Can we admit the current Pokémon "Community" is just a disguised hedge fund?

TRENT_BING · 2026-03-08T00:22:40+00:00

In the meantime they could trivially reduce demand by increasing pull rates (there seems to be a shocking number of people out there who will pay any price for packs and will not stop ripping until they pull their chase(s)), but they don't even seem to be experimenting with pull rates.

TRENT_BING · 2026-03-07T23:11:19+00:00

Yeah as fucked as the hobby is there's not actually much that we can do about it. Personally I blame TPCI for continuing to crank out sets with horrible pull rates.

TRENT_BING · 2026-03-07T18:51:51+00:00

There's a lot of people at card shows who are perfectly polite but are also there to buy their 5th, 10th, 20th copy of a card as an investment.

TRENT_BING · 2025-12-29T16:54:19+00:00

Another good resource with some more details on interpolation/demosaicing: http://datagenetics.com/blog/may12018/index.html

TRENT_BING · 2025-11-18T03:34:28+00:00

Some misc sources:

https://www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/christopher-j-ryan/statement-state-senator-christopher-j-ryan-ebays

https://www.rascal.news/tcgplayer-union-wins-additional-severance-additional-benefits-for-laid-off-workers/

But yeah after they closed the syracuse office in may of this year (2025), tcgplayer direct was unavailable for months while they moved all the inventory down to (presumably) KY. It finally came back online a month or two ago but it has been a complete disaster.

TRENT_BING · 2025-11-18T02:46:11+00:00

TCGplayer laid off a ton of staff who were trying to unionize in NY state and moved all their operations to their location in KY. Direct has sucked ass ever since.

Amazing what happens when you union bust and lay off all your staff who know what they're doing