[HN Gopher] Target stops selling Pokemon cards in store, citing ...
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Target stops selling Pokemon cards in store, citing safety concerns
Author : adrian_mrd
Score : 82 points
Date : 2021-05-13 13:59 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.polygon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.polygon.com)
| w0mbat wrote:
| I heard the problem was not theft, it was big guys showing up at
| store opening and bulk-buying the whole stock of cards,
| threatening staff with violence if not allowed to do so. Then the
| supplemental problem of normal customers complaining all day that
| the cards are sold out.
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| Is there something preventing stores from selling these for more
| money?
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| MRP and MAP mostly.
|
| Retailers usually have agreements with vendors to sell at the
| manufacturer's retail price and to advertise at the
| manufacturer's advertised price. This came out of a 2007
| Supreme Court decision: Leegin Leather Products vs. PSKS Inc.
|
| I only know about this because I used to purchase a lot of
| cigars from a large volume discounter and they were forced to
| raise prices dramatically due to the outcome of that ruling.
|
| Pokemon cards are a gambling racket. No manufacturer is going
| to be happy with their direct customers raising the bar to
| entry on said racket.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| MAP is a factor online too. Google Shopping, Amazon
| marketplace... All of them have MAP as an input field for
| data providers that describe products they make. In Google's
| case, it creates a floor on the value that Shopping will list
| for the price of a product (though you can sometimes find
| cheaper via a non-Shopping main page search, or by going
| through the main portal of an online retailer).
| Joker_vD wrote:
| In the USSR, when it still existed, retail prices were
| stamped on the items at the manufacturing plant, because of
| how stable the prices (and the economy in general) were.
| After the collapse, this practice had stopped entirely for
| obvious reasons.
|
| So the fact that such a thing as "manufacturer's retail
| prices" still exist, in the USA of all places, and that they
| apparently has some legal weight was a surprise to me. TIL.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| The price policy just created shortages, so yes the item
| was stamped with a price, but unless you knew someone who
| owed you a favor or slipped the clerk something extra under
| the table, it would be hard for you to purchase it for that
| price. This also led to endless queueing, where standing in
| line was a full time job. It would not be uncommon to wait
| in line for a few hours when rumors spread that a
| particular store got some bread in, or that a butcher
| finally had some meat. This job was then assigned to
| grandmothers and others who did not have to show up to work
| -- to basically spend all day standing in line in front of
| various stores, hoping to come back with some groceries.
|
| That created an entire black market economy of side
| payments and private goods which were not stamped with a
| price, but the government tolerated this economy because
| they knew that without it, many household essentials could
| not be obtained. That normalization of bribes meant that if
| you had to go a doctor and wanted to be treated decently, a
| side payment was required. If your car broke down (although
| most people learned to fix most issues on their own) a side
| payment was required. If some apples became available and
| you wanted to get one, a little money or barter was needed.
| Maybe you had an uncle in the country who made some
| sausage, that could be exchanged for a dental visit in
| which anesthetic was provided. So the economy began to
| devolve to barter. If you were not good at politics and you
| had nothing to barter, life was pretty hard. I once traded
| a pack of sunflower seeds for private access to a UNESCO
| world heritage site. The friend of my uncle who was running
| the restoration (one of those eternal ongoing projects
| started in the 50s) unlocked the doors for me and let me
| crawl around the scaffolding. I was able to touch the
| frescos! But, you see, I had the desired sunflower seeds.
|
| This is portrayed beautifully in many underground books and
| even some mainstream books like Master and Margarita, where
| the main objective of everyone in the novel was obtaining
| an apartment in Moscow. Yes, those apartments were cheap,
| but available only to insiders or members of the
| nomenklatura. Hence the endless jockeying, politicking, and
| finagling to get onto various secret waiting lists or catch
| the favor of a government official who might in their
| beneficence put you on the right list.
| foobarian wrote:
| I saw this in Prague in the 80s. Went to buy bread and the
| price was embossed in the loaf. "5 Kcs"
| Joker_vD wrote:
| "Inflation"? Pah, what a load of bourgeois nonsense. The
| bread costs 5 crowns, and had always costed that much
| since the last price reform in 1969.
| jpindar wrote:
| When I was a kid, prices were printed on comic books and on
| paperback books in the US. I don't know when they stopped.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Well, I guess you can consider a manufacturer to be either
| an actual manufacturing company that sells directly to
| wholesalers or retailers OR a company that owns a brand
| which purchases product in bulk to sell to wholesalers or
| retailers.
|
| Either way, a lot of companies want their products to be
| seen in a certain "class" of products, and it's harder to
| maintain that brand image from a pricing standpoint if
| everyone can just sell it at whatever they want.
|
| So, what happened at this large discount cigar place is
| that, like I said, they were doing something similar to
| Wal-Mart's strategy: sell a ton of product at a low profit
| margin and force manufacturers to come down in prices as a
| result. The manufacturers hated it because (a) their
| existence relied on the good will of this corporate
| behemoth, and (b) supplying so much product to the
| discounter meant less was available around the country for
| retail shops, which is essential to building brand loyalty.
| When Leegin happened, the discounter begrudgingly admitted
| that they would be forced to raise prices. But not before
| buying out a few accessory manufacturers.
|
| While not as popular as simply discounting cigars, it sorta
| worked for them. They would sell a box of cigars at the
| lowest price that they could and then include a free
| humidor to store them in. And what collector of stuff
| doesn't want another container for their stuff?
|
| I'll say too, that some manufacturers simply refused to do
| business with the volume discounter until after Leegin.
| They had built up a market for themselves with independent
| shops without needing to go to the volume discounter... but
| after they could be ensured that their prices would be
| stable, they opened the floodgates.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| > it's harder to maintain that brand image from a pricing
| standpoint if everyone can just sell it at whatever they
| want
|
| Does this apply to discounters only? The PS5 (and
| earlier, PS4) resellers are re-selling them at premium,
| but AFAIK Sony doesn't go after them, at all.
|
| > (b) supplying so much product to the discounter meant
| less was available around the country for retail shops
|
| ...don't supply to the discounter so much then? Don't the
| manufacturers usually supply the retail chains first and
| only then dump whatever left to the discounters anyhow?
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| which resellers? I would have to imagine that anyone
| buying directly from Sony and marking up their products
| would catch the ire of the company, but maybe not. MAP
| and MRP are more about the downward pressure on prices,
| not upward, so that companies can't come back later and
| say "I can't sell your product and make a profit because
| I'm selling it for too cheap."
|
| The discounter largely doesn't care as much because of
| the sheer volume they were doing. They were selling at
| near half the price of what brick and mortar shops were
| selling AND this was during a time where most states were
| not charging taxes on internet purchases OR on tobacco
| sales.
|
| Say you have a box of cigars that has an MSRP for $100 a
| box. Break even price is $50. Discounter sells for $60
| and offers free shipping. You go to the local store and
| buy for $100. Then you get hit with a 30% tobacco tax and
| a 9% sales tax. So now you're comparing $60 vs $139. Even
| if they didn't have what you want in stock, they probably
| would have something else you'd like for a fraction of
| the cost.
|
| Most mom and pop cigar stores carry about $50-200K worth
| of inventory at any one time. This discounter was doing
| mail order business and had about $80-100M worth of
| inventory.
| [deleted]
| 5560675260 wrote:
| This wouldn't be able to compete with online stores then.
| neaden wrote:
| They are being stolen, so selling them for more would just make
| it even more likely to get shoplifted.
| dariusj18 wrote:
| That's not what the article is talking about.
|
| "in response to reports of violent confrontations related to
| the collectibles"
| ______- wrote:
| It would be cool if the cards could be NFT'd[0] as in some sort
| of digital collectible that you could own.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fungible_token
| ironmagma wrote:
| That would be good for Digimon - arguably what that brand
| should have been all along.
| gspr wrote:
| NFTs are pure, unadulterated insanity.
| kizer wrote:
| From what I've read and come to understand, NFTs may one day
| become meaningful if they are legally recognized as a claim
| to ownership. Then, they can serve as a decentralized, easily
| sold form of copyright. To sell IP for example now, you need
| a bunch of lawyers and everything is all on paper anyways.
| There's nothing tangible to exchange; it's all dependent on
| contracts, lawyers. NFTs could expedite this process
| according to people whom I've asked what possible usefulness
| NFTs could have.
| gspr wrote:
| Bullshit. You're describing a system to replace the paper
| and ink part of copyright, at best. What you're proposing
| would _still_ need law behind it to be meaningful as a
| replacement for copyright itself. So then what 's the
| point?
|
| Only the law stops you from using IP without permission
| today. And only the law will stop you with what you
| propose.
| im3w1l wrote:
| > So then what's the point?
|
| It's useful to keep track of ownership of digital goods.
| And if you did it in a centralized way there are issues
| with that. We have seen with Amazon and Apple that there
| can be issues with ownership getting revoked, or services
| being discontinued as with Google music. It may also not
| be transferrable. And if you instead make the Government
| keep track of who owns what there can be some privacy
| concerns.
| manigandham wrote:
| Ownership means nothing without adjudication and
| enforcement, and that's still centralized which means
| ownership is centralized.
|
| NFTs don't change anything, they're not real ownership.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Why? People want the physical card.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| As a kid, nobody had a clue how to play the game properly.
| But the pokemon tcg video game forced you to play it
| properly, and was pretty fun. Digital formats have appeal.
| whateveracct wrote:
| But the TCG game let you get any card in the game without
| paying extra or there being limits to ownership. That's a
| good digital format, and adding NFTs to it provides no
| value-add. Probably negative value-add.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| I think I agree. The problem with a traditional TCG is
| that there's a small set of cards. One could imagine a
| really cool NFT based game with only unique cards, and
| permadeath rules that cause you to actually lose the card
| when used or lost or whatever.
| NoOneNew wrote:
| I was a kid when Pokemon first hit the states. All of us
| that collected them knew how to play. The game wasn't
| difficult and it already attracted a nerdy crowd to boot.
| At that, "house rules" are typically more fun than
| original. A digital version would stifle that.
| wincy wrote:
| Me and my friends went to Toys'R'Us every Saturday for the
| weekly tournament back in the late 90s, we all knew how to
| play properly.
| Jarwain wrote:
| Maybe treat the NFT as a license of ownership that must be
| transferred if the card is traded, and let the owner of the
| NFT reprint the card for a fee in case the card is damaged or
| otherwise lost
| gspr wrote:
| What problem does this solve?
| Jarwain wrote:
| Strictly ties a given card's value to its rarity, instead
| of rarity*condition. Mainly useful for, well, rare cards.
|
| If you own a rare card and damage it or lose the physical
| version, it's okay because the publisher will send you a
| new one for a small fee.
|
| On top of this, it acts as proof of authenticity; if
| someone's trying to sell a rare card, instead of the
| buyer having to figure out whether it's a fake, the
| seller just has to prove ownership of the NFT and ideally
| the publisher would maintain a catalog of valid NFTs.
|
| Trading these cards can use existing nft platforms
| instead of the publisher having to handle marketplace
| concerns; all the publisher needs to do is be able to
| issue the NFT to the owner of the physical card
| gspr wrote:
| > If you own a rare card and damage it or lose the
| physical version, it's okay because the publisher will
| send you a new one for a small fee.
|
| Is this a real issue?
|
| > On top of this, it acts as proof of authenticity; if
| someone's trying to sell a rare card, instead of the
| buyer having to figure out whether it's a fake, the
| seller just has to prove ownership of the NFT and ideally
| the publisher would maintain a catalog of valid NFTs.
|
| This just shifts the burden to authenticity of the NFT.
| How does that help?
| cle wrote:
| The card's ownership is public knowledge? Like, if the
| physical card is stolen or forged, then it's trivial to
| see that it's illegitimate.
|
| (Not an NFT expert, correct me if I'm wrong please.)
| gspr wrote:
| How does it do this?
| cle wrote:
| I assume by using the private key to sign a message. If
| the card holder doesn't also hold the NFT, they can't
| transfer the NFT to the buyer.
|
| My understanding is that NFTs are useful when the cost of
| preventing theft, forgeries, etc. is higher than the cost
| of protecting a private key. If "ownership" is agreed to
| require proof of holding the NFT as well, then it's not
| good enough to steal some cards from Target, you have to
| also steal the private key for each card, or coerce the
| owner to transfer the NFTs to you, etc. I guess we could
| think of it as a kind of two factor auth?
| gspr wrote:
| You're describing a contract. But specifically done
| digitally. We've been able to do that since the 70s. What
| do NFTs add?
| cle wrote:
| Proof that the person who claims to be current owner, is
| the person that the previous owner transferred ownership
| to (I guess more specifically, proof that they hold the
| private key). And simultaneously, proof that owner n-1 is
| who owner n-2 transferred ownership to, etc.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Ooooor..you can just print and sell limited paper cards and
| whoever physically owns the card is the owner.
|
| Just as decentralized of ownership as an NFT lol
| Jarwain wrote:
| Physical cards can get damaged or lost or stolen. I guess
| nfts can also get lost or stolen, but they can't get
| damaged
|
| I don't see this as a Replacement for physical cards, but
| as an add-on
| whateveracct wrote:
| Pretty sure the card maker can just give out text keys
| they store in a DB and it'll work better.
|
| You'd have to be a bad technical decision-maker to use an
| NFT for that feature. Or trying to get some free NFT hype
| money lmao.
| Jarwain wrote:
| Heh yeah that's fair.
|
| The other thing I was imagining was that trading a card
| could just utilize existing nft platforms, instead of the
| publisher having to set up an ecommerce marketplace for
| managing card trades.
|
| Although yeah this is definitely more "solution looking
| for a problem"
| IncRnd wrote:
| > Maybe treat the NFT as a license of ownership that must
| be transferred if the card is traded, and let the owner of
| the NFT reprint the card for a fee in case the card is
| damaged or otherwise lost
|
| How would you do that - $0 for a card and $300,000 for the
| license of ownership? Possession of a card is ownership.
| How would someone even reprint holographic cards? This,
| unfortunately, isn't doable.
| Jarwain wrote:
| I wasn't imagining the Owner reprinting the card, but
| that the publisher is providing the reprints as a service
| to those who own the nft.
|
| Specifically, I'm imagining a case where people still go
| to the store, buy a card, and each card comes with a QR
| code or something. You can go online, scan the QR code,
| and have the NFT representing that physical card
| transferred to your NFT deck.
|
| You could play games virtually with only cards that you
| have Proven you own, and if you ever lose the physical
| card the publisher will send you a new copy.
|
| A key idea here is that every Instance of a card would
| have a unique identifier and thus a unique NFT; two
| people scanning the QR code for the same card shouldn't
| result in them both getting the NFT.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Good luck recovering those NFTs you bought and forgot about 20
| years ago. At least people's old MTG cards might still be in
| the back of a childhood closed.
| swiley wrote:
| The reason I used to buy these was to play the game with my
| siblings and friends. If I wanted to have a computer involved I
| would have just played the official video game (which is pretty
| cool too, but only some of my friends enjoyed that.)
| schemescape wrote:
| > MLB, NFL, NBA and Pokemon trading cards
|
| It's not just Pokemon cards, apparently.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| The original loot-boxes
| mdoms wrote:
| I have seen so many things skyrocket in value over the past year,
| from Pokeman cards to classics cars to houses, cryptocurrencies,
| tech stocks and on and on. Some of these are assets and some are
| collectibles and some are consumables. But none of it seems to be
| driven by general inflation. Have we seen this kind of scenario
| in economics before? Is this a known phenomenon?
|
| I don't know jack about economics, but to be perfectly honest
| it's making me very anxious - not because of the high prices, but
| because I know moments of exuberance are often paid for in the
| not too distant future.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| The Fed goes
| brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
| Jerry2 wrote:
| > Have we seen this kind of scenario in economics before? Is
| this a known phenomenon?
|
| Sure, Tulip mania. [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
| alisonkisk wrote:
| That wasn't caused by printing money like today's events.
| Djvacto wrote:
| My local wal-mart recently moved their cards to behind the
| customer service desk.
|
| I had seen wal-mart TCG sections completely trashed (littered
| with open packaging, or boxes torn open and partially scavenged),
| and I know that even without this destructive method, there are
| other ways to "cheat" by weighing packs with a scale.
|
| Seems like locking them in a case like video games is probably in
| the future for most physical stores that continue carrying them?
| Even before fistfights over cards from this year.
| josefresco wrote:
| I've always seen (at Walmart and other department stores)
| collectibles and trading cards in a special isle near checkout
| seemingly to thwart theft. Some items were/are actually behind
| checkout, not accessible without asking.
| adamrezich wrote:
| I think this is a new Walmart policy because the local Walmarts
| here just started doing this too.
| Djvacto wrote:
| Yeah it is definitely just weeks old at most, from what I can
| tell.
|
| I don't go super often, but definitely a few weeks back it
| was still the old way, and this week they were moved.
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| It's pathetic what people will do for money.
| morsch wrote:
| You can determine whether a pack is likely to contain a
| valuable card by weighing it? Wow.
| swiley wrote:
| Oh wow I didn't think about that but yeah! the valuable ones
| tend to have holographic film and other weirdness that would
| make them slightly heavier.
| bombcar wrote:
| This could easily be defeated by simply having a
| holographic card in every pack - just most of the time it's
| a relatively worthless one.
| graywh wrote:
| TPCi started putting different filler non-cards in the
| packs and it's been hard to weigh them for years now.
| Djvacto wrote:
| https://indoorgamebunker.com/how-to-weigh-pokemon-packs/ Yep!
| It's fascinating, aside from how it shouldn't be done. Cards
| that are holographic seem to weigh more.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| What I find humorous about it is Pokemon puts these code
| cards that give you a booster in the online game. They have
| a greyish one and a green one. If you get a green one you
| got a foil 100% in the pack so what I don't get is why
| don't they just make the grey one thicker to compensate for
| the weight difference?
| mort96 wrote:
| Why shouldn't it be done? Weighing items before buying
| seems completely legit to me.
| david-cako wrote:
| Sort of, but it's unfair when you're buying booster packs
| online from folks that might be selling you pre-weighed
| packs from booster boxes. For this reason, you're really
| best off only buying booster boxes or individual cards
| online unless you really trust the seller.
| city41 wrote:
| It used to be you could see what cards were in a Magic
| the Gathering booster without opening it by pushing each
| card one at a time to the edge of the pack and shining a
| bright light behind it. The edge of the packaging was
| white, so the name of the card would shine through.
|
| I think most people into collectible card games know
| boosters aren't to be trusted in general.
| tasogare wrote:
| In addition to weighting, there was also a know
| vulnerability in the pseudo-rng method used in printing
| that allowed to know which boisters of a box were the
| most likely to contains the good cards (speaking of MTG).
| somehnguy wrote:
| If you want a specific card you should buy that specific
| card. Packs are not designed so you know what is in them.
| Weighing them seems like petty cheating to me.
|
| Thats just my opinion though, I know moral debates like
| this are highly subjective.
| fl0wenol wrote:
| ... but what if I don't want to gamble?
|
| It's not like buying an item at retail can enforce a
| "terms of service" like a EULA
|
| I'm free to ignore a box if it's dented or damaged.
| Weighing it to see if it's missing parts (like a return)
| is perfectly reasonable.
|
| How is that any different?
|
| Your position is ridiculous; if the manufacturer wanted
| to enforce randomness then they'd need to make the retail
| units all weigh the same.
| somehnguy wrote:
| Again, if you don't want to gamble then you're free to
| buy individual cards where you know exactly what you're
| getting.
|
| Even if you weigh the decks you're still gambling, as you
| have no idea what is inside the packs until you break the
| seal. You're just cheating to improve your odds.
|
| If you don't want to gamble then the obvious solution is
| to buy individual cards and not cheat others out of
| random decks.
|
| I think it's more ridiculous that your position is
| advocating bringing a gram scale into Target with you so
| that you can weigh cards off the shelf in order to gain a
| slight advantage.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > then you're free to buy individual cards where you know
| exactly what you're getting.
|
| Actually, he is also free to weigh the packs, as that is
| completely legally allowed.
|
| There is nothing illegal about that. It is fully within
| his right, and the manufactures do not call it gambling
| anyway.
| somehnguy wrote:
| I know it isn't illegal, and never claimed it was. I
| think it's poor form, morally speaking. That's why I
| added the 'morals are subjective' part to my original
| comment.
|
| It isn't illegal to cheat at your local pickup basketball
| game either, that doesn't make it a good thing to do.
| stale2002 wrote:
| But it is a product, available for purchase, which the
| manufactures themselves strongly claim is not gambling.
|
| The manufactures themselves are not setting up terms of
| service, or gambling rules, that prevent these sorts of
| things.
|
| Its not cheating anything, when the manufactures are not
| preventing it and are not saying this is against some
| gambling rule.
| robrtsql wrote:
| Just because you have an opportunity to do something, and
| it's not explicitly forbidden by any laws or 'terms of
| service' or whatever, doesn't make it okay.
|
| Imagine that I went to a store, identified every booster
| pack with a rare card in it via weight, and then bought
| all of them. Then let's imagine someone else walks in.
| This buyer is a reasonable person, but not savvy enough
| to know that booster packs with rare cards are easily
| identified. He buys the packs thinking that his chances
| of getting a rare card are 5% when they are really 0%.
|
| Do you feel that that was wrong of me to do? Or was it
| the other buyer's fault for not being smart enough to
| already know that someone like me would have come along
| and done what I did?
| stale2002 wrote:
| > doesn't make it okay.
|
| In this case it is OK, because this isn't gambling,
| according to what the manufactures claim, and they go to
| great lengths to claim that it is not gambling.
|
| If it is not covered under gambling laws, and the
| manufactures declare that all cards have no monetary
| value, then I see no problem at all.
|
| > Do you feel that that was wrong of me to do?
|
| No, it is not wrong at all, because the manufactures say
| that it is not gambling. Therefore this is fair game.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Putting variable value cards in the packs is cheating.
| nrook wrote:
| Indeed. The Pokemon Company is running a children's
| casino: it's hard to imagine a business model less
| ethical than that.
| yifanl wrote:
| Keep in mind that The Pokemon Company don't make profit
| off of secondary sales, so they don't really have much
| incentive to make it a casino. In fact, I believe in the
| past they avoided this problem by printing cards to such
| capacity that prices don't dramatically rise due to lack
| of scarcity.
|
| (special circumstances like very old first edition prints
| still hold value for obvious reasons, but The Pokemon
| Company can't realistically make profit off of them now
| that they are out of print)
|
| Currently they aren't able to do so because of a
| combination of an insane increase in demand and COVID,
| but ultimately this seems like a temporary problem that
| fixes itself once they get facilities in order to meet
| the demand.
| mhluongo wrote:
| > Keep in mind that The Pokemon Company don't make profit
| off of secondary sales, so they don't really have much
| incentive to make it a casino. In fact, I believe in the
| past they avoided this problem by printing cards to such
| capacity that prices don't dramatically rise due to lack
| of scarcity.
|
| The fact that the card pack has a randomness element
| makes the card pack more valuable in the first place.
| This is exactly how gamification and random reward
| schedules drive revenue.
| kadoban wrote:
| Lottery tickets don't get profit off of any secondary
| market either. I think you're focusing on the wrong part.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > Why shouldn't it be done?
|
| The point of the product is to gamble, not to determine
| in advance which one has the best outcome or odds.
|
| In much the same way that a casino won't let you hover
| around and count cards, or watch a machine all day and
| only play when you've determined that it's about to cache
| out. They take other countermeasures against that stuff
| these days but you get the idea.
| ygjb wrote:
| > The point of the product is to gamble
|
| You know that, and I know that, but legal weenies and
| regulators go to great pains to make it clear that it's
| not gambling, as do defenders of the "sport". And to be
| clear I love me some MtG, so I am not criticizing the
| model or the industry.
|
| That said, if weighing the packs as a viable strategy
| became common knowledge and is even a marginally reliable
| method for gaming the system, then there would be a solid
| case to be made that the companies that produce that
| these cards need explicit countermeasures to prevent that
| strategy.
|
| If they don't, and there is a real secondary market, then
| there is nothing stopping an FLGS from selling individual
| packs from a box after having weighed all of the packs.
| The only way to protect yourself from the game being
| rigged would be to buy guaranteed unopened boxes.
| derefr wrote:
| > as do defenders of the "sport"
|
| People who buy Pokemon/MtG cards have an interesting
| relationship with WotC.
|
| They're usually perfectly willing to buy cards on the
| secondary market (which doesn't make WotC money) but
| they're constitutionally unable to play "real"
| (non-"casual") matches -- even in tournaments WotC has no
| relationship to! -- if the cards are
| https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Proxy_card s.
|
| I've never been clear on what the difference is. Both the
| secondary market, and proxies, result in perfectly
| _usable_ cards, and result in WotC making no money from
| you. But one 's acceptable to the community, while the
| other very much isn't.
|
| I have a feeling it's probably to do with the community
| having a lot of collectors in it, who want their rare
| cards to retain value, and who fear that that value would
| be lost if there's no reason to _play_ with the card,
| only to hide it away in a binder while playing with a
| proxy.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The point of the product is to gamble, not to determine
| in advance which one has the best outcome or odds.
|
| The _manufacturer's_ goal is to leverage the addictive
| behavior associated with gambling to get money while not
| being restricted in market reach (as to venues, eligible
| purchasers) or profits by regulations and taxes targeting
| gambling, sure.
|
| That's not the _buyer's_ goal, though, and I see no
| reason that the manufacturer's buyer-hostile attempt to
| hack around laws designed to protect against and provide
| resources to mitigate exactly the kind of predation it is
| engaging in deserves particular respect.
|
| > In much the same way that a casino won't let you hover
| around and count cards
|
| Casinos, _by law_ , where permitted to operate _at all_ ,
| in many jurisdictions wouldn't let most of the market for
| the goods in question even on the floor except to make
| through transit, _specifically_ to protect them from
| gambling.
| dTal wrote:
| Because it's a zero-sum game with other customers.
| "Cheating" doesn't hurt the company at all, but it does
| lower everyone else's chances.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > "Cheating" doesn't hurt the company at all
|
| If the people that care most about rare cards target them
| more effectively rather than buying however many packs
| needed to get them randomly, how can it not?
|
| And, also, if those playing by the rules that the
| manufacturer set up get less of a "ooh shiny" bump to
| keep playing by the rules than is designed, again, how
| can it not?
| dTal wrote:
| Hm. I suppose you're right, in the large.
|
| In the small, it still mostly feels like you're unfairly
| changing the rules of the game out from underneath the
| next person to walk in the store. By analogy, it's not
| ethical to rig someone else's slot machine to steal
| people's money and pay it out only to you - even if you
| think slot machines themselves are unethical. Claiming to
| be be curing them of their gambling addiction seems...
| convenient.
| mort96 wrote:
| But a store isn't a casino, it's a store. AFAIK, a
| company can't prohibit anyone from inspecting their
| product on store shelves before buying. I would certainly
| expect to be able to weigh, say, a pack of batteries, and
| use their weigh as a part of my buying decision.
| reedjosh wrote:
| Maybe card makers should add fluff to match the weights?
| Like a thin piece of paper in packs without foils?
| bena wrote:
| That's difficult because of the way the cards are packed.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I think they addressed it by just making one card in
| every pack foil, but keeping the chance you get a foil
| chase card the same.
| SllX wrote:
| Foil weighs more than paper. Don't think I could do it now,
| but when I was a little kid with little kid arms, I could
| slightly perceive the difference in weight between Yu-Gi-Oh
| packs. Had a pretty good success rate too, but it annoyed the
| folks at Blockbuster watching me rummage through the box at
| the register doing this so the real challenge was finding a
| store that would let me pick my packs.
| barbazoo wrote:
| This reminds me of my grandma who claimed she could tell if
| a Kinder Surprise egg had a plastic toy or one of the,
| often more desired, figurines in it by shaking it a certain
| way. That always impressed me. I wonder if that's why she
| did it or if it was to amuse me. I miss my grandma.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| In general, it's easier to approximate a difference in
| the weight of two objects by shaking them rather than
| merely holding them in either hand.
| kizer wrote:
| Are Yu-Gi-Oh cards worth much now? Have a huge collection.
| Unfortunately my we'll-meaning mom wrote my initials in
| sharpie on the back of a bunch of the cards so that people
| wouldn't steal them, LOL. I'm wondering what kind of
| cleaner will take the sharpie off but not damage the cards.
| lstodd wrote:
| Isopropyl alcohol would do it. Extremely unlikely to do
| any damage, but try on one first just in case. Use cotton
| pads. And get some 99.99% stuff, not this "rubbing" crap.
| syntheticnature wrote:
| Probably merely having played with them will nick a big
| chunk of the value; collectors are looking for perfect
| condition, mint cards.
|
| That said, I found https://yugiohprices.com/ if you
| wanted to take a look; there are some super-valuable
| ones, but it sounds like they were extreme rarities for
| special events, and otherwise the top card is just
| $444.44.
| lotyrin wrote:
| Try a dry-erase pen or dry-erase solvent
| tablespoon wrote:
| Rubbing alcohol dissolves sharpie ink, but it's probably
| only worth trying if the surface is coated and nonporous.
| I use alcohol prep pads for this.
| mistersquid wrote:
| > I'm wondering what kind of cleaner will take the
| sharpie off but not damage the cards.
|
| If you ever were established as a go-to knowledge source
| for Yu-Gi-Oh or an adjacent domain, those sharpie
| initials could actually _increase_ the value of those
| cards...
| kizer wrote:
| ...good point. If I'm famous one day, the cards could be
| significantly more valuable.
|
| I'm not strapped for cash (knock on wood) right now so I
| plan to hold on to them indefinitely, until an obvious
| reason to sell or give them away appears.
| [deleted]
| jhwhite wrote:
| I was in Target a week ago and the sign in ours said they're
| limiting packs to 1 per customer. I had no idea it was over
| safety concerns.
| whateveracct wrote:
| It must suck to be a competitor now. The good cards tended to be
| pricey to buy in eaches before this mania.
| Djvacto wrote:
| I played some of these for fun with a few friends (more
| playtime in Yu-gi-oh than pokemon, granted).
|
| What I've found fun, especially as the game has evolved to well
| past the number of mechanics we would nostalgically like to
| play with, is to build sets of balanced decks that we can each
| randomly play to pick with, facing pre-builts of similar power
| against each other, so it's back to being a game of chance and
| basic strategy at playtime.
|
| We do miss (and sometimes use online players to do so) playing
| with deck design as part of the competition, since using
| digital cards we aren't as limited by wallets.
| whateveracct wrote:
| This reminds me of those championship decks they sell every
| year (with different backs so you can't use the cards
| officially.) Playing with a pre-built pro deck is super fun.
| It's amazing how fast they set up with their little engines.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| I did that with Magic. It was super fun, specially because
| I sucked at deck building and also didn't want to spent all
| my money trying to get cards that could (not) be useful to
| me
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Let them fight. Then collect stats for their performance,
| manufacture cards for each one of them and make a trading card
| game.
|
| Then wait until people fight over those cards and do it again.
| computronus wrote:
| Metamon?
| justinlink wrote:
| For the tiny amount of revenue this product likely generates for
| Target, and that the relationship with the manufacturer is
| probably of little concern to them makes a lot of sense.
|
| Factoring in theft, safety issues, and associate time spent they
| have to be selling this product at a significant loss.
| thrav wrote:
| It gets people in the stores though. That's valuable.
| djrogers wrote:
| Only to a certain extent. If they got an extra 50 people into
| a store on a drop day, is that really going to help much when
| weighed against the downsides?
|
| My target has 50 people walk in and out several times an
| hour, so unless these campers are buying a bunch of other
| stuff while there, there's not a lot of value in it.
| tomlagier wrote:
| These cards are marketed at kids, and kids also buy junk
| food and soda which are high-markup items.
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