TT - Calm Down!

[baby mario]

A players wallet should not decide if they can win or not. Tell this to the same people who have kids playing that can't afford the cards needed to be competitive with

But it does.

Why? Because Pokemon TCG is part of a commercial business. It's not a charity for people who need a cheap TCG. It's not a sport, or a community service.

Not being able to afford the cards is harsh, but not being able to afford things is just a part of life.

That said, Pokemon is STILL cheaper than most TCGs. Trading and borrowing cards from friends can save a ton of money as well.

 

[sdrawkcab]

40 FA​

30 Reg

I'm going to bet they finish 70 and 60 respectively.

for which, darkrai or raikou?

 

[vaporeon]

But it does.

Why? Because Pokemon TCG is part of a commercial business. It's not a charity for people who need a cheap TCG. It's not a sport, or a community service.

Not being able to afford the cards is harsh, but not being able to afford things is just a part of life.

That said, Pokemon is STILL cheaper than most TCGs. Trading and borrowing cards from friends can save a ton of money as well.

You can't use that argument. It's like a store raising the price of a laptop 300 bucks at a store because it keeps selling out or even with video games at Game Stop. What T&T is doing is not good for the game. TPCi or whoever needs to address this.

Yes I do agree that Pokemon is a pretty cheap in regards to others but on what grounds though. Every ultra rare is valued extremely high compared with every other card in the game. This makes trading very hard and makes it unfair for the younger group looking to get the card.

T&T needs to back down 45 bucks for a card is crazy and Pokemon needs to do something about this.

---------- Post added 04/12/2012 at 03:52 PM ----------

Basically, my point is, if you think T&T's price is too high, go and buy it cheaper somewhere else. If you can't buy it cheaper anywhere else, then the price isn't too high.

Also, if you are going to be the kind of person who insists that they must have a card the very instant it comes out, then I have no sympathy for you. Cards are never made legal until after the set is officially released, and before that there are two-three weeks of pre-releases.

Even if the tournament that you need the card for is a week after the set is released, then that still gives you three weeks to obtain the card from the start of prereleases. As soon as prereleases start, there will be some people selling the cards you want, whether on forum, eBay, wherever. Other online stores who don't do pre-orders will also start to stock them. Most of the time, you'll be able to get a cheaper deal from somewhere.

The thing is most website go by T&T's prices. Even most card shops do. On top of that, most players go by T&T prices.

 

[baby mario]

You can't use that argument. It's like a store raising the price of a laptop 300 bucks at a store because it keeps selling out or even with video games at Game Stop. What T&T is doing is not good for the game. TPCi or whoever needs to address this.

Yes I do agree that Pokemon is a pretty cheap in regards to others but on what grounds though. Every ultra rare is valued extremely high compared with every other card in the game. This makes trading very hard and makes it unfair for the younger group looking to get the card.

T&T needs to back down 45 bucks for a card is crazy and Pokemon needs to do something about this.

T&T are simply doing what the market is telling them to do.

TPCI can't do anything about it. What should they do? Refuse to supply T&T? Would that even be legal?

Yeah I agree it sucks, but there is nothing anyone can do about it short of players refusing to buy at those prices (and we all know that's not gonna happen) or another retailer coming in to undercut them.

T&T are a business and trying to maximise their profits. Why would they sell for less than they can get?

 

[DJGigabyte]

One simple answer is, if you can't afford Mewtwo or Darkrai, play a deck that doesn't use Mewtwo or Darkrai.

As far as I know, Durant is still a pretty competitive deck, and that runs solely on commons and uncommons (one rare if you include Rotom, which most do).

This is pretty much the only game where a deck like this exists, I don't think YGO or Magic have any decks built around cheap, non-rares which still remain competitive.

What T&T is doing has no effect on the game, what they are doing is running a business. If T&T got shut down (and the rest of the online card stores), then the only place to get cards would be eBay. Then rather than having a store whcih offered the cards, you'd only have people opening packs and selling them.

$45 is not crazy for a highly competitive and desirable card, and Pokemon does not need to do anything about it.

A healthy secondary market just proves the popularity of the game.

 

[vaporeon]

T&T are simply doing what the market is telling them to do.

TPCI can't do anything about it. What should they do? Refuse to supply T&T? Would that even be legal?

Yeah I agree it sucks, but there is nothing anyone can do about it short of players refusing to buy at those prices (and we all know that's not gonna happen) or another retailer coming in to undercut them.

T&T are a business and trying to maximise their profits. Why would they sell for less than they can get?

I don't expect TPCi to refuse supply to them. I expect them to lift the burden of price of these cards on us. After all, they don't profit from Mewtwo EX being 80 bucks. What I expect them to do is release cards like that as Tin promos or blister pack promos as a 'we'll still supply to you but will continue to do this' type thing when the price for a card becomes over the top.

 

[DJGigabyte]

Releasing cards as promos if a price becomes too high is a great way for TPCi to annoy people who had already paid for the cards.

In the end you'd get people too scared to make the investment.

 

[vaporeon]

One simple answer is, if you can't afford Mewtwo or Darkrai, play a deck that doesn't use Mewtwo or Darkrai.

As far as I know, Durant is still a pretty competitive deck, and that runs solely on commons and uncommons (one rare if you include Rotom, which most do).

This is pretty much the only game where a deck like this exists, I don't think YGO or Magic have any decks built around cheap, non-rares which still remain competitive.

What T&T is doing has no effect on the game, what they are doing is running a business. If T&T got shut down (and the rest of the online card stores), then the only place to get cards would be eBay. Then rather than having a store whcih offered the cards, you'd only have people opening packs and selling them.

$45 is not crazy for a highly competitive and desirable card, and Pokemon does not need to do anything about it.

A healthy secondary market just proves the popularity of the game.

A deck does not not need Darkrai to be competitive. Not everyone wants to play Durant. Mewtwo is needed to be competitive or you get swept by them. 45 bucks for a single card is insane when you know the price will continue to go up. I expect Raikou EX to be 60 by the end of the day and it will only go up. For once, don't think about yourself but the health of the game.

People are not going to play if they can't afford the cards they need to be competitive with.

 

[DJGigabyte]

I understand that not everyone wants to play Durant, but if thy are restricted by funds, then the option is there. If you only have the money to afford Durant, then the choice becomes Durant or a cheap rogue deck. If you refuse to use either of these when you can afford anything better then you're only hurting yourself.

If Raikou EX is up to $60 by the end of the day, it is because of this thread, and this thread alone. People are reading crazy predictions of price increase, they start panic buying the card, the crazy price increase happens.

I am not just thinking about myself, I am mainly a collector, I very rarely spend money on competitive cards, but I still managed to go to Regionals with a deck containing 2 Zekrom Ex, Mewtwo ex among others, just from borrowing from friends.

The health of the game is not decreasing, and won't decrease purely on people having to choose to play a cheaper deck option.

 

[baby mario]

I don't expect TPCi to refuse supply to them. I expect them to lift the burden of price of these cards on us. After all, they don't profit from Mewtwo EX being 80 bucks. What I expect them to do is release cards like that as Tin promos or blister pack promos as a 'we'll still supply to you but will continue to do this' type thing when the price for a card becomes over the top.

They profit from NEX selling out as everyone chases Mewtwos

What you are asking is completely unrealistic. There simply isn't time to respond to secondary market price jumps by releasing promos like that.

Besides, why would anyone buy stuff from the set if they knew any valuable or chase cards were going to be a $5 promo by next week?

The only solution which I can see working would be if TPCI released cards at the same time as Japan, and they were super careful about not leaking scans.

Actually, I would like that for a lot of reasons. Cards get hyped for so long in advance that people are bored with them by the time they are released.

 

[Freudinio]

One simple answer is, if you can't afford Mewtwo or Darkrai, play a deck that doesn't use Mewtwo or Darkrai.

As far as I know, Durant is still a pretty competitive deck, and that runs solely on commons and uncommons (one rare if you include Rotom, which most do).

This is pretty much the only game where a deck like this exists, I don't think YGO or Magic have any decks built around cheap, non-rares which still remain competitive.

What T&T is doing has no effect on the game, what they are doing is running a business. If T&T got shut down (and the rest of the online card stores), then the only place to get cards would be eBay. Then rather than having a store whcih offered the cards, you'd only have people opening packs and selling them.

$45 is not crazy for a highly competitive and desirable card, and Pokemon does not need to do anything about it.

A healthy secondary market just proves the popularity of the game.

Yep, even the WoW TCG where I play competitively have issues, while you can build somewhat competitive with mediocre rares, most top tier decks still run ~1k$.

 

[Charranitar]

Don't really see the complaint about what Troll and Toad is doing, it's just supply and demand economics at work.

Troll and Toad runs their store website on the Amazon Marketplace software, and the card prices on the websites are controlled by algorithms (how much people are buying, how fast they're selling, etc.) all affect the price.

They're really doing us a favor by even making them available for $10 to start with. They could easily start cards like Darkrai or Tornadus EX at $30, because that's where the market will take them, but by providing them at $10 to start, they allow some players to get good deals on the cards.

I got 2 Darkrai EX for $25, 4 Tornadus EX for $10 and a FA for $14, 1 Groudon EX for $10, FA for $14, 3 Raikou EX for $10 and a FA for $14. That's not too bad imo going into pre-releases. Just need to find 2 Darkrai, and maybe 1 more Groudon in my boxes/pre-releases and I'll be good to go.

And releasing every good card as a tin promo would be bad for business. Why would anyone buy boxes or packs if they could just get all the good cards for $5 each?

And this game isn't all that expensive. I'm a college student, working full time with no parental support, and I'm able to afford any competitive cards I need. When I graduate in a month and get a better paying job, I won't even have to really budget some money away to afford the cards.

If you really can't afford the cards, and you really want to play, you might want to consider what you can do to improve your life situation to be able to afford luxuries like this.

 

[Team CREAM]

IMO, I think those prices are damn good right now. Stop complaining.

 

[King Piplup]

Prices up again by the way...

On another note, what kind of attack name is VOLT BOLT?!?!?

 

[flygon_frank_66]

And Troll & Toad is loving all it's sudden publicity.

 

[Steelix_281]

I just signed up for this forum and just recently started playing again. I'm a college student and where I can see people complaining about a $40+ card it isn't T&T fault its all the players. They keep buying at whatever price T&T puts it at and they leave it like that for awhile and then T&T pushes their luck again by trying to make the most money per card. All they are doing is simple capitalism making the most money they can while in a private company. I mean they have to make money so they can pay their employees, all the TCG companies for their inventory, and pay for their warehouses or buildings. Like I stated before I'm just a college student but I could even afford some of the more expensive cards if I ever get to the point where I want to start playing on a competitive level. If you can't afford the really expensive cards than go with a cheap competitive deck or use your brain and see if you can come up with a different deck to beat the more expensive ones its that simple.

 

[Tagrineth]

This is the reason why 'poor' players can't win or play or trade for cards needed to do well because T&T keeps doing this. There's no need for a card to be over 15 at most. It's also annoying that the company does nothing about this. Releasing mewtwo ex in a tin or blister pack fixes the price almost over night.

Are you somehow implying that Troll and Toad is the sole reason that cards have value above $15?

OK look at it this way. You get three EX in a box that has a $120 MSRP.

Generally card prices balance out so that if you were to resell everything you got in the box, you make back close to what you paid (assuming you don't pull all the worst cards, or whatnot).

If all EX were $15 (and maybe $20 for the FA), each box's SRs would amount to a paltry $50. The investment would be trashed and nobody would resell singles.

Anyway, it's all supply and demand. High demand off the same supply means prices go up. It's that simple.

Also, I scored five FA Raikou EX for $14 each. Booya.

 

[vaporeon]

Are you somehow implying that Troll and Toad is the sole reason that cards have value above $15?

OK look at it this way. You get three EX in a box that has a $120 MSRP.

Generally card prices balance out so that if you were to resell everything you got in the box, you make back close to what you paid (assuming you don't pull all the worst cards, or whatnot).

If all EX were $15 (and maybe $20 for the FA), each box's SRs would amount to a paltry $50. The investment would be trashed and nobody would resell singles.

Anyway, it's all supply and demand. High demand off the same supply means prices go up. It's that simple.

Also, I scored five FA Raikou EX for $14 each. Booya.

Yeah, thats about right. I did by the last FA Raikou ex they had. I did go crazy on the preorders so its as much of my fault as everyone elses.

 

[cookymonster]

insider trading!!!!!! its the 90s all over

 

[Skitty]

Are you somehow implying that Troll and Toad is the sole reason that cards have value above $15?

OK look at it this way. You get three EX in a box that has a $120 MSRP.

Generally card prices balance out so that if you were to resell everything you got in the box, you make back close to what you paid (assuming you don't pull all the worst cards, or whatnot).

If all EX were $15 (and maybe $20 for the FA), each box's SRs would amount to a paltry $50. The investment would be trashed and nobody would resell singles.

Anyway, it's all supply and demand. High demand off the same supply means prices go up. It's that simple.

Also, I scored five FA Raikou EX for $14 each. Booya.

Actually it would be close to that if the EXs were $15 each. If you're going by the prices that some card shops sell boxes at ($79 for ND for example). If you're going by MSRP then blisters usually have strange odds so that throws the whole value out of the window anyway. :tongue:

2 regular EXs per box $15 each = $30
1 FA EX $20
36 RHs ¢15 each = $5.50
12 holo rares $1 each = $12
Non-foil bulk ¢3 each x 290ish = $9

Total of $76.50. So even counting the good/playable trainers at ¢3 each and the good/playable holos/RHs as cheap bulk you're still almost getting back the price of a box. So if you factor in that at least some cards will be worth more than the cheap bulk prices, then you're already guaranteed to get more than what you payed for the box, even if you count every EX as only $15 or $20 each.