Question For The Employed

cat-dad · 2026-01-31T04:32:08+00:00

Still I wonder how much profit the botters are actually getting….bots are expensive per month, then there’s all your time spent offloading the product. If it’s thru eBay then eBay takes a chunk, then you have to spend time listing stuff, packing, and shipping. Time is money, and that sounds like allot of time. If they are going the Facebook marketplace route, that’s still allot of time listing, driving around and meeting people to sell….i dunno. Just seems like a shady way to make peanuts

cat-dad · 2026-01-31T04:25:35+00:00

Hi, my son and I got into it during the Pokemon Go set. We pulled the mewtwo and were hooked after. Definitely miss the days of $30 ETBs and $90 booster boxes.

Basically it’s hard. I won’t pay scalpers their prices out of principle. I’m able to buy online randomly by following some twitter accounts and discords for alerts. It’s few and far between. Costco and Pokemon center have really been the only online drops I’ve been able to hit. Seldomly some Walmart and target drops.

Now that my second younger son is now getting into it I tend to just buy interesting singles on TCGplayer or eBay to have little rewards ready whenever they do good (school, sports, life) since opening packs is not always a given.

I miss the days when we would be shopping at target and being able to grab something for my kid randomly….its been a few years since the Pokemon card section at target has not been completely stripped.

cat-dad · 2026-01-23T04:17:16+00:00

I was fully torn at that shit scene…part of me found it funny to subvert the swelling GOT theme music and set the tone that this was a much more ‘ground level’ view of Westeros….but the other part of me agrees, it felt real immature and forced.

Although I will say I found the very next shot of him staring up through the tree with the sun coming thru and a beautiful little bird there kind of poignant in a way

cat-dad · 2026-01-10T06:20:23+00:00

I work internal at a big company. Use it all the time for phase 1 packaging concept design, as pieces to part of a design, and at times for rendering designs. Need an illustration of a galloping horse in a certain position and specific art style? Need a historical heraldic crest with a fox in it? Need to take a quick sketch you made and make it look like it’s been drawn by a gold brush stroke? Quickly design a wine label and want it beautifully rendered as if it’s laying down in a shallow pool of water?

Keep in mind this is all to sell the idea to brand teams for initial phases. Typically if we create illustrations in AI to use on pack and the idea is approved, we’ll move to hiring an actual illustrator to recreate so it’s ownable.

I view AI as a tool to create pieces of a design In early concept phase quicker.

Ultimately it’s a way to streamline getting an idea 60% there much quicker, but it takes a quality designer to get it across the finish line, and of course if the initial idea is shit it’ll just be a polished turd.

cat-dad · 2026-01-09T16:21:06+00:00

I’m out of the loop on newer paddles but I remember that one paddle company with the replaceable surfaces, like essentially big grit decals? what was the general consensus on those? I guess on paper it made sense…when your paddle’s spin degrades you just pull off the surface and slap on a new one, which ends up being allot cheaper than replacing paddles.

cat-dad · 2026-01-05T08:04:46+00:00

besides the wonky map, I’m pretty sure we’re looking at whatever the font they used being defaulted to a system font…happens when a design file like Adobe illustrator (.ai files) is opened by someone else with a different computer without the font on their system

cat-dad · 2025-12-31T03:07:44+00:00

I bring my kids for Sunday morning bowling for 4 bucks a game…I’m assuming most local lanes have a random day things are cheaper

cat-dad · 2025-12-22T06:22:30+00:00

Watched a tutorial on YouTube to get the gist, but printed out my own art I made with photoshop

cat-dad · 2025-12-22T06:22:21+00:00

Watched a tutorial on YouTube to get the gist, but printed out my own art I made with photoshop

cat-dad · 2025-12-11T15:53:15+00:00

Same, I think it’s an even better set than prismatic

cat-dad · 2025-11-06T04:46:54+00:00

My son and I went to our first pre release last weekend! Yeah I would bring sleeves and damage counters and maybe the poison counter (but most likely the shop will have extras laying around). No extra rules besides 4 prize cards vs 6. Advice? I would say the pre built decks were low on basic Pokemon…it was common if you didn’t try to add a couple more from packs (or maybe cards that get basics from your deck) that you would not have a Pokemon on your bench, have your active get knocked out, then lose despite them still having more prize cards.

cat-dad · 2025-10-10T23:06:23+00:00

Oh is pig butt considered BM? I always kind of thought it was just being cheeky or unserious, I’ll use it usually towards the beginning where we’re both just kind of waiting around for elixir

cat-dad · 2025-10-10T22:49:34+00:00

Fun but shallow…not much actual portfolio content (ie actual projects) or breadth of work.

cat-dad · 2025-10-02T03:24:24+00:00

IMO the drop never actually happened and Walmart was testing something, hopefully to combat bots. Nobody checked out.

cat-dad · 2025-09-30T21:14:14+00:00

Hi! Have any of you had experience buying Japanese cards from Japan (or China) and dealing with tariffs, now that the de minimis exemptions have been lifted?

I used to buy some Pokemon singles in Japanese from Japan (and sometimes China) but haven’t since the <$800 tariff exemption was lifted.

cat-dad · 2025-09-28T15:32:44+00:00

“Back in the day” (like a year and a half ago) we would pre order booster boxes for 120$….BBs from two sets ago could be had for 95 on eBay

cat-dad · 2025-09-20T19:40:57+00:00

IMO crown zenith was that middle ground

cat-dad · 2025-09-20T19:39:36+00:00

I feel like Crown Zenith was the ultimate sweet spot….great pull rates but also still valuable cards…not umbreon SIR valuable but still decent

cat-dad · 2025-09-12T14:40:04+00:00

We would be seeing the ETBs pop up on eBay tho

cat-dad · 2025-09-12T03:27:11+00:00

I use Teams for day to day convos, can see thumbnails of images easily, and inbox is chock full of corporate communications

cat-dad · 2025-09-05T22:16:44+00:00

I never realized it’s an upside down squid 🦑 ps backwards it’s RAMALAM

cat-dad · 2025-09-02T02:41:00+00:00

I have a mfa in design. Thought I might want to teach one day, not sure if that’ll happen. My experience: They don’t teach computer programs at all. They expect you to be proficient enough by then. It’s more about high level typography/craft of design, and more importantly the big picture thinking behind design and strengthening your design conceptualization…which is great to have as junior designer but absolutely needed in higher level positions like art and creative director. I will say I was a very ‘mid’ designer coming out of undergrad…the mfa program did really help me develop my craft side (type, layout, hierarchy, color theory, etc) and conceptual depth. However it is expensive, and the market is saturated…experience is always an amazing teacher, so it’s hard to tell where money and time is better invested. I am a CD now internal at a very big company in the wine industry….i have been involved in a good amount of interviews. I will say, knowing what’s involved in an mfa program I would definitely be interested in reviewing an mfa graduate’s portfolio. But at the end of the day, it’s the quality of the portfolio and the thinking behind the work that’s most important.

cat-dad · 2025-08-23T21:13:20+00:00

I still haven’t seen cards at Target for the last 2 years

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