Note before everything, excuse me if I miss some things. I'm very tired.
Eh, there's still room for criticism in regards to how these big box stores are handling it. TPCi (technically Play! Pokemon, but AFAIC both are the same entity in this case) had to push out TWO Tweets saying that they're "working" on bringing on more stock to stores and it was barely felt as far seeing products in-store goes. If bots are any sort of issue for online stores (which, given that they're mentioned in the article as being the main reason behind Pokemon Center Japan's online store crashing, pretty obviously means they are) then these storefronts need to start developing the means to filter them out. I'm still a big proponent of tying accounts to government-issued IDs and, at least for those in the States, passing the
Stopping Grinch Bots Act.
There is, that's not to be denied. I'm just saying that it was for the best in terms of an in-store sort of thing, for the time being. Online is a completely different story and I do 100% agree that bots and whatnot need to be combatted, as it's a huge issue with just about anything right now.
I was talking with several vendors at Frank and Son's around Battle Style's release and I'm more of a pessimist in regards to that "growing number of scalpers losing interest" bit, it's basically an "X amount leaves, X-amount-minus-Y come in" bit. Also, having social media influencers like Logan Paul throwing gasoline onto the fire last year didn't help the situation at all.
It was definitely more of a pessimistic time around the release of the set, but I'd still argue that demand has gone down to
some extent in the last few months. Not completely back to normal levels, but there's certain decreases in demand I'm seeing just looking at markets pretty often. I think every new release for a while is going to have its issues though. Scalping still
exists, demand that gets people doing it still exists, and TPCi is still not printing enough to reach equilibrium, for whatever the case, that much is obvious. But again-it's a slow burn. It's definitely not as bad as the height of it a few months back where everything culminated into an absolute nightmare, right when the ~influencer~ hype began to really explode and whatnot (I want to say somewhere in between Champions Path and Shining Fates was the peak of it) but the effects are still there. So you're still going to have the problem, but I'm just saying that even if slowly, there are signs that things are calming down. Not to the full extent, it could in a perfect world, but regardless, there's some encouraging signs here and there, even if the problem does (and will) persist for some time.
It'll largely depend on how TPCi handles the situation, they're going to have to regress to the printing levels that FCO/STS/EVO had when they were released and KEEP that level going to reverse course.
I think they have to reverse course and increase their supply, 100%. This is an issue I've had with them since Hidden Fates, where TPCi had seemed to not understand what printing cards towards a certain level of demand was. And now it's even worse than it had been then, but we've had a pandemic and promptly, supply chain issues that occurred with it. So to me at least, it's a mix of both TPCi's already existing ineptitude at figuring out how to adapt to levels of demand (refer to some absolute dumpster fires as the Special Delivery Pikachu promotion which, in my opinion was way smaller of a window than it should have been), as well as outside factors and supply chain issues.
I'm not an expert on the
exact numbers and quantities TPCi needs to supply their product that strikes a balance towards not oversaturating things, while also keeping products
reliably stocked, but I think they do need to take measures to start working towards it. As well as, like you said, other factors such as bots being combatted to stop that whole mess.
It's just, in all, tons of factors and entities which need to get things sorted out. Obviously it's not going to happen overnight, I don't think anyone thinks that, but there's a lot that does need to be worked on.
