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The Pokémon Trading Card Game 30th Anniversary expansion launched last week on 16th September, and the release was expectedly messy. Launch day saw lengthy queues outside stores in the early hours of the morning, cancelled and delayed pre-orders, and, most infuriating of all, select individuals sitting on huge hoards of stock, preventing anyone else from getting involved.
Well, get your tiny violins out and prepare to play the saddest song you can muster, because it seems that the new set isn’t shaping up to be quite as profitable as the scalpers were hoping, and they’re not happy about it. *Pause for applause*
As reported by IGN, the rare cards in the 30th Anniversary expansion are, in fact, not so rare at all, with high pull rates reducing most cards’ value on the resale market.
For those of us who enjoy the hobby of Pokémon card collecting, this is a good thing — you stand a better chance of pulling new cards when opening packs, and cheaper resales make it easier to complete your collection — but that’s not the case if you are a scalper hoping for a big hit from the set.
“2-3 years ago, quite literally on this subreddit, many people were anticipating the 30th anniversary as a bull catalyst for exit strategies for their investments,” one user wrote on the /r/PokeInvesting Reddit, “The literal complete opposite happened.” Another gave a slightly pithier response: “Idk i like making money and after a while this set will stop making me money so i dont like it.”
In another thread, these ‘investors’ noted that many people seem to be selling their prized cards off the back of the unexpectedly low market value for the new set: “it’ll crush even more when more and more people start dumping. it’s gonna be a bloody mess.”
Of course, there is a bit of melodrama going on there. Looking at how quickly the 30th Anniversary set sold out, there is no way we’re on the brink of some kind of ‘Poké Crash’, but it is interesting to see how put off some folk can be when the promise of profitability isn’t there.
At the time of writing, only the blue, green and red SIR Mew cards have resale values in the thousands of dollars, with basically everything else falling below the $200 mark. Compare that to some of the ridiculous prices we’ve seen from previous sets, and it’s a rather refreshing sight.
User TommyC6852 sees the set from a slightly different angle, saying that it’s “actually a great thing for our investments”. According to this user, the high pull rates make the set “a blast to open,” getting more people engaged in the hobby in the first place: “The more fun people have, the longer they stay in. The longer people stay engaged; the higher our investments will go”.
Describing the whole affair as some kind of ‘loss’ for the scalpers would be doing the bigger picture a disservice — many collectors still missed out on getting any cards from the expansion, and we’re sure that those hoarding great swathes of Elite Trainer Boxes and other packs will profit on the resale market eventually — but still, seeing scalpers panic always brings a smile to our face.