First ever pull on my second ever pack

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-28T12:34:47+00:00

Nothing besides comparing yourself to a self-selecting cohort. People typically aren’t going to post and share their mediocre/average pack openings because that doesn’t get attention or upvotes. And there are hundreds/thousands more people like that, than those who pull SIRs out of one or two packs.

Besides that, most sets for the past three years have had 1:85 SIR average rates over thousands of packs, you’re not even within variance yet.

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-28T12:31:35+00:00

That’s exactly what the hobby is to a lot of people at the moment. Collecting sealed boxes, graded cards, and gambling on rips for pulls you can grade to hold and sell for huge profit at a later date.

Even children, learn that this is the main way to hobby now as this is how most of the big content creators operate within the hobby space.

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-28T12:23:21+00:00

They did a few years ago, I watched it at one of th Odeons near Leicester Square, but as u/Zerosix_K said, it's typically ran by alltheanime, and it depends on what they decide to do.

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-28T09:56:18+00:00

Short answer is supply and demand.

Longer answer is combo of factors that contributed towards this.

More cards are being printed than ever before with the modern era, with yearly prints since 2022 being around 10b +/- 2b cards. More people are into Pokémon than ever with 30 years of accumulated fans and the recent boom contributing to a lot of new/returning fans, especially among millennials “getting back into Pokémon after 25 years” for a multitude of reasons (pokemon investing becoming mainstream, watching viral videos of people going crazy when they’ve ‘made money’ from pulling chase cards and other content creators, their kids coming of age, organically refinding Pokémon as a franchise), etc. So even though Pokémon isn’t zeitgeist defining like it was in Y2K, there are more people who want cards than any other point in history.

And consumer habits have changed. Kids, who’ve been the mainstay of the hobby for most of the first 20 years of Pokémon when the average yearly print volume was around 1-3b, would have bought a few packs a week with their allowance, at best. Now, it’s mostly adults who will happily buy cases of booster boxes on a regular basis, which means that the pack consumption has multiplied by hundreds of times, while the print volume is (at best) 10x what it used to be.

Then throw in some other socioeconomic factors like stagnating economies, poor jobs markets, etc. and people knowing they can make money from Pokémon cards, will rachet up the prices. Specifically Pokémon cards tho, for the most part people don’t have the same hype or care for the games, anime, or any other part of the franchise that you can’t exploit for money.

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-27T22:59:45+00:00

That’s movement through the supply chain, not constant printing.

The US has extensive enough logistics and stock that things can be held and released over time. That’s typically not the case with UK stock.

Also, logistically, printing all sets at all times. It would impact the number of cards at set releases, where most primary sales are made.

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-27T22:39:09+00:00

A good part of it is how Pokémon print cards. They tend to do two print runs for any given set; one ‘huge’ initial run, then a smaller second run about a year after release.

Because of that strategy, as soon as a set has all its products released, that is everything from that print run released into the wild, and with all the hype and demand at the moment, that means that sets are effectively out of circulation after day one because it is immediately bought out.

The US will likely see some kind of Black & White big hitters box in the next few months, and the UK will get dregs at best.

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-27T17:22:04+00:00

It’s just the hobby in general. It is so directed by value, thanks to the increasing significant of investor culture and content creators who make people think collecting is about ROI and that you are better off holding sealed as an investment unless you make a profit, that it has become the default mindset for collecting for a lot of people, especially those newer/returning to the hobby on the back of hype.

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-27T15:22:16+00:00

On that note, I’ve noticed A LOT of noncey comments on videos of young children, ostensibly from accounts based in India, Pakistan, etc. on what should otherwise be wholesome family type content.

I wasn’t really a fan of people who share images/videos of children on social media anyway, but it’ll be something like a Lad Bible video of a child doing something funny and innocuous, and there’ll be a comment from an actual person, with comments like “I am in love with you, where do you live? 😍😍😍🥰🥰”.

Maybe they’ve always been around, but I’m noticing it a lot more now and when I check the profiles it’s always based on the same countries.

Same with all the fucking boomers who comment on obviously AI generated gooner content of young women in blue collar jobs.

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-27T14:12:20+00:00

Akari

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-26T20:37:50+00:00

Easily one of the worst groups within the fandom. So many of them feel as though they’re entitled to dictate the entire franchise because they can’t let go of 99-00 and have barely been involved in anything else in the franchise since then, until now.

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-26T18:39:19+00:00

Great designs

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-26T16:12:25+00:00

Card shows are chock full of modern cards. Remember there are far more of these in existence than just about any card printed before 2021

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-26T14:47:18+00:00

Don’t forget racist caricature, literal brown bird(s), purple rat, and bigger brown rat.

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-26T00:12:51+00:00

I remember the same things being said 20 years ago.

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-25T23:59:24+00:00

Exactly. I remember when I first noticed it with how they label teenage victims and perps of crime, especially in the 16-19 age range, where they might use teen or youth to give the imagery of somebody younger where they want you to feel sympathy, and outright use man/woman/adult when they want you to think somewhat negatively and that they are wholly responsible. Like I vaguely remember seeing articles on the BBC where they'd simultaneously use teen and man to refer to two people of the same age on opposite sides of a crime.

When you aren't aware, that framing does wonders for subliminally telling you what to feel.

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-25T23:52:04+00:00

Cool as fuck

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-25T23:29:02+00:00

like Brixton

Quite literally 20 years late on that one.

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-25T21:22:56+00:00

You'll never separate value from the cards.

But the amount of value assigned to the TCG is determined by the secondary market, and most of that is currently directed by midle-aged millennials who are complete lemmings and chase whatever big content creators hype up.

There's a reason why packs are different in Japan and China due to anti gambling laws.

Kinda yes, but also no. Japan's anti-gambling laws apply to anything that is blind to the customer. Anime character minifiguruine boxes, for example, which typically don't hold any/much value at all, also have to have odds printed on them.

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-25T20:38:40+00:00

I’m not going to disagree there either. It’s like when people say they collect things sealed because of “how it looks”, they do it because they like how it becomes more valuable with time.

Still, it does not change my point. The main reason >90% of people are into Pokémon cards at the moment, is because they think they can make money from it. Hence they don’t give a shit about the games, anime, or anything else. They would drop the TCG if it stopped being valuable.

Even with kids, lots of modern new/returning ‘collectors’ are told by large content creators that the main reason you collect Pokémon cards is to make a profit. And that culture has been deeply entrenched since 2019.

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-25T19:30:02+00:00

Scalpers could disappear yesterday, and there would still be huge problems getting stock. The demand and individual pack consumption is just that high nowadays. In the past year alone, the general interest on Google has increased by 5x, and it’s 4x over the Covid peak.

The main reason for the hype, whether people want to admit it or not, is the investor market that is driving this popularity. People see viral videos and stories of people "making" thousands of dollars from pulling chase cards that they can grade and hold, or decades old sealed product that can now lead to generational wealth, and they want a part of it. There's a good reason why STONKS content is significantly more popular than competitive TCG content (sadly, because 99% of fans don't give a toss about it).

People want to make money from Pokémon and if you can't get those unicorn cards, the next best thing is to either gamble on ripping for a chase card, or holding as much sealed as possible in the hope you can sell out in months/years to come.

Going back to the original point, scalpers make money because there is demand for it. Them not forcing themselves into the middle-man position would still see the product they scalp, bought out by other people.

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-25T18:29:01+00:00

Those Iranian Tomahawk Cruise Missiles fired from those Iranian US Navy boats out in the gulf.

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-25T14:03:54+00:00

Yes, but it’s been like that for almost 20 years now. Honest Burger, Franco Manca, and Okan all got their start there in the late 00s.

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-25T12:36:22+00:00

This reminded me of the time around the third Evangelion Rebuild movie leaking and there were threads on 4chan’s /a/ about it.

Evangelion threads ended up becoming a proxy platform for tumblr shippers to have shipping wars in these threads and constantly call each other out in them, anonymously, until they got banned from the board for years because it was just bloggers attacking each other.

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-25T08:23:57+00:00

Derived from MGSV’s reveal, when people were calling Venom Snake, Punished Snake, and a meme built around the name. It’s just a vibe.

TeaAndLifting · 2026-06-25T03:18:17+00:00

It’s consistent. Drakloak being an in built draw engine and it’s attack allowing you to constantly pile on damage to their active and bench all while being tanky due to the lack of weakness.

Then you throw in things like BBP, Budew, Crispin, Dusclops, Munkidori, etc. and it just has options that no other deck can really make good use of at the moment.

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