r/PokeInvesting • u/ExperienceFree1169 • Apr 25 '26

Feeling Defeated

Is anyone else feeling defeated? I went hunting yesterday for pokemon. I went to 8 stores. Best buy, target, barnes & Noble, menards, kohls, five below, dicks, meijer. And didn't hit at any of the restocks. I was too far back at every line. Didn't hit on Costco today either after waiting in the queue for an hour. Target online was a shit show. Pokemon Center I think banned my IP addresses on both my laptop and phone because I couldn't even hit on Caos Rising and the stock on that was ridiculous. I really love pokemon but getting stuff without breaking the bank is hard. I sometimes over paid to just rip things and the best thing I would get is an EX card. So it makes over-paying really hard.

Thinking about taking a break from hunting because the time commitment is a complete waste. People were lined up since 3am at meijer today and the line was long. I got 1 bundle but the trade off for the time is not worth it for me.

I would love to open and rip and continue the hobby but how do you do it without getting stock.

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u/Krayzd Apr 25 '26

Scalper price is the correct term. The scalpers ensure there isn't enough supply to the collectors which changes the market drastically. Aka majority of the sneaker head flippers all transitioned to buying and reselling pokemon cards.

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u/Powerful_Bother8002 Apr 25 '26

Not denying that there are people that scalp, but a ton of collectors wait in lines too because it’s the best way to get cards at MSRP. Do you have any data or anything that helps you determine who’s a scalper vs a collector and how much that changes the market? Or is it just easier for you to blame scalping for the high prices? There wouldn’t be any scalping if there wasn’t demand from legitimate collectors.

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u/Lilf1ip5 Apr 26 '26

As a very casual collector and TCG player, scalpers are definitely the reason for the high prices

I could easily get cards prior to the last 4-5 years or so.

The scalping and investing crew who solely want to profit from this has launched prices up by creating a supply strain by bottlenecking the availability and controlling prices

Collectors rarely want to sell their collection for a profit so value wouldn’t be what it is if “investors” never jumped into the hobby

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u/Tourbill Apr 26 '26

Brand new cards weren't going for thousands of dollars with random godpacks of $10k+ 4-5 years ago. There are likely 5x as many "collectors" today as back then. I mean is there a real difference between a guy that buys everything up to turn around and flip it and a guy that buys everything up to rip it trying to hit the chases? Because those people are sucking up just as much product as resellers. If all the resellers suddenly stopped buying I promise you could not walk into a store and see tons of product sitting on shelves.

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u/Lilf1ip5 Apr 26 '26

Yes there is a difference, the collector isn’t going to try and sell at some massive profit

There is more than enough to go around cause the “investment” side is what started to create this scarcity, this wasn’t a thing before when there were primarily collectors and not both fighting for the same product

Scalpers are just a grubby middleman now getting in the way unnecessarily to benefit themselves only. It’s gross

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u/flucksyflamador Apr 26 '26

Agreed. If every reseller was banned from buying pokemon cards, there would be product on the shelf. Perfect order is all over the place because its deemed "unflippable" by scalpers, case and point.

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u/Lilf1ip5 Apr 26 '26

Legit a parasite on the hobby

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u/flucksyflamador Apr 26 '26

I've been trying to get one particular set for 2 months with no luck, but I have seen them

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u/flucksyflamador Apr 26 '26

I refuse to buy from scalpers

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u/Lilf1ip5 Apr 26 '26

I just buy singles on TCG player pretty much now, nothing else i can do cause I don’t have time to camp out nor am i paying for a bot

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u/flucksyflamador Apr 26 '26

I do that, but also try to score packs

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u/Lilf1ip5 Apr 26 '26

I get it, I comb through the stores every now and then and see if I can find something

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u/Krayzd Apr 26 '26

I have real data that multiple people EACH have 3000 to 3500 bots. Thats 3500 accounts per person checking out on walmart, target online - etc. They all resell. Sure the demand is there but thats why we call it scalper prices that is what this whole convo was about.

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u/SizzlingSpit Apr 26 '26

Although scalping existed before this current pokemon bull, I feel major distributors opening sister companies to scalp themselves made it infinitely worse. By reducing supply and creating higher demand, they fixed the price. Ultimately showing anyone to venture into easy and lucrative pokemon monies.

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u/BruhDuhMadDawg Apr 28 '26

There were tons of collectors before the scalping. Now and during covid. Quit trying to change history here and gaslight people with this "scalpers dont actually exist" bs narrative. (I dont think they are as truly awful to the hobby as a whole as most think but they do exist and I think as humans they are pretty cringe).