Does the Pokemon Company want to eliminate scalpers and investors from the market?
I’ve been hearing for some time about the fight against scalpers and people who buy cards to sell them for more in some time.
I spend a lot of time on forums, chats and discord servers. A lot of the conversations are based on financial aspects - how much something will be worth in the future.
Wouldn’t the simplest method of fighting “bad” scalpers be “print on the demand”?
In my opinion, the whole fight against scalpers is made up. So that people who didn’t manage to buy a given product wouldn’t be angry at the Pokemon Company but at the scalpers. The real reason for the lack of goods is not people who want 10 ETB, but the company that printed too few of them.
Additionally, if they killed the scalpers and “printed one on demand” - the prices of cards would be so low that no one would buy sealed stuff anymore.
To sum up, in my opinion, the Pokemon Company doesn’t want to kill scalpers/investors. They want to maintain a balance so that scalpers/investors and normal buyers are “more or less” satisfied. If they excluded the first ones from the market, their revenues would probably go down the drain.
These are just my thoughts, maybe I’m wrong. What do you think about it?
My take: Pokemon company wants to make money and protect its brand image. It doesnt care about collectors or players unless there is a financial incentive to and that is determined by a quarterly metric.
Logistically it is impossible to always print to demand and they need to move on at somepoint.
Currently, while pokemon company may hate the tarnish their brand gets for having an active scalper community, they measure that dissatisfaction against the money it brings in and happy partnerships from stores having product bought out. If i had to guess, the dont hate them anywhere close enough to find a solution beyond the increased print amount they did by aquisitioning an additional english print facility.
Valuation helps brands gain attention and adoption. It is part of a balanced ecosystem to have scalpers / investors. I always tell myself that patience is also good to be practiced in this hobby, for scenarios when scalpers are getting a little bit out of hand.
I would guess that secondary markets mean almost nothing to TPCi. For-Profit companies are motivated by cashflow. They want to sell through as much as possible without destroying the brand or turning customers off. If anything, scalpers/investors benefit TPCi by buying up new product beyond what would typically be expected by a collector-, player-only fanbase.
There is a balancing act, however, as others have said. TPC/TPCi is careful of their public image given the average age of their audience. Children being unable to buy cards at big-box stores is a huge embarrassment/frustration for TPC/TPCi, so their approach has been print to demand and a break-neck pace for set releases.
Also just to note, trading cards and video games are relatively small sources of revenue for TPC/TPCi. Their biggest priority has and will always be merchandise. That stuff is easier to procure and quickly adopted by all audiences.
Most of these ideas are collectors projecting. I doubt tcpi cares at all. They don’t even prioritize lgs. Their main goal is to put as much product in big box retailers. Japan might care a bit more, but It’s most likely a simple focus of adding supply when something is sold out.
There is only one metric that care about: how many units can they move though Walmart. Overprinting or underprinting both can lead to inventory problems. Their goal is to balance that in a way that maximizes sales and minimizes unsold product. Scalpers are not even a thought.
There’s been many years where we’ve had an infinitesimal amount of scalping compared to now, almost to the point where you could compare Pokemon to a normal hahbee. It just has very little to do with the amoral entity producing the actual cards.
