u/Ornery_Country_9600

Calling on all to stop buying Japanese PCJs, whether from Shops, cardshows, online, or streams, even for M6 rayquaza. I get it, its a beautiful chase, but the same scam and shit show is happening all over again without you realizing it only after spending a whole lot of money.

1. Japanese packs are heavily filtered, when packed in clear bags, taped on the side with konbini tape, or even when in familiar Yellow pokemon center bags. They can be filtered by metal detectors, weight, hit filtering, and now even light shining. The filtering does not become obvious until you count the number of SARs and Top Hit SARs coming out, especially Top Hit (rayquaza) and grossly missing the 1 in 90 hit rate for SAR and 1 in 540 hit rate for specific SAR. We have seen this in Inferno X before, where people will say ‘oh pokemoncenter controlling Zard population’ or ‘PCJ is just like that’. You will see opening 10 packs with only normal Foil and/or EXes. Yes some will get lucky, you may even be the one that gets lucky and scold me, but on a bigger picture, these Top Hits are already mostly missing by the time it reached SG shores. Truth is, sg buyers even have options to choose the level of filtering from their suppliers.

2. Price is heavily manipulated by Demand. It started being $7/pack. Now it is $4 range. In a few weeks time, M6 will drop to <$3 per pack. The MSRP has always been $1.50 per pack, but heavily manipulated by sellers on Japan end. English packs in print at most will be 2x MSRP (Pris or AH).

I wanted to get a general feel, do you feel there exists fake listings on Carousel to manipulate pricing? What I have encountered is, those lowest price sellers dont respond at all to your messages, not even the least read them, while they are very actively online

I saw a Greninja SAR post for $280, which is ridiculously low. Seller has been actively online but not even so much read my message. That is the most recent case, have encountered many more before. Do you guys experience the same? Because I can imagine now I am actually a Buyer but using these fake posts to create panic and negotiate a low price for my purchase, quite smart actually!

I stay in Toa Payoh, but interestingly I have never bought anything from the 2 TCG shops in my town. My old house is in western part of Tampines, another TCG shop there as well, never bought anything. I find myself more frequently making a trip down to Balestier shop to purchase for degen, or get my stuff from reputable online sellers. You have also got Carousell. Then you have got weekly tradeshows that put together many vendors who bring the same products to you at competitive prices. When I look back at how horrible prices at TCG shops can go (Chaos Rising $12/p, Ascended Heroes $20/p, singles priced beyond imagination at the point of writing), i begin to wonder how does it even work out. Back during 1999 packs were msrp all over, buy/sell/trade at shop, so it had a meaning at least.

Am curious and would like to know if there was any missed opportunities that I could have worked on i.e. building connections could pave way to future purchases at discounts or other benefits?