Pokemon Center Says More “Destined Rivals” Product Coming!
- Thread starter Water Pokémon Master
- Start date
No we don't....
Yeah, I don't think anything is going to happen in regards to getting more product into peoples' hands. The most this'll amount to TPCi dropping more regular ETBs and booster bundles, any other product is going to get left in the dust due to the additional products they include and the way they're manufactured.
If TPCi (oh, and this is your daily reminder that Creatures Inc. and The Pokémon Company/TPC in Japan has no real say in how The Pokémon Company International/TPCi localizes and releases the TCG elsewhere) actually wanted to fix this they'd redesign their packaging to be more automated and have less human hands in the manufacturing process. IIRC someone Twitter mentioned that part of the reason why there are so few booster boxes going around is due to them still being hand-packed while booster bundles are a more machine-made product.
And s far as online stores are concerned you'd have to tackle the ever-present cancer that is WhatNot, if not rip streamers in general, and finding a way to incapacitate bots at a technical level.
If TPCi (oh, and this is your daily reminder that Creatures Inc. and The Pokémon Company/TPC in Japan has no real say in how The Pokémon Company International/TPCi localizes and releases the TCG elsewhere) actually wanted to fix this they'd redesign their packaging to be more automated and have less human hands in the manufacturing process. IIRC someone Twitter mentioned that part of the reason why there are so few booster boxes going around is due to them still being hand-packed while booster bundles are a more machine-made product.
And that's honestly part of the problem, TPCi just doesn't learn when these kinds of problems happen.
It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest, this has happened to almost every other collectable scene imaginable and the only way to "fix" it is to overprint it to Heck and back whist ignoring the cries of short-term investors.
I was in line up until queue started to stall, after that I just decided that I'm better off getting into a TCG that's not being used to launder money and/or evade taxes.
As someone who used to work with less-than reputable small blusinesses I only have a couple of things to say: Scalpers have zero shame in regards to what they do (remember that one used their own children and a fake assault claim on them justify cleaning out a store of product) and that the only scare to scare them off is to do something that involves a reaction from law enforcement.
And s far as online stores are concerned you'd have to tackle the ever-present cancer that is WhatNot, if not rip streamers in general, and finding a way to incapacitate bots at a technical level.
More like 1.5 million bots and 100,000 scalpers
I believe we were on this course at the start of sv base. But pokemon hit rates were so easy it dropped singles prices and killed the hype that was building during the end of swsh. Twilight started the hype back up with the Greninja and once people saw the values back up it pushed attention back to pokemon and surging became the tipping point. Prismatic just added fuel to the fire and now it's going to be really hard for them to slow this anytime soon.
People are getting upset but the fact that people are this mad let's me know the demand is insane and people don't want to leave. I don't think they can print enough in the immediate future to kill demand they could eventually but I think they should look at changing pull rates for a couple sets to weed the instant money flips out.
People are getting upset but the fact that people are this mad let's me know the demand is insane and people don't want to leave. I don't think they can print enough in the immediate future to kill demand they could eventually but I think they should look at changing pull rates for a couple sets to weed the instant money flips out.
Oh boo hoo you (referring to those who bot the ever loving shit out of PKMNCenter) have incurable FOMO and a mixture of PTCGP getting Pokémon fans into the card game and an Eevee set dropping making that FOMO excessive and long lasting. You're the only reason it's so damn expensive, because your greedy ass can't spend 2 minutes getting a real job. What's your plan when TPCi inevitably tells you to shove it and mass reprints every set since 151 into the depths of Hell? They did it with Celebrations in SwSh era, they'll do it again. All TPCi needs to do is make one big draw set and have somewhere between jackshit and fuckall in it except for the chase. (i.e. Obsidian Flames) maybe after Destined Rivals we get a set where the only good card is Red's Charizard and the only things also good in the set are cards that support that deck but they're far inferior compared to Charizard.
I don't know why people say 2023 was the best year for collecting. How bad was the scalping scene in the US last year? Speaking as a JP collector for the most part, 2024 was a lot better from my experience. There was product available for nearly the entire year. Even stuff like 151 packs were restocked constantly on the JP Pokemon Center site. By the time Terastal Festival came out and Battle Partners started pre-orders, that's when I noticed the scalping scene coming back in a boom. I had actually opened a majority of the sets by then because shit was actually affordable. 2023 was horrible for JP collectors. Sets were scalped up the ass and lotteries were the only ways of obtaining them at a fair price without being a speed freak on third-party sites that get botted in almost an instant. All of the sudden, we're back to where we were then. The hell happened?
It was basically nonexistent for the first half of the year, you had the usual prerelease hype prices for certain chase cards but they'd eventually go down. That slowly started to change with Obsidian Flames and 151 but finding product wasn't too hard if you knew where to look whilst Paradox Rift altered the pull rates for SIRs to their current level of "2 SIRs per booster case" nonsense.
If you ask me the TCG would be better off if Creatures Inc. actually retired Illustration Rares and Secret Illustration Rares for a bit like they did for Rainbow Rares, the pull rates for anything south of a Full Art are pretty fair but IRs And SIRs are too tasty to not be market-manipulated by investors.
We have the BW special set and the Mega TCG sets coming out after Destined Rivals, things are going to get worse before they could potentially get better.
I agree. Certain locations around the world might be/have been different at different times, but before Prismatic Evolutions in the area where I live (in Germany) and in the online stores where I preordered/ordered and actually could get things, some things were more expensive, some more sought after, but the only things I remember in the last 6 years before 2025 that actually were pretty much unavailable were some ultra premium collections and the 3 Eeveelution special boxes. But it was never that nothing from a main set was available, that everything cost 2x the normal price even weeks after release or that pre-orders were done 2 months ahead and then completely sold out within minutes.
They'll eventually realize they've got a ton of unsold product and that their margins are slim and move onto other things before deciding to go back to Pokémon in 2 years
The fact that TPCi has not made any legal action towards the storefronts and distributors enabling the shitty scalping practices with some of the most backhanded tactics I've ever seen for a damn card game, begs the opinion that they are completely unaware of how truly hopeless this situation has become or they are preparing a scorched earth approach in taking out these practices.
It really does not help that Shrouded Fable and Prismatic Evolutions intentionally lowered pull rates of cards to drive artificial demand in a key moment that set off a massive domino effect. I have not seen a pack of Surging Sparks since November. I was incredibly lucky to get a booster bundle of Prismatic recently. I locked in as many Journey Together prereleases as possible and luckily I got good pulls.
This massive recession in the TCG has been caused by lightning striking more than twice; A main set with a Pikachu mascot is also the biggest shakeup to the meta in a while, followed by an Eevee themed special set with the worst pull rates in recent history, which is then followed up by a set featuring iconic trainers from across the franchise onward. If scalpers only look to characters and Gen 1 material, we can probably expect this drought to recede by the MEGA Era, provided the Unova special set is also paid no mind. But this will only last until Pokemon Day 2026.
It really does not help that Shrouded Fable and Prismatic Evolutions intentionally lowered pull rates of cards to drive artificial demand in a key moment that set off a massive domino effect. I have not seen a pack of Surging Sparks since November. I was incredibly lucky to get a booster bundle of Prismatic recently. I locked in as many Journey Together prereleases as possible and luckily I got good pulls.
This massive recession in the TCG has been caused by lightning striking more than twice; A main set with a Pikachu mascot is also the biggest shakeup to the meta in a while, followed by an Eevee themed special set with the worst pull rates in recent history, which is then followed up by a set featuring iconic trainers from across the franchise onward. If scalpers only look to characters and Gen 1 material, we can probably expect this drought to recede by the MEGA Era, provided the Unova special set is also paid no mind. But this will only last until Pokemon Day 2026.
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It started since 151, which was bad but not this bad, but since then, then Surging Sparks into Prism into Journey, into Destined Rivals has just made collecting Pokemon TCG too annoying to even bother with to be honest. It's gonna take a lot for me to bother sitting in a queue for over half a day to begin with, let alone having to do it for every set that releases. Not gonna buy from scalpers or the retail shops that sell for above RRP since it's basically the same thing, I'll just go back to buying singles of cards I like, better for the wallet anyway eh, even if not as fun.
There really isn’t much that TPCi can do regarding distributors and retailers. The best that they could do is discontinue working with distributors that pump up the prices of products but that also means poisoning the TCG’s reach (with MJ Holdings being an unfortunate reminder of that, they’re the only TCG supplier that provides stores like Walmart with products.
But there is one thing that TPCi could do that would be really damaging to the investor community and be really funny at the same time: send copyright takedown letters to WhatNot streamers opening and selling TCG products (especially product that’s opened before release date).
The bad pull rates technically started between Paradox Rift and Temporal Forces, especially with the latter set (and later) having 2 SIRs per case on average. That said you are right about Shrouded Fable to a certain extent, it showed how absolutely devastating these pull rates are for special sets and how horrible Prismatic Evolutions would be.
Yeah… no. I’m already seeing prices for the old XY sets rising due to Z-A announcing the return of Megas and I’m sure the same nonsense will happen in the Mega era.
Yeah, we do... This just happened literally a couple of years ago.
And a couple of years before that too.
Not to this extent, but it still happened.
But it will go away, and then it'll happen again.
Yes we do, we went through this in mid 2010s, 2020, and now 2025. And it ALWAYS ends the same way. People in the e4 forum even made a graph for it:
We are currently in the climax of stage B, and we should be entering stage C in the near future. It's happened every single boom, and I dont see this one being any different.
20,000 bots and 200 million customers. Pokemon is absolutely huge, the largest entertainment franchise by a mile.
People throw around the word “bot” like any other buzzword, in fact very few known how to create a successful let alone a functioning bot. The issue is so many customers simply want product.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter what the split is as the website simply cannot support tens of millions of people actively trying to check out a products. The que for TPC is only designed to keep the website from totally crashing.
Oh wow someone who’s actually been around in the hobby long enough to understand how regular collection based market cycles work… how refreshing! Lately all I ever see is the same “should I hold or should I sell!!??” post.