I recently got into collecting Pokemon cards because of tcg pocket but now I don’t even know where to buy cards lol I just wanna collect. Idc if they’re worth money

Thank you for this video. I rejoined the hobby at the end of last year and am already doubting my choice. I had already began to feel like I had joined an MLM and this video has really shown me that my gut instinct was right. I will keep collecting but am definitely boycotting Prismatic Evolutions.

it doesn't matter how much this guy's editor gets paid. It's not enough.

We need to get the investors and scalpers out. They don't belong here.

Sometimes I wonder where I fit into all this.

It's such a foreign concept for me to see people buy booster packs not because of card play, but for the potential money that could be earned. After this sudden flipping situation, the set Sun & Moon from 8 years ago went from 60 bucks to 80 with the Solgaleo box on ETBs. Pokemon just needs a Silver Era like MTG had. Print it to the ground.

If I could phase through walls and haunt people I’d honestly just follow flippers around and stare at them in abject disgust. What kind of loser makes it his life’s mission to suckle on the festering teat of Mammon and just, with zero interest in the game, zero interest in the collecting, just take all of the stock and make something they don’t even care about miserable for everyone who does? Why does anyone tolerate this? I really wanted PE but I will never ever purchase higher than the msrp for a new product. TPCI should be suing every flipper on the internet because they are selling a sealed product of an IP without a retail licence. All of this needs to be regulated. You can’t just buy a pallet of stock of iPhones from some third party and just sell them on the sidewalk without Apples permission. Why is TPCI so lax with this? Like yeah they’re getting paid, but people who did nothing but purchase their product the fastest are getting paid even more than them in resale. So what, you can compete with Pokemon and sell their product by making money on their labour and intellectual properties, but if you even think about downloading a pokemon crystal rom you’re honestly done for mate like how dare you mate shakes fist* ??? Make it make sense. Great video, hope you get some from the shops

Funny how you are blaming investors or whatever which has always been in the hobby since the dawn of era while the real reason these things happened is because of this “COLLECTORS” you keep worshipping paying stupid prices to the breakers and contributed massively to their growth that led to Breakers seizing a huge portion of available supplies. These dumb group literally keeps giving their money at stupid marked up prices to make the problem bigger by the day.

its not the cards.. its the collectors.. humans are always the problem.. always have been

Frankly, I'm at the point of just waiting the hype to calm down and do nothing about it. Even the previous sets has come up in value. It's to difficult for a casual fan like me to pick up something when everything is scarce or at a high price. 😢

I think you can tell the "investor" type channels that genuinely enjoy the hobby and the cards and those that don't, but hey, maybe I'm part of the problem and just don't want to admit it. Also, why did you choose a clip where i looked so grumpy?

All shops near me are literally wiped clean of everything not a single pack or etb at any shop that sells them

As you said, this boom happened a couple years ago, and eventually went back to normal. I'm holding out hope that this will happen again. Unfortunately for a lot of us, it means that we are going to be priced out of our hobby again. When it happened last time, I took your suggestion and moved to playing the TCG rather than collecting Japanese product. I hope that I will be able to continue to play the TCG during this boom again and that the playable cards don't get pumped too. I've already given up on building any of the eeveelution ex decks because I know it would just be a waste of money to buy the singles of these.

the secondary market - the price is insane, not gonna buy it period, even the store now follow current market price, speechless

let retail pay 3 times

every market has flippers even concert tickets that's the cycle

As a collector there is nothing wrong with investing wether for money or for trade value for other cards , Jluv literally does that so I don’t understand why he’s so irate against investors

Unfortunately or fortunately pokemon cards are a capital market now so you're always going to get people coming in to speculate. The only people to blame is the pokemon company for not printing enough. It's just supply and demand

Jluv ur vids always bring me entertainment 😂 us aussies just get the leftovers of America

I'm a smaller local vendor that does trade shows and it's insane right now. Honestly probably going to be skipping these next couple sets until we see a reprint since I refuse to charge 2x or more msrp for a set that just came out and I likely can't get more than a few boxes cheaper with how distribution is right now. Obviously it's great to make some money from my hobby but that isn't what i originally got into this for and I'm not a fan of the current culture surrounding things like whatnot and extreme scalpers, hope to see a return to a bit more normalcy soon so more people can get back to enjoying the game

While that, I Started collecting 1 month ago, and with little money I am almost with a master set of shrouded fable :) Don't go with the hype boys

For Australia there's speculation that EB Games (probably our biggest retail store for TCG) way over sold their pre-orders, because they had them up for a few weeks with no purchase limit. The distributor (Banter Toys) then would have told them that's way too much, but we love you guys, so here we'll take everyone else's allocation and you can have it. Leaving every other store here with like 3 ETB's and a few of the other products.

Distribution is the key for me, the fact distributors can hold their product and sell later at a higher price is crazy to me… There are always people after a quick buck, which doesn’t make it ok, but TPCI should know this and be working to mitigate it, which doesn’t feel the case

Category 2

Imagine paying more money for someone to live stream them opening your purchase…. Why would someone be interested in that, literally a lose lose situation. You overpay and you don’t even get to open what you buy.

Go to Big W and Myer still stuff there and even Toymate

As a poor, casual collector-investor, first, I wanna say sorry. Second, I completely agree. I've lashed out at a few fellow collectors recently for being greedy MFers and it went down like a lead balloon. Kids and Players should always get a fair go. Some PoS who buys everything out should be called out. I'm pretty depressed over the whole thing. I hope it does die down (it did during covid, so fingers cross) but in the meantime, I think I'm just gonna ignore the incoming stuff and try, and finish my 151 and CZ master sets, and my dragonite collection - but the prices are already galloping away from me there, too.

i think distributors are shorting everyone because of all these new whatnot sellers who got access to distribution. they are getting mad that they are selling for retail and everyone else is reselling for 3x the profit instantly. so they are shorting ppl and selling them backdoor on ebay and tcg to get that 3x price

So, where do you fall from this list?

After watching this video i'm convinced the real shortage is your IQ points

Think this is crazy just wait till team rocket set comes out

deman

Love ❤

locking all flippers and investors in a very small room would also solve the issue but apparently that's "not ethical"

The hobby is alive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PC moved to supply more big box stores with product because of the scalping by the LGSs. It seemed to be working and LGSs still got their product, but something weird is happening currently. Even 151 was widely available at and well after release for msrp or less. Surging sparks is fine, but how did that set sell put so quickly? I just find the speed at which this new popularity supposedly popped up disingenuous. It's seems more like the TCGPlayer equivalent of a buyout than an actual increase in popularity.

9:14 I think the good type of breaker usually falls under the collector type ie Scotts_PC

straight up haha

I think this is a solid measured take Julian. But I’m still an investor bro 🤘 Grear video!!

Thank you for explaining the difference between scalpers/flippers/investors I would say that most casual investors have stepped away from the hobby at the moment. We've been flooded with the wallstreetbets type of investor whose mantra is "bleed the market dry" with no regard for the actual hobby. The people who were investing in a responsible way before are not going to pay the prices currently being asked. Those prices are for the wallstreetbets chums so they can enjoy their heavy bags soon. And with the rise of gambling culture rip and shippers are just out of control. Whatnot is a toxic wasteland.

i dont know if im not thinking too deeply into this but Pokemon company, yugioh they should hire a designated pack opener/ sponsored product hyper/advertiser so that before other people scalp only that one person gets like 1-2 early access boxes, with a NDA signed contract that said person can't sell the product/ cards until the offical products are released. this way even if we have scalpers or flippers they cant gain access to the products and everyone can get at least 1-2 boxes. is it bad for poketubers and or yugitubers maybe...but is it better for everyone else who is actually into the hobby...i think so.

Budew to the moon?

Unpopular opinion, i love chasing stuff that’s harder to get. Although it sucks not getting many product at MSRP, it feels even better when you do score.

People have been investing in collectables, IE Pokemon, since they've existed. I see no issue with people investing in Pokemon. They buy sealed when there is hype or no hype. I enjoy Pokemon, been playing the video games since they first released on gameboy. Breakers are the worst. They sell packs at more than a slight markup. Breakers, flippers, and scalpers are the problem...but people are willing to give them money so the real problem is PCI and PCJ not printing enough and buyers refusing to pay these inflated prices. Crying about investors is hilarious and incorrect. Didn't you rage last time you had this debate because no one agreed with you and you got trounced because your arguments were flawed and illogical/irrational. You're ignoring the main issue, demand is outpacing supply by an extreme margin. Whether this is due to PCI/PCJ reducing print runs of recent sets or the fact more people are just wanting these more popular sets....the blame for this fiasco remains with them. Investors make up a small portion of this hobby. Most of the people who watch "investor" channels don't even have the amount of capital to affect the supply. Scalpers/Flippers don't need these channels to tell them there is money to be made. THey can look at Whatnot and see what COLLECTORS are willing to pay to have someone else open their packs. I, personally, am tired of all the complaining and the pointing of fingers at anyone and everyone other than the company in control of the printer. Show me definitive proof that the evil investors who has been around during the SV era lull in demand is to blame. Your average collector needs to blame themselves. They didn't buy 151 when it was readily available online and in store at MSRP. But now that it's popular, now that it's popping...they want to cry. Prismatic is hyped to hell and people have every right to be upset that they can't get it at MSRP, but don't blame anyone else but Pokemon for this problem. It's theirs to own.

Soo glad to see another video. Always have loved your views in this crazy tcg space, it was your content that changed how I collected and viewed how I collect Pokemon. (Hope that wasn’t weird to say) hope lil one is doing good

Would Pokemon Steven be part of the problem since he actively buys cards, grades them, and then sells them for profit?

One Easy Solution is to print to demand. Pokemon Japan have done this before and it at least eases the pain of the average Joe who can't even buy one box. If it takes 2-6 months, people can handle that with the mind frame that something is better than nothing. Another easy solution is to program several human identification checks into the Pokemon Center. Let's be honest here, Average Joe's aren't getting to buy product online because AI and bots are buying it sooner and quicker. Limiting purchases to one item. Not allowing P.O. boxes as scalpers are probably utilizing this to hoard. One thing that Pokemon content creators often forget in these conversations is the KIDS. And the Kids are actually a huge part of the Pokemon target market. Adults are ruining it for them and Pokemon won't be nostalgic for these kids turned adults in the future. An easy solution it to reserve product for kids. Pokemon could easily ask stores like Gamestop to set rules in place to hold and only sell a certain number (let's say 3) packs to kids. Kids shouldn't be caught up in all of this mess. In Japan, this was a solution during the Chaos years. Convenience stores would only sell packs to kids. You would get some bad actors, like these 40 year old balding Japanese guys asking kids to purchase for them (super cringe but it that's how bad it was in Japan a few years back)... But overall, it helped. Things can be done...

This is a pretty toxic video. Vilifying people for spending their money how they want to just ain’t it. Definitely doesn’t help the situation.

Nice video my man, I am glad someone is talking about it and raising these points

dad vibes