Differ all you want. No child will bankrupt a family at a trading card game store. These are physical goods paid in bulk with provisioning and there are laws for returning them.

Another point of contention is the randomness of packs. The way you play is: You save up to buy the entire set of boosters and already get almost all cards you need for competitive or fun play. The rest you need to trade for or buy individually. It is much more of a social interaction than gambling. The value you get from saving up and trading is easily 10x what you get from opening boosters.

That's why you will never see a bunch of kids queued up in front of a counter frothing from the mouth saying "just... one more!"

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hiccuphippo 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Allowing trading is a big part of it. Most online games never allow trading the things bought with real money, they get tied to your account. I guess as a way to prevent CC fraud but it still contributes to the issue.

	▲	rcxdude 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's a double-edged sword. For the seller, the ideal would be getting people just as addicted but not allowing trading, since that increases the average spend required to get a specific desired pull substantially.
	▲	JasonADrury 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Just to be clear, the biggest problems are associated with games that allow trading.
	▲	nurettin 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Trading wouldn't work due to online game deflation. They have to set you up in order to retain you. When you open a new account, or are a "returning player" you get a bunch of free/easy to get stuff that took someone else a decade to collect.

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GoblinSlayer 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>No child will bankrupt a family at a trading card game store.

Let the child use a separate debit card? Bank cards are personal and work as an authentication factor.

	▲	nurettin 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Let the child use a separate debit card? I remember that cartoon. Was it Richie Rich?

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IshKebab an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

You can't return an opened pack of Pokémon cards and more than you can get your money back for a used lottery ticket. It's absolutely gambling. Low stakes gambling maybe, but it's still gambling.

If you want to allow Pokémon cards and not casinos you have to accept that your rule isn't just "kids can't gamble".