I worked at Toys R Us. We did Pokémon tournaments. The older guys would show up and try to demolish these little kids, to the point we had to ban them. The kids were there for a good time and a free card, these older guys clearly had inferiority complexes and wanted to punish children.
It's actually a lot more than a few, but thank God it died down. Really peaked during covid. Heard horror stories from delivery drivers saying they had found apple air tags on their vans and people were following their routes looking for them to drop off trading cards.
Unfortunately the pokemon community is a shit show rn. Coop (guy in this video) is a shining star that we all hope to be like but ultimately right now you can't even find pokemon cards in most places with people buying them to flip. To me I've stepped back and am not collecting due to it actually. I'm not paying 2 or 3 times MSRP.
There's always going to be crummy people in the hobby. Having worked at a game store I've seen it. But there are a lot of people who just want the kids to have fun.
Scalpers can get fucked, but the community itself is super nice. My nephew had a similar experience like this video, and the store was full of some of the nicest employees I’ve dealt with.
The store was split up in two, with the second floor being the trading card scene and the first floor being comic book related stuff and action figures. They were so nice I ended up buying some cool comic book stuff just because I liked their vibes
Yeah but those are the scalpers. The bane of any collectible hobby. The real Pokemon community hates those assholes, they are the reason it costs 200 bucks for a booster box, or 2 grand for an Umbreon.
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u/BalmdeBono Feb 10 '25
This may sadden you...