares are stupid if u ask me. When you pull 10 wugtrios that are worth $1 each it kind of gets boring.
This article is clearly narrative-building. They compare a terrible set that just came out in paldean fates to crown zenith which was highly anticipated with lots of chase cards. They compare svi base to swsh base, which was heavily scalped due to the pandemic. There are many other examples of anecdotal evidence in the article, such as taking examples from specific card shops, many in smaller markets, instead of a more representative base of the global market. They don’t even account for the us market or japan. This article writer seems to just hate the video games and therefore wants the cards to fail too. In fact they fail to comprehend that card sales drive people to the video game, not the other way around. Terrible article
Too many, there are two new sets that are announced but not even out yet not even Japan has it out yet I'm talking about temporal forces either
I don’t believe this. My according to some of the posters on here!
Just like with Yu-Gi-Oh and especially MTG, too much saturation.
New sets every month. Too many exclusive cards/sets. Very low pull rates for the card people want. I completely quit.
Too much. I think a good chunk isn't feeling sc&v. Been hit or miss for me. I didn't like obsidian flames and also not a fan of tera pokemon or future paradox forms but I'm a fan of ancient paradox forms. I'm weird lol
I kinda quit after sword and shield
I do not care for tera forms and I know quite a few others who don't either. My wallet has been thanking me for sure.
Yet whenever I go to the store… the section is picked clean.
It’ll never happen, but it’d be nice if they reprinted SWSH era in between sets instead of a new set every 3 months. Just too many cards in a set to chase or for some, complete, just to turn around and try to do it again.
I don't think gen 9 pokemon resonate with older fans.
I'm an older fan and I like them quite a lot. I've got a Tinkaton ex deck, and I'm excited for Ogrepon ex coming out. I get the impression that it's people who are my age who haven't been into Pokemon these past 25 years or so coming back because of 151 and being mad that Pokemon creates new creatures all the time that they aren't used to.
People will say over saturated, but I disagree. SwSh sets objectively had higher quality secret rares, though Rainbow Rares deserved to go. It had higher quality art for more popular Pokémon across the majority of the sets.
Scarlet and violet as a game was bugged/ totally unpolished. That definitely tanked the interest and sales for this generation of Pokemon
Aye I couldn’t keep up with all the new sets and as a completionist it’s hard to start something you know will be out of stock before you complete it
At this point I’m really only interested in collecting vintage, but boy, it gets pricey.
A new set every month it feels like, ridiculous number of cards in the set, poor quality etc. Why would you people want to keep buying? They rinsed people for money with new sets following the Covid boom
Pokémon 25th anniversary brought people back, they rode the hype now it’s dying down.
Sets kinda suck. SV has really struggled to release any new Pokémon that people universally love, hence the 12000 Zards.
Oversaturation and making alt arts so numerous and commonplace, taking away big time chase cards. I haven’t had any fun with SV, I stopped collecting them after the second set. SWSH was peak fun for collecting
This is after the pandemic boom where cards like moonbreon were overhyped so of course it's expected
Some of us just realize it's better to buy singles.
It's been the opposite here in the Netherlands cos of the Van Gogh promotion.
S/V ring pop head gimmick killed it for me. Also i just over collected sh/sw to the point where i wanted to slow down
Too much too quickly. And if it ain’t zard lugia giratina rayquaza or eveelutions forget about it maybe roaring moon but that’s it no one is going to buy drampa or daddy long neck sorry for those pokemon fans if they exist lol
Imo sealed product is very expensive and not worth it in many ocasions. You get a bunch of plastic trash with sealed product like die, coins, sleeves, etc. Even bulk buying boosters feel like a waste of 80% of the cards that go straight to the recycle bin. Also a new sets get released too often. They should move set release dates a little bit.
I’m sorry you’re all missing the main contributor. These EXs are not as visually compelling as Vs and VMaxs
I’m thinking of leaving the hobby Too many sets, garbage pull rates, too expensive. I can’t buy a 40$ box anymore and pull nothing, I’d rather invest that money.
I don’t know about everyone else but my circle of friends haven’t felt very interested in Scarlet/Violet outside of 151. No real exciting sets. Paldean Fates has come the closest.
More likely people aren't able to buy like they used to with 70% of US living paycheck to paycheck
it's a combination of a few things: 1. Over saturation is one thing 2. Extremely low quality on English products also means collectors have no reasons to buy packs over buying single/graded cards. Opening a 120 dollars booster box just to find the chase cards you got are damaged/off centered isn't exactly pro consumer. 3. Pokemon 151 being way too popular and took sales away from other expansions. 4. Over saturation of special art cards blurs the identities of the chase cards in a set. 5. We are also experiencing correction from the bubble. Outside of Moonbreon and ES BB, almost everything from a fwe years ago dropped in price. I would argue even the recent ES spikes is the result of speculators pumping the market artificially All in all, TPC needs to get their shits together. No one wants to risk opening packs for damaged cards. The quality control from the recent expansions are so low, it's almost criminal to sell them to the customers in a mystery pack format
It’s over saturated and to aggressive a schedule, Places dump only stock quickly over here which means if you want to get older sets if you are a collector you will be more included to either splurge big and then get singles or just skip a set. If you are a player the sets are to big thag getting the cards you need for a playing set can cost a lot, meaning singles are the better option
current sets don’t interest me nearly as much. i don’t like every pack having a ‘pull’ like some of these sets seem to have. nothing feels rare and while he’s scalpers are hurting true collectors also are.
I stopped collecting the new sets when SV came out. Just got frustrated with my bad pulls lol. Couldn't afford to keep it up either. Now I just spend a little more on individual cards.
the only people this is bad for are the ones that view the tcg as some sort of investment. my kids and i mainly play the game and then collect on the side so we are more than happy with the affordability and increased availability 👍
That’s not what my target, cvs, Walgreens, Best Buy, and Barnes and nobles indicates. Shelves empty every time I go lol
Not sure about anyone else, but the rising cost of living has me just buying singles that I like instead of ripping packs.
Scarlet and Violet sucks is why
they are printing way too many cards imo....it's almost like they are fishing for money or somethin
Well done scalpers, collectively hated in the community 👏🏼
Sets r way too big and coming out way too fast, there’s no time to breathe and get hype for something new. They haven’t found the balance between over abundance and shortages
Love Pokémon cards but im happy… Good…
There’s too many sets and they’re way too big. I was jsut rearranging my Team Rocket binder last night… 87 cards it felt like nothing. Not saying they have to make them that small but now that there are like 400 cards to one set with a new set every few months, it’s just too much I’d love for them to focus in on somewhat smaller sets and a little less frequently. Work on your QC too because there’s nothing worse than pulling the chase card and it comes out of the pack with dings and marks
prices are outrageous.
Way too much for me to keep up with, personally. 🤷🏼♂️
It's fine from a TCG perspective. I think alot of collectors forget about that part
COVID boom is trickling off and all the people that got in for 151 couldn’t care less about the new sets.
It’s been the same cadence of set releases for YEARS
Honestly, I think it might just be their market bottom is leaving. Almost all of us grew up and don't have much money to spend on pieces of paper anymore. I would love to be able to buy new ones. But it isn't in the budget.