“Black Bolt” and “White Flare” to Experience Severe Shortages, But TPCi Now Catching Up!

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Unfortunately, we've received word that Black Bolt and White Flare allocations will be much less than Prismatic Evolutions. Most stores will receive no product. This is according to one of TPCi's biggest U.S. distributors.


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But there's also good news on the horizon that may explain why this is the case!
Following their initial print runs, TPCi has been busy reprinting past items like...
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Continue reading...
 
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Unless they completely flood the market, or give all the product to places like target that don't triple the price, it means nothing. Scalpers sell and scalp because local game stores can triple the price. They are the first person to screw you over and scalpers follow. Pokemon has to print so much that it sits on shelfs for months, that's what had to happen during covid. Printing more in small waves is just lgs doing this with the product for longer.
Don't support your lgs.
 
Yet Obsidian Flames, Paldean Evolved, Temporal Forces keep appearing on every damn box lol

Tbh I'm just so disappointed. I remember when I could go to Target or Walmart any given day and they would always have plenty of product. Boxes would pile there for weeks, months, and you were never in a rush to get something. Every time I went to buy groceries or whatever, I would put a couple of booster packs in my cart or just whatever they had, I even had plenty to choose from. But long gone are those days.

During the pandemic I started buying online, but now I can't even get that. Everything is always out of stock in minutes. From the Pokémon Center I could always get the ETB without issues, the last one was Shrouded Fable, and after that, it's been a nightmare.

I refuse to buy from scalpers. If any I prefer to buy singles at TCGPlayer or so, but if that's the case, I'd rather TPCI be the ones that sold the cards by singles and give my money directly to them, to the prices they establish, so this goes back to being a hobby for people and not a business or "investment" for resellers or scalpers.

And then here in Mexico they supposedly started selling the new sets in Latin American Spanish but they're nowhere to be found.
 
Honestly I'm checked out of the hobby. Somehow it's even worse than the hype during covid (at least then you can blame the scalping partially on covid shortages), where even if scalpers didn't exist we are dealing with hordes of whales and gamblers spending insane amounts of money on the hobby chasing $$$$. At the point where I may just sell my collection while it's high and hop back in when people move on to the next big thing.

Like, the full art gengar from phantom forces is going for 300 - there's no way anyone can seriously say these are rational prices and this isn't just a pyramid scheme at this point where everyone is just praying prices continue to rise just because
 
So from what I'm hearing, we're getting marginal print runs of Surging Sparks and Prismatic that'll be scalped to oblivion anyways, and now BB/WF just won't be accessible to anyone who wants it for the foreseeable future.

And there's supposed to be a positive spin off of this story? Like... Okay. More supply is a good thing, sure. But that's not going to fix the root cause of this issue. I know these things take time, but maybe how about they use some of those record-breaking profits to try and fix some things in the meantime? Like their broken website that never works. That'd be a nice start.
 
Scoop said:
So from what I'm hearing, we're getting marginal print runs of Surging Sparks and Prismatic that'll be scalped to oblivion anyways, and now BB/WF just won't be accessible to anyone who wants it for the foreseeable future.

And there's supposed to be a positive spin off of this story? Like... Okay. More supply is a good thing, sure. But that's not going to fix the root cause of this issue. I know these things take time, but maybe how about they use some of those record-breaking profits to try and fix some things in the meantime? Like their broken website that never works. That'd be a nice start.
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yeah like if any of these fabled additional print runs actually affect the price in a significant way for a significant amount of time then i’ll believe it. but a $250 box going to a $225 box for like a month and then just going right back up when they don’t print any more (or when they do some other tiny reprint that’s even less than this one) - that is not the kind of reprint any non-scalpers benefit from
 
OOF. The current craze hasn't really been a problem for competitive play since the hype isn't for minimum rarity stuff, but if most stores are getting nothing, we might face an actual supply crunch for singles. I feel lucky to have gotten an order in for an ETB, but now I almost hope the sets turn out to be duds.
 
JohnFoster said:
Unless they completely flood the market, or give all the product to places like target that don't triple the price, it means nothing. Scalpers sell and scalp because local game stores can triple the price. They are the first person to screw you over and scalpers follow. Pokemon has to print so much that it sits on shelfs for months, that's what had to happen during covid. Printing more in small waves is just lgs doing this with the product for longer.
Don't support your lgs.
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“Dont support your LGS” is probably the biggest L take I’ve heard through this. Dont support the ones scalping of course but realise that they have to battle these scalpers as well. Support your stores who are ethical with their pricing and try to stop scalping
 
MarlinRimes said:
“Dont support your LGS” is probably the biggest L take I’ve heard through this. Dont support the ones scalping of course but realise that they have to battle these scalpers as well. Support your stores who are ethical with their pricing and try to stop scalping
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yes, obviously if a store is selling product at msrp, which still is them making a profit, support them. But the bad news is that 95% of stores are screwing over their patrons. To say that they are battling scalpers is untue. For them to "battle" them they would have to be challenged by them. Scalpers are doing shading things to get product. But for the most part they are still buying the product at MSRP, mostly, to sell at triple the price. Stores only have to get on the phone, call their distributor, pay distributor prices which is not MSRP, but they sell the product at triple MSRP. Is it possible to find shops that dont screw over their patrons? Yeah sure. But 95% are getting their product, and selling it for way more. Also, if every store sold their product for MSRP, then scalpers would honestly have way less power, but because they know that people who want the product can only turn to the LGS and scalpers selling them at $250, they know they can sell them for $250.

Tldr
Yes support good local game store. Sadly they are not easily found, and all other local game shops are the problem and you should not support them.
 
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