![]() ![]() When you make something too expensive for a 10 year old, you’re not helping yourself long term.Full Text of Papyrus Statement from Dominique Schurman ![]() “A 10 year old can’t buy a single card for $200 to play with. “On eBay sometimes the price of it is so astronomical,” Humbert said. Influencers like Gary V and Logan Paul started talking about Pokémon cards like they were investment opportunities and it’s driven prices up. The secondary market is driving a lot of the demand. Having a community is what my store is about, it’s not about selling as many booster boxes as humanly possible.if all these collectors are buying up all the product, what happens to the players of the game? Will they want to come back to the store and play again? That’s where I’m concerned.” “I’d rather have lots of people coming in playing our league and having a good time. “I personally don’t like selling product at this high a price and at this low a quantity,” he said. Humbert said he’s happy for the business but he’s worried about the future of the game. We’ve never had to do that before,” he said. To keep as many people happy as possible, Humbert has set hard limits on the amount of cards people can buy at one time. “People will come in and literally buy $600 of product at one time.” “I’ve never seen people come in and buy five booster boxes at once. Humbert said he’s never seen Pokémon fly off the shelves like it is now. “I don’t know if Pokémon is used to that,” he said. In the past few years it’s produced more and more limited edition sets marketed towards the collector similar to the Hidden Fates tins people in the Pokémon are after. Magic: The Gathering is probably the world’s best known card game. Humbert said that he’s selling more trading cards across the board but that other games have been in the business longer and are better able to meet demand. Sealed product that was a $20 item is now $150 because people are at home collecting because they aren’t going out doing other things.” “Collecting across the board has gone up. “Pokémon? We just don’t have it enough,” Humbert said. ![]() What Firefly does get hold of, it sells almost immediately. “The allocations are being cut across the board.” A board game and Pokémon card show in Los Angeles told Motherboard that they are never getting full Pokémon card orders that they've placed from suppliers. “Something that used to cost $15 for us may now cost $25,” she said. Harr said that it costs more for her store to buy Pokémon cards at cost and that Nintendo can only fill around 25 percent of what her store is requesting. But even the card shops are feeling the pinch. Collectors have flooded eBay with rare cards, and prices are through the roof. Nintendo has struggled to keep up with demand for the cards. “When you still have an interest in the game, what else do you do instead of play it but collect the cards?” Harr said. People trapped inside all day began to root through their closets and try out old hobbies. Suddenly people couldn’t play Pokémon in person anymore but they still wanted to enjoy the hobby. “Instead of having regular releases they ended up having spin-offs like Hidden Fates.It started picking up on the collectors side of things.”Īround the same time collectors started chasing rare Pokémon sets, the pandemic hit. “I started noticing more of this pickup when they started releasing some of these special sets,” Harr told Motherboard on the phone. She orders the cards for the store and teaches new people how to play the game. “That’s my concern: is it hurting the game?”Įmily Harr is a Pokémon brand manager at Firefly. “I’m worried about what’s going to happen when events start happening again and none of these people have played for two years because they couldn’t afford the product,” Humbert told Motherboard on the phone. He can’t keep Pokémon cards on the shelves, but said he’s seen fewer families coming in to buy cards and far more older collectors. James Humbert owns and manages Firefly Toys & Games in South Carolina. ![]()
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