More and more listings are popping up. Seems like they’re coming from grocery stores mainly, but weird how they’re all getting stocked around the time. Time to put on the tin foil hats!
There is no tin foil hat conspiracy here.
The very boring answer is that TPCi released more pallets of 144 Sleeved Booster Cases to big-box stores.
Clearly, this goes higher than I thought…
How do you know they released cases to stores as opposed to old inventory being sent out now?
???
Old inventory that TPCi had laying around? Sure. I never said that it was freshly printed.
Oh i just assumed i guess. I thought stores were just rummaging through backstock since they cant buy retail. Which explains why some stores have inventory and some dont
There is no financial incentive for a big-box store (Publix, Target, Walmart) to sit on product when they always sell it at MSRP. It is far more likely that TPCi sent some locations a few boxes of product.
They would have been doing it unintentionally. Idk why pokemon would restock random grocery store chains over target. Especially since they did walmart in this scenario
Good point!
TPCi uses wholesale distributors. It may be that specific distributors got more (or released more) product, and their specific customers/locations benefited.
Thats intresting data. I didnt know that was puclic. As for packs in the wild ive seen none in the northeast. I know @mcorey777 found some in florida though. Not sure where theyre at
I’m surprised that someone hasn’t created a “Where’s Evolving Skies?” app yet!
For what it’s worth, I am on a short trip back to the east coast (Virginia) for work and I rummaged around some grocery stores here in my off time for fun in search of Evolving Skies packs (I feel like a child that hasn’t matured fully scouring grocery stores for Pokemon packs, but I digress ).
Between Kroger and Food Lion, I ended up finding 17 sleeved packs of Evolving Skies for $3.99 each. I saw at least 3-4x as many Vivid Voltage and Darkness Ablaze packs ready to be bought, likely not selling as quickly simply because the demand for Evolving Skies is so high (I assume mainly people trying to flip for a small profit, but potentially also wanting to pull the awesome Alt Art cards). I also checked a more local place I’m not familiar with at all called Harris Teeter and they also had sleeved packs. When I was still living in Jacksonville, FL, and when I drove down to the previous Regionals in Orlando, I found around 40 sleeved packs in Publix stores across the two cities (at the Publix locations I went to).
Can’t speak for the northeast specifically, but if there is a somewhat local/regional grocery chain (Wegmans, Stop & Shop), I would imagine they would be doing the same thing. You can search the whole store if you want, but in my experience the packs have been hanging on the white “hangers” in the aisles where Pokemon would specifically catch the eye of children (which makes total sense), so just search in those areas: candy, crackers, chips, cookies, soda, juice, and cereal aisles are your target. I have heard sometimes Food Lion puts them by the customer service desk but I haven’t noticed that here.
I have also heard success stories of finding Evolving Skies sleeved packs at $3.99 in HEB (Texas), Meijer (midwest), Ralphs (west coast), and Hobby Lobby (yes, it’s true) in the back near the section where there are model planes and whatnot (usually in an enclosed case). The one Hobby Lobby I checked here had a bunch of Crown Zenith and Astral Radiance packs, but no Evolving Skies. If for whatever reason you do go to Hobby Lobby and buy packs there, ALWAYS check online for a coupon - they nearly always have a 40% off coupon you can pull up on your phone!
Happy hunting!