Especially lately, you are 100% correct.
There is no actual shortage of pokemon cards, its being hoarded by sportscard and crypto speculators.

Source: I manage the gaming side of a collectibles/gaming store.

Most regular players have sold out of the game that we know locally. Since you cant play tournaments when…

The problem is most McDonalds were almost instantly sold out if they allowed the purchase of just the Pokemon toys. (That or the cases magically disappeared and reappeared on ebay)

The day this started both of the nearby mcdonalds sold out completely and that was with them requiring a full happy meal purchase and…

Some stores are not allowing that. Each store is apparently setting their own rules.

Exactly.
I didn’t mean anything by it beyond explaining why this can’t be sustainable. Sorry, dealing with way too many customers that think they are getting a deal spending 200$+ on a charizard and going to flip it for a few thousand. 

No it is not. There is no shortage of individual pokemon cards out there.
People don’t get how many cards were made when the game came out. There are easily over 100 MILLION base set cards (across all unlimited print runs of original Base Set) out there in circulation or in packs even on the low end.

That blastoise…

This wasn’t purchased by a pokemon fan trying to complete some esoteric collection of oddities. This is an investor. That’s what easily 80% of pokemon tcg is right now. This may end up hurting the game if it doesn’t kill it in the long run.

Within a year (maybe two, depending on HODL people, streamers attention spans…

Yeah I have told so many parents that have brought their kids in to get cards that they can get graded and get 10k for that they are buying at peak prices and to simply...not.
This isn’t a “natural” demand curve like you see with modern sets where playable staples and powerful cards are high priced. Its anything with…

Two Words:

Bed Bugs.

Same here, we do buy pokemon singles but are buying them incredibly low right now as the values are beyond insanely inflated. People are buying to flip, often to grade and sell as “mystery lots” on ebay and facebook. “Graded Card Guaranteed COULD BE CHARIZARD for only $100.” is a common thing. Then they send out…

I kind of agree with the OP. It looks alright but nothing really spectacular of this level of hype. I hope it will be good because I know a lot of people who loved The Witcher games. Not really my style of game personally, and I might try this out but I don’t see why the hype is at this insane level.
It looks fine.

Did you not experience the collecting boom of the 90's? That was rough. In the end the people that loved comics or cards were the ones hurt the most. that’s what I mean by suffer. Stores around them shut down and plenty of comic lines ended prematurely when the trend died. Companies increased their print runs to meet…

Yeah and this kind of hype is exactly what caused the crash of the 90's. We still get tons of people bringing in their factory sets of topps granny and grandpa bought them. They never listen when I tell them that those 1989 topps baseball sets and 1994 X men comics aren’t worth anything.

If you want to park money and not lose it? In the last 30 years sitting on boxes of magic or pokemon cards has been consistently safe.
I didn’t say anything about profit, but on the scale of what people are doing when they sit on a few hundred boxes of literally any set of magic or pokemon, you can guarantee you can…

You know how many people I tell that to when they bring in their collection they kept in their pockets as a kid? I HAVE A CHARIZARD they scream and I tell them to 1. put a mask on and 2. understand that it isn’t worth anything once its been through the washing machine.

Nope people just held on to them like they do beanie babies. People sat on them and forgot about the boxes. No doubt there are very few comparatively left, but that was one of the reasons the game sold so well (and why jungle/fossil sets and beyond like Gym Heroes had basically little value due to overprinting) .

The problem is its expanded to current sets as well. Imagine people buying standard MTG sets out completely. Like buying every pack of Zendikar Rising from every big box store and hobby store to resell because poeple don’t realize that every card with the word LOTUS isn’t a million bucks.

That’s what’s happening to…

Yep and that is why the game and industry will suffer. But it’s cool, make your $50 profit.

Eventually the companies will overprint to meet demand, which quickly dries up when these idiotic streamers move on to the newest thing they can shriek about and get people to watch . Then there is a surplus that the industry…

Its a more reliable market than the stock market. sealed boxes of gaming cards rarely drop below retail. This means it is a safer haven than most places to park money. And that is not good for the people that play the game or collect the cards.

Seriously I am so tired of this (and I manage a tabletop game store). The hype is legitimately unreal.
These streamers are often pricing off of graded edge cases. Most cards out of pack are around the 7-8 PSA range. It is insanely easy to damage early generation pokemon cards, the holos are often damaged in the pack…

He killed his brother in tromeo and juliet so you never know.