By now, Pokemon fans know the pain of empty shelves all too well. Thanks to high demand and low availability, many new Pokemon card sets vanish from stores within minutes of launch. While cards going quickly to actual fans is one thing, the reality is that many of the people getting their hands on new Pokemon TCG product are hoping to resell it for a profit. Actual hobbyists who love to collect Pokemon cards and actually play the game have had enough of scalpers contributing to sold-out stock and high resale prices. Now, one local card show is attracting praise for its anti-scalping policy.
Recently, a local card show drew praise with a new policy aimed at cutting down on scalpers. Feel Good Gaming in Glen Burnie, MD recently revealed a new policy that bans vendors from selling sealed product that’s currently available at retail locations. The policy goes into effect at the next card show, and fans are already praising the move as a great idea to help crack down on Pokemon TCG scalping.
Pokemon Fans Sick of Scalpers Praise Local Card Show’s Ban & Hope Others Follow Suit
In a social media post later reshared to the r/PokemonTCG subreddit, Feel Good Gaming announced new measures to keep scalpers off the sales floor at their card show. Specifically, the show will ban “all sealed product that is currently for sale at retail.” In other words, people won’t be able to snap up recently released Pokemon TCG ETBs and other products from recent sets only to immediately mark them up and resell them at the card show.
In theory, this could help local stores like GameStop, Target, and local card stores keep product on shelves. If scalpers don’t have a clear market to resell recently released products above MSRP, they don’t have as much incentive to buy it all up as soon as it drops. Of course, one local card show is just one of many options for scalpers to resell product. They can still snap up restocks of popular recent sets like Prismatic Evolutions and Ascended Heroes to resell elsewhere, including online retailers like eBay. But for many fans, this decision from Feel Good Gaming does seem like a step in the right direction.
“Please let this catch on,” says Reddit user @abrickstory, who reshared the post from Feel Good Gaming. “It’s so sickening going to shows and seeing rows of vendors with sealed stuff they bought from Target.” In the comments, many Pokemon TCG collectors agree, praising the idea as a solid move that could help revitalize Pokemon in the long run. Some fans even note that their local card shows have similar rules in place, suggesting this could well be a larger trend aimed at helping bring Pokemon cards back to actual collectors.
Not only could this help keep Pokemon cards that are currently in print on shelves, it will also make vendor shows like these more enjoyable for fans. Rather than tables full of stock you could’ve gotten at retailers, this could encourage vendors to lean into selling coveted singles and retro product, instead. For many collectors, this is what they want to see at a card show, over a marked-up version of the Pokemon aisle at Target.
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