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Target to stop selling sports and Pokemon trading cards in-store due to concerns of employee and customer safety


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It has come to this: Trading card collecting has gotten so feverish Target has decided it's safer to take sports and Pokemon cards off their store shelves.

From The Verge:

"Target has decided that it’s had enough: the company  has officially confirmed to Bleeding Cool  that it will halt the sales of Pokémon cards throughout the US, starting Friday, May 14th. The retailer cities “an abundance of caution” for the safety of both guests and store employees and notes that it will still be selling the cards on its site.

...

Target has recently started limiting how many packs customers are allowed to purchase, and has even threatened to get law enforcement involved if it found people camping out by its stores for them. There was also an incident at one of the stores where someone pulled a gun during a fight about sports cards — which could explain why the halt also applies to MLB, NFL, and NBA cards as well."

https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/12/22433236/target-halts-sale-pokemon-mlb-nba-nfl-trading-cards-may-14

 

 

 

Edited by Teh_Lurv
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Gotta wonder if it's all the card collectibles or just the ones specifically mentioned.  M:tG is pretty nuts at the moment as well, and generally hotter than sports cards as far as personal experience advises, so it seems weird that they'd kill all the sports cards and Pokemon specifically, but not anything else they stock up on.

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I expect all "collector" markets to move exclusively to online storefronts in the coming years

Blame the companies who cater to these "collector" markets.  They have all the sales data in the world to know how much demand there is.  But they don't care about sales, they shortchange their product on purpose as they just want hype and "to blow up on social media."  Then some smart guy upstairs can tell his boss about how they "sold out" instead of telling him how they would have made 5x as much profit if they just made enough to meet demand.  Instead they want to create mass hysteria in the aisles and target doesn't want their store turning into a warzone cover pokemon cards.

Edited by fox
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Well true, but at the same time there is a fine line between production and overproduction.  If you really do push out the supposed level of demand, sure you'll clear the stuff for weeks, at best, but when the scum figure out you're saturating the market they'll move along and you're stuck holding the bag with a lot of now depreciated items below MSRP no one will touch... screwed basically either way.  I get what you mean though, going well too low is just wrong as well.

Pathetic is comes to this, but hey I can't blame target when it comes down to... GIMME that $10 pikachu card bitch or I'm going to cap your ass! while whipping out a small gun acting all tough.  This crap is exactly why you see more people getting nervous or mugged from online sales if they aren't smart and meeting up at a starbucks, police station, somewhere with many witnesses and cameras.  The escalated scummy attacks on the population and their livelihood started like a dozen years ago has created this vacuum against good behavior, everyone trying to scrape more money up at whatever the cost to either get by or get rich quick.  Now who're the victims... primarily the kids, because now they can't go to the store and get CHILDRENS TRADING CARDS of all things.

For fucks sake... this same exact shit happened 30 years ago, and with the SAME STUFF no less, same identical stuff.  Before the net, you have a-holes rampaging comic, grocery, and sports stores scooping up all the goodies at cost, then taking it to their freshly opened shops (since online sales wasn't a dial up BBS thing) and asking like 2-10x the price of whatever the whole pack of stuff costs per individual item.  It took a few years, then like 90% of them failed and shut down rightly so -- internet won't be so gracious, less overhead.  I won't let my kid be a victim of that crap like I was as a kid/early teen back in those days where I lost 2 hobbies in the same year.  I don't get her pokemon cards anymore and distract her with other stuff.

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It's a pretty good idea on Target's part.  A pack of trading cards costs, what, 5 bucks?  What's the margin on that?  Even if their cost is under a buck, they aren't making that much money compared to the annoyance of having that type of crowd lined up outside the store every morning plus the mild risk of violence.  They can sell them online with no risk.  Let the scalper crowd fight over them online.  Eventually the bullshit will die down, and I can go back to buying a pack of cards every other week for my kids when they are acting good. 

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1 minute ago, docile tapeworm said:

@TDIRunner the only reason i thought target/walmart lasted this long would be a contract? 

No idea, and I don't really care.  All I know is that a pack of Pokemon cards is the perfect quick & cheap gift for the kids when they have had a good week, or been helping around the house and you want to give them something small as a reward.  It's easy and I know the kids will be happy with it, so it's annoying when I can't get them.  

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6 hours ago, fox said:

I expect all "collector" markets to move exclusively to online storefronts in the coming years
 

I can totally see trading card companies looking at EA loot box mechanics and online collectable auction sites and adopting that system. Log into a sports card website, pay $2.99 to buy/open a virtual card park. Flash of light and glitter and your cards appear on screen. The website will then mail you are cards unless you didn't like what you got, so instead click the "recycle" button to discard those cards for a 5% discount on your next card pack purchase. Get lucky and wind up with a highly sought after rare? You could have the company mail it to you...or you could immediately put it up for resale on their own internal auction marketplace for a modest fee.

Scuzziness from the beginning to the end of the collecting pipeline.

 

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3 minutes ago, Teh_Lurv said:

I can totally see trading card companies looking at EA loot box mechanics and online collectable auction sites and adopting that system. Log into a sports card website, pay $2.99 to buy/open a virtual card park. Flash of light and glitter and your cards appear on screen. The website will then mail you are cards unless you didn't like what you got, so instead click the "recycle" button to discard those cards for a 5% discount on your next card pack purchase. Get lucky and wind up with a highly sought after rare? You could have the company mail it to you...or you could immediately put it up for resale on their own internal auction marketplace for a modest fee.

Scuzziness from the beginning to the end of the collecting pipeline.

 

Mail you physical cards? $2.99 a pack? Digital NBA card packs start at $9, go to $100s, and still sell out quickly. The magic of NFTs! https://nbatopshot.com/packs

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11 minutes ago, ApebitMusic said:

People are animals. 

I don't understand why they don't just put them out at random times. 

 

6 minutes ago, DefaultGen said:

And have nerds camping the store all day??

i asked when they stock at target and the employee said "i dont know the last vendor lady quit because people were harassing her and following her from store to store".

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26 minutes ago, DefaultGen said:

Mail you physical cards?

if you think nintender nerds complain about shipping......you can only imagine. i dare you to mail a card "pwe" even if it arrives without issue they will complain. its hilarious.

edit: and thats after they paid $1 to mail "pwe"....then complain you mailed "pwe"...rotfl

Edited by docile tapeworm
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8 minutes ago, docile tapeworm said:

the whole card hobby is litered with scammers and liars. even the shops are rip off artist. they will send employees to buy out the retail and mark it up to sell in there store front....

Seems like you can replace that with literally any collectible hobby right now.

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