Huh, when you take Tinkatuff's Surprise Hammer Ability and everything about Tinkaton's Large Swing attack into consideration it feels like that Creatures Inc. almost regrets printing Gardevoir ex back in SVI. Almost.
Hmm, that's kind of neat.
The one thing I'm glad to see is that the etchings on the Poké/Master Ball pattern holos are gone. I'll admit that they were interesting but part of me suspects that they're the reason why manufacturing Prismatic Evolutions products is so slow.
Using 151 is kind of...
The last time Costco put a Pokémon TCG product up on their website it was fairly easy to score so long as you kept a close eye on the usual PTCG restock accounts.
As far as bots are concerned I think Costco’s membership system along with their 1-product-per-account-per-24-hour-period limit...
That might be true for your area but not others, I’ve seen some of the line-ups that occur in my city and I was able to recognize several of them as being collectable show vendors or LGS owners.
The problem is that limits are easier to set online than they are offline, it’s why you rarely see Costco stock Pokémon TCG products in-store recently.
Seconded on the whole “prepare for mayhem” thing, outside of some online stores it’s been an absolute nightmare finding any sort of sealed products. Thankfully Costco is one of the few retailers that takes its limits seriously, it’s also worth noting that their online business model makes it...
They have customer limits but they’re easily reset if the machine lacks a secondary power source and is unplugged.
And as far as the scalping goes it varies depending on location: some stores will formally trespass you if you buy over the limit whilst others will turn a blind eye.
As others here have already pointed earlier an increase in locations won't shift the tides much.
Scalpers, as @bbb888 pointed out, have found a way to bypass the limits and you also have issues with store employees cleaning out these vending machines before they open to the public.
Part of me...
Eh… it’s a nice gesture in theory but this doesn’t really help much when scalpers clean out stores in groups and stores get a small number of units in per restock.
The previous limit was generally 2 of each item per restock and the group thing is well known scalper tactic already.
Now those are some decent cards, I could see Frillish (with Jellicent ex being a possible tech) being put into Gardevoir decks as beefier Budew but the 3 retreat cost kind of kills it until you set up Gardevoir ex.
I decided to read the article again and I'm still not buying any of this considering that we're still dealing with stores selling out the minute they get stock. In addition to that, there's one bit that's really rubbing me the wrong way:
TPCi may say they're printing at maximum capacity but a...
Don’t forget that these kinds of shortages tend to happen every time a hyped special set comes out:
* It happened with Generations during the set’s first few releases.
* It happened with Shining Legends to some extent
* It happened with Hidden Fates
* It happened with Champion’s...
It’s worth noting that distributors are also guilty of this too: MJ Holdings, the distributor that supplies Walmart with their products, was found to be selling products for market value on Walmart’s website via their GT Collectibles company.
Unfortunately LGSes will often clean out big box...