Current Events > Wal-Mart Allegedly Suspending Trading Card Game Sales

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://bleedingcool.com/games/wal-mart-allegedly-suspending-trading-card-game-sales/

Sources have alleged that Wal-Mart, a huge retailer in the United States and elsewhere across the globe, has ordered vendors not to stock trading cards of any sort for the foreseeable future. This mandate comes after purported "inappropriate customer behavior" and increased demand, though nothing has been said on precisely what that behavior has been.

Gotta be the scalpers coming in early morning and buying out all the cards. Pretty sure there are pushy customers harassing employees too. & abuse of the self-checkout like scanning and buying one packet but they're taking home 20 packets.

https://youtu.be/tZVdR19E5mU
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Scalping should be a crime

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sneakysnake posted...

https://bleedingcool.com/games/wal-mart-allegedly-suspending-trading-card-game-sales/

Sources have alleged that Wal-Mart, a huge retailer in the United States and elsewhere across the globe, has ordered vendors not to stock trading cards of any sort for the foreseeable future. This mandate comes after purported "inappropriate customer behavior" and increased demand, though nothing has been said on precisely what that behavior has been.

Gotta be the scalpers coming in early morning and buying out all the cards. Pretty sure there are pushy customers harassing employees too. & abuse of the self-checkout like scanning and buying one packet but they're taking home 20 packets.

CCG card scalpers are some of the worst human beings you will ever meet.

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Lucky it's not us employees that are being harassed. I feel bad for those Anderson reps who com in the mornings. That said, fuck scalpers and resellers.
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I'm surprised they would suspend sales completely, but yeah trading card buying has been out of control.

I'm glad it sounds like they're setting up a better system of selling them so that scalpers don't just grab everything.

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Finally, a cause I can get behind, Ive been on the fence between this or global warming

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Scalping is capitalism

DirkDiggles posted...

Lucky it's not us employees that are being harassed. I feel bad for those Anderson reps who com in the mornings. That said, fuck scalpers and resellers.

Oh Walmart doesn't get trading cards as part of their regular stock? Interesting.
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sLaCkEr408___RJ posted...

Scalping is capitalism

A parasite middleman between you and the product that charges you more for absolutely no benefit to yourself? Sounds about right!

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Don't know if there's any toy collectors here, but scalping has gotten worse there as well.

They released a new G.I. Joe line last year with many of the figures exclusive to Target....and they're $20 figures being scalped for up to $160 online

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End stage capitalism right over here. Anything can make money if people are willing to buy it.

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G.I Jimbo > G.I Joe.
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cuh posted...

They should just stick to online orders

I can understand their frustration over having like 20 scalpers showing up right before opening on delivery days and causing trouble and drama

Wal-Mart's online ordering system is notoriously shit though, and it doesn't seem like they want to invest any money towards making it better.

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RchHomieQuanChi posted...

Wal-Mart's online ordering system is notoriously shit though

this is something i agree with... walmart screwed me out of the chance of getting a ps5. every time the button was greyed out a second after clicking when the chance came up.
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Only in America

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The TCG scalpers have started hanging around stores like walmart and target scoping them out, pestering employees and other customers to try to learn when they restock the cards, and gathering and sharing intel on scalper discord servers.

all so they can buy up all the cards to resell online.

No wonder the stores have had enough of it.

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I remember at the height of the amiibo fad I stopped by best buy right when it opened and there was a group of around 5 people standing out front and they rushed in the store as soon as the doors opened. I went in to get some video game that had just launched and they were all crowded around the amiibo section. People are so greedy and foolish these days just trying to make a quick buck at the expense of other people.

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Theres also a lot of stealing. Customers and even employees exchanging content and passing premium packs as cheaper ones without cashiers noticing.

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Wetterdew posted...

The TCG scalpers have started hanging around stores like walmart and target scoping them out, pestering employees and other customers to try to learn when they restock the cards, and gathering and sharing intel on scalper discord servers.

all so they can buy up all the cards to resell online.

No wonder the stores have had enough of it.

IMO, this wouldn't even be a problem if they set quantity limits.

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Lol my sister and her bf bought over $200 worth of Pokemon cards and some kid offered over $2K to buy the cards. Gotta blame the buyers too imo. They said that they usually hosts shows on Instagram/other sites for bets on opening the cards and it's legit becoming a business.

My local Target even banned anybody from lining up in front of stores too. She usually tells me that the lines are nearly like Black Friday long which is nuts. The craze ain't gonna be over anytime soon unless Walmart and other retailers will do this for now on.

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Theres also a high theft rate when it comes to TCG's in general, because of how easy it is to slip them into your pocket.

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Lol my sister and her bf bought over $200 worth of Pokemon cards and some kid offered over $2K to buy the cards. Gotta blame the buyers too imo. They said that they usually hosts shows on Instagram/other sites for bets on opening the cards and it's legit becoming a business.

Wow, just wow. I should get in on this but my town is bust unless I sold em online.

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Glad I play MTG. A refind game for a more civilized population.

But forreal I feel for the pokemon and yugioh nerds that just wanna honestly collect/play the game.

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FabIe posted...

Glad I play MTG. A refind game for a more civilized population.

But forreal I feel for the pokemon and yugioh nerds that just wanna honestly collect/play the game.

This happens with mtg too. Or people will weigh packs, buy packs, take out the rare, reseal and return them, etc

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SothaSil posted...

This happens with mtg too. Or people will weigh packs, buy packs, take out the rare, reseal and return them, etc

I've only ever really seen that in sketchy areas tbh. I don't really buy cards from big box stores anyway. There's an LGS near my local Target that's always stovked up on MTG.

Weighing packs doesn't do anything for Magic either, btw. Foils are generally worthless because any card in the set can be foil. Also for yugioh it's not beneficial to scale anymore because you get a foil in every standard set pack too. Pokemon also included weighted cards in packs without foils. Scaling is really a relic of the late 2000s and early 2010s.

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The Fred Meyer I shop at had a pokemon tcg vending machine thing.

They stopped stocking cards in it for a month then took it out.

I saw it up for repair or restocking once a few months ago and there were 5-6 people standing around the maintenance tech just waiting for him to be finished. It was nuts.

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Garioshi posted...

A parasite middleman between you and the product that charges you more for absolutely no benefit to yourself? Sounds about right!

The benefit is receiving services for an agreed upon price

I seriously don't understand the sudden surge of these card sales. It's a nightmare at my local target. I have to literally protect the vendors when they stock our aisles. We get lines of people OUTSIDE AN AISLE and I have to let a single person it at a time, limit them to 1 pack, and make sure they don't come back. It's a waste of all of our time.

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That sucks for authentic honest fans

Bloodmoon77 posted...

I seriously don't understand the sudden surge of these card sales. It's a nightmare at my local target. I have to literally protect the vendors when they stock our aisles. We get lines of people OUTSIDE AN AISLE and I have to let a single person it at a time, limit them to 1 pack, and make sure they don't come back. It's a waste of all of our time.

The sudden surge is that there has been a big increase of interest in the TCG's because of the pandemic and because of that some cards are worth a fortune if you manage to pull them. Also there seems to be a lot more "limited time exclusives" with TCG's lately. Think of the amiibo's when there was store exclusive ones. It's fucking insane people going crazy over literal piece of card board, I'm glad I dropped it back in college. Yugioh and MTG ate up thousands of dollars to stay competitive.

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Some people literally follow a vendor from store to store to take the cards as they stock them.

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Prestoff posted...

Theres also a high theft rate when it comes to TCG's in general, because of how easy it is to slip them into your pocket.

lol, when I was a kid and Pokmon cards first came out the Walmart near me had all their booster packs in some plastic bin in an aisle in the back and I used to steal so many of them

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DirkDiggles posted...

Lucky it's not us employees that are being harassed. I feel bad for those Anderson reps who com in the mornings. That said, fuck scalpers and resellers.

These people even stalk the reps back to their car, snap pictures of their car license, then threaten to cancel/blackmail them to sell.

I work at a Walmart and we have this problem. Somehow these guys always seem to find out where and when the vendor is showing up at stores. One step away from being stalkers.

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sLaCkEr408___RJ posted...

Scalping is capitalism

Yes, no scalping in socialism and communism. Purely something that exists in capitalism.

Good, but I doubt there will be a better system. Online is even worse.

These people buy these up and throw them right up on their eBay stores immediately. It's not just TCGs. All collectibles. Walmart had a white Vision GitD Funko and that shit never came back past the initial 2 minutes it was up.

The sad thing is that they don't sell as well as people think. People are just stocking up like morons.

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RchHomieQuanChi posted...

IMO, this wouldn't even be a problem if they set quantity limits.

Target not only has quantity limits but they only allow purchases behind guest sevices at a specfic time every Friday. We still get issues with people flashing weapons and fighting.

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Can I ask what exactly caused this? Is a certain type of pokemon or yugioh or even magic pack with a lot nowadays or what not?

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itachi15243 posted...

Can I ask what exactly caused this? Is a certain type of pokemon or yugioh or even magic pack with a lot nowadays or what not?

The dumbass paul brothers opening a fake box on youtube.

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I've apparently completely missed this fad

People are buying trading cards again? What kind? Why?

Yeah this is why I don't play trading cards unless it's with a group of friends or it's digital. Desperate moral lacking assholes are particularly abound in this community

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I still have an ass load of old Pokmon, yugioh, and magic gathering cards, wonder if theyre worth anything

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Made two grand selling my old collection just this week. I've done enough research to know they weren't worth nearly that much, just threw it up on Facebook market asking for offers.

The market is fuckin insane right now.

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That explains the cards behind the service counter last week

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Thats why I'm digging Target's new system of only releasing cards on Fridays at 8 am and only one pack/box per person per day. Fair to the collectors and screws the scalpers/flippers. But man these lines are getting longer and longer, the store I was at today easily had over 100 people waiting, it looked almost like Black Friday lines. Manager came out, came around the corner to take a peek at the line and you could hear her audibly say holy crap. Last week there was maybe 30 max in line.

metralo posted...

Target not only has quantity limits but they only allow purchases behind guest sevices at a specfic time every Friday. We still get issues with people flashing weapons and fighting.

There was an article I read earlier that in Wisconsin, they had to call the cops cause some guys jumped another guy after he bought his cards and the guy getting attacked pulled out his gun. Ridiculous.


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RchHomieQuanChi posted...

Don't know if there's any toy collectors here, but scalping has gotten worse there as well.

They released a new G.I. Joe line last year with many of the figures exclusive to Target....and they're $20 figures being scalped for up to $160 online

We tried starting a forum...
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/1546-toys-and-collectibles

Toy isles are bare due to scalpers. Forget finding anything like a NECA TMNT, Star Wars, Transformers, or MOTU Origins figures. Its not going to happen. If you find that 4 pack of disguised Ninja Turtles then youve struck gold. Two years ago I had to stalk a Walmart for a month to get a G1 Soundwave. I had to keep watching online for a year for the week they finally got released, then I had to watch my stores inventory on brickseek for like a month to see when their shipment came in, then I had to visit the store every morning to see when they put out the stock. Mine had been on the shelf for like 15 minutes when I bought it. By 6pm the next day they were all gone. Walmart never restocked. You literally had about a 24 hour window to grab it or lose out forever.

And that was before the pandemic. That shit aint even hitting the shelves now. Theres a video out there of a target employee buying up all the TMNT stuff directly from the NECA rep as hes stocking the shelf. These toys are going from the stock room directly to eBay.


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legendarylemur posted...

Yeah this is why I don't play trading cards unless it's with a group of friends or it's digital. Desperate moral lacking assholes are particularly abound in this community

Yeah it's not even just scalpers, when I was grinding the MTG tournament scene 4 or 5 years ago there were always multiple people who would get their shit stolen if they didn't have their pack properly secured.

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Scalping should be a criminalized.

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