The easiest way to do this is to lock it all behind Guest Services and have customers come up and ask for it, having a bit of humility helps curb scalping since there's always an ego aspect to these things.
Now if only stores like WalMart and Costco (especially the latter, just because you specialize in selling wholesale that doesn't mean you should let the public buy out
pallets of TCG products) could do something like this, I'm sure we've all heard the story of that father-and-son team cleaning out their local Costco of a specific Scarlet & Violet - 151 bundle to resell it at a brick-and-mortar store they operate.
Actually, it's quite possible. Self-checkout interfaces restrict you from paying if you have age-restricted items in your cart that an employee has to override once you show them ID. You can implement the same idea by flagging UPCs and showing the message "this item cannot be purchased in self-checkout; please go to a conventional checkout lane to make your purchase."
Seconding this, self-checkouts can also enforce product limits under the right circumstances.
Someone doing a mass opening can easily buy product elsewhere than Target, and typically would probably buy from a distributor anyway.
Agreed, most YouTube product openings are done with product that's obtained elsewhere, especially when you can said product for a cheaper price than Target's.
The only time this doesn't work is if someone's doing an opening of Target-exclusive TCG merchandise, I've always heard rumors of scalpers paying a store's distributor rep under the table to get certain products before they're put on the shelf and wouldn't be surprised if that's still happening.
The scalping and reselling was big during the sword and shield era, but since last January, things have completely calmed down.
If you guys took a look at the pokemon section today, you'll see it'll mostly be stocked up.
I feel this article is outdated already.
I agree with this to
an extent, the scalping for TCG products in general has largely stopped, most scalpers have moved onto other TCGs like One Piece and Disney's Lorcana.
But for the scalpers that feel like they've invested too much into Pokémon and decided to stay? They've shifted more towards gaming the prices of certain chase cards (Secret Art Rare Iron Crown ex, anyone?) or buying out a TCG product that's exclusive to certain stores like Pokémon Center.
This is honestly why I'm not too pleased with TPCi sticking with the concept of special sets even after Celebrations' horrible drops and 151's rocky start, even though Shrouded Fable doesn't look too appealing I have no doubt scalpers will try to make bank off of it due to TPCi being TPCi.
Target stores are taking new measures against scalpers.
