I keep cards in sleeves, sometimes 2x sleeves, because I handle my cards. Same with comics. I don't play with as many of them as often as I used to, but I'm glad I've used sleeves for many years and have cards from across the game's life in great--or rather, consistent--condition. Protection of game pieces (cause, lest we forget, that's what they are) makes sense regardless of the value of the card, for longevity as well as consistency.
This is not that. This is very clearly a product designed to preserve value for the secondary market. There is no game here, no value from a gameplay perspective, to be preserved. There is no reason to handle a box repeatedly. They aren't that fragile and they come wrapped in plastic. Protecting a sealed box of randomly distributed trading cards is protecting the potential value of the objects inside that box. I understand some people do that for fun, for collecting, whatever. I don't have a problem with them doing that, I do it too.
It is the monetization of this kind of behavior that disgusts me. This is a company that regularly interacts with tpci. They distribute cross-brand merchandise with them all the time. Now they are releasing something that encourages the consumer to put a sealed box on a shelf and call it a collectors item. Again, I'm fine with individuals deciding to do that, and I'm fine with them spending their money on whatever they feel best protects or displays that kind of thing. But this is designed to hold pokemon boxes specifically. This is designed to encourage sitting on product, to encourage consumers to protect that product not because it has gameplay value, or artistic value, or value as a card or cards to be traded, but because...? I can think of no other reason to encourage this specific kind of consumer behavior than an implicit promise of increased secondary market value with time.
And not only that, this has tpci's implicit seal of approval.
I'm shocked that anyone could be positive, or even neutral, about this product.
I think I'm more worried about the smug people who are going to try and make encasing your sealed boxes the
norm, even when it's not fully necessary.
Like, I should clarify to you because I want to make sure my thoughts are being fully out here:
1: I don't think these cases are necessary for protecting your sealed stuff. Far from it. I apologize if my initial response seemed as if I did think it was completely necessary, I was merely just highlighting that people wanting to do it isn't exclusively for future profits.
2: I think this product itself isn't warranted for the price. Even if I kept a sealed box, I wouldn't do it. It's just nothing I care to spend the money on. It's not a good product in that pricing reason alone.
3: Like yourself, I don't care if people decide to use these or not.
I just don't think it's so black-and-white as to this being
designed specifically and exclusively to encourage that implicit promise of value overtime. That was my only issue with the point you made. HOWEVER, I can see this as being Ultra Pro cashing in on all the Pokémon hype as of now. Which, at least to me, is just the same as any company making any product designed to cash in on what people are after, for more than one reason. I just think it's a lot more of a grey area, even if it is the company cashing in on something.
I don't have an issue with products for protecting boxes
existing, but I can see that how the "influencers" and smug hype-beast fans or whatever getting impressionable fans to think that casing up boxes is the only way to protect them. I'm more concerned by the side-effects of what the fans are going to do with these kinds of products. Much like instantaneously valuing a card as if it were a PSA 10, regardless if it actually makes the grade or not, and making it feel like grading is the only true way to be a collector, when it isn't.
I hope this clears things up, and I don't want it to seem like I completely disagree with you with most of the things you said. There's reasons to be unhappy with this product existing, especially in the context of the time like
@Number51x just said as I'm typing this. I'm just trying to say that there's more layers to it than just what you're saying.
I also don't think I agree with this specific point:
. Protecting a sealed box of randomly distributed trading cards is protecting the potential value of the objects inside that box.
You're looking at the box as if there's no collectability or value to it. Again, my example with something such as Skyridge. The value of a sealed Skyridge box isn't
just the potential value of what's in the box, as there's no one card, no entire box's worth of cards that could ever be more valuable than the box itself, nor can there be a card that replicates what that sealed box is. At least in my eyes, even if I don't collect sealed boxes, I still am aware that there are plenty of people who are looking for a sealed box as its own unique collectible. They don't care about what's
in the box, they care about the box itself. I have a friend who is collecting sealed Elite Trainer Boxes for purely display purposes. He values them as their own unique thing, and protects them to his abilities (not in cases or anything but he does shelve them with care and all) because he values them as such.
My point being, there's a lot more to protecting a sealed product than just because you want to protect what's
inside of it. A lot of people who collect sealed products don't, for one second even consider the value of the cards inside of them. There's so much more to it than that.
