u/legendarykam

Between the 25th/30th anniversary hype, vending machine fights, scalpers with no life, BotMart bots, 3 AM Target drops on the East Coast, Pokémon Center/Walmart queues that kick you out or error, grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles and everyone in between camping vending machines, ghost chairs outside stores at 11 PM before they even open, Facebook Marketplace resellers selling everything for 2x-3x MSRP, local card shops charging way above retail, rip-and-ship people buying everything, investment bros, shoe resellers and every other type of flipper jumping in, retail workers allegedly tipping off friends/family or buying product themselves, people hiding product in stores because of purchase limits, fake cards getting scary good, and modern chase cards going for $400-$1,000+… how is this even a hobby anymore?

Some of this I’ve experienced myself, and some of it I’ve seen through videos, pictures, posts. People say “just buy singles,” and yeah, that works for random cheaper cards, but even singles are cooked when the cards people actually want cost more than a car payment.

If you work a 9-5 or you’re a kid in school, good luck finding anything after work, after school, or on the weekend. At this point, buying sealed Pokémon at MSRP feels less like collecting and more like clocking into a second job with worse hours and no benefits.