Pokemon cards are today's latest ponzi scheme and have an infinite printing supply without any utility or valid use case whatsoever.

They are today's beanie babies and is a complete waste of money. Even stablecoins have a better use case than this over inflated garbage.

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snayan 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's literally a card game. You can argue the utility and use case are stupid, or wildly less than the cost would suggest, but it's silly to say there is no utility, even if most collectors don't play the game.

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rationalist 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's kind of funny to see the Pokemon card vending machines at various grocery stores.

Today I went to a hardware store, and was humourously-surprised to find a Pokemon card vending machine there too.

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torton 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It is gambling, with some valuable "pulls" and intermediate steps that grant a plausible non-gambling veneer (such as having to sell the card on eBay instead of just pocketing money, etc.)

I never see kids using the machine at my local grocery store. I see adults, the same ones that patronize the CA lottery machine located next to the Pokemon machine, loitering while waiting for the next set of packs to "unlock" (they are on a timed release to manage the stock).

It's a depressing sight.

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spike021 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

we have one of those by our office and it's funny how every day it says sold out but there's never really anyone there.

one time we did walk up to it as a few unscrupulous looking guys were hanging out and we figured they're just waiting for a restock. I don't think those vending machines really do anything to prevent people from getting as much as they want.

	▲	wildzzz an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The card vending machines are effectively rate limited, you need to wait to make a purchase. This is so one person can't empty the entire machine, even if they have multiple payment methods.

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jpalawaga 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is an awful take as beanie babies were always predicted to be collectors items but failed to reach that status.

Pokemon cards, on the other hand, are veritable collectors items, like stamps or baseball cards.

Like baseball cards, their value comes from a combination of rarity and nostalgia.

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toast0 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> without any utility or valid use case whatsoever.

Pokemon battles have some amount of entertainment value.

I mean sure, it's glorified cock fighting for kids, but that doesn't diminish the utility of the game as entertainment. It just makes it squishier.

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blharr 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Except very few of the cards that are so expensive are even used in the card game for real battles. And the shiny / fancy ones have plain counterparts that would do the same thing in a battle.

The value is purely artistic. Which is its own value, to be fair. But people aren't buying these expensive cards to use them in the game. They just want them for the art (or simply the rarity)

	▲	bayarearefugee 44 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> The value is purely artistic. Which is its own value, to be fair. But people aren't buying these expensive cards to use them in the game. They just want them for the art (or simply the rarity) I think its pretty much just entirely based on a current hype cycle, not even really art per se, I mean the cards aren't hand drawn or anything, they are mass produced cardboard. Eventually the market will implode like the sneaker resale market did and people will move on to the next thing that gets hyped.

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johnnyanmac 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Infinite theoretical printing supply. In reality, that specific really cool Charizard from my childhood stopped being printed decades ago, and natural wear and tear reduces the supply compared to 1999 (or whenever it was printed). Nostalgia kicks in, demand skyrockets. I don't know why Pokemon specifically did this, but it's far from the first trading card series to have this effect.

As for utility: it's still entertainment. remember that this is a TCG, so there technically is still a formatted game to play with these cards. Even if most effects in older cards have been long irrelevant in competitive formats, other TCG's can have card prices surge due to new strategies being discovered.

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chorsestudios 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Yea that Charizard stopped being printed decades ago; however they have no problem printing cards that look identical to the originals other than a small logo, which many people get and feel no need to acquire the original Charizard. I don't think demand in this case is nostalgia driven - it seems more likely that the heavy presence of scalpers making it difficult for average people to acquire product at MSRP has been causing the demand to skyrocket, in addition to celebrities like Jake Paul hype streaming.

Printing supply is not infinite, theoretical or otherwise. They are printing as much as they can, and currently have a new factory scheduled for construction. Once the factory is online, the supply & demand curve will almost certainly be affected. If it gets to a point where product is abundantly available at MSRP then suddenly the scalpers move to a different market to scalp and long lines of people camping in front of Target overnight dissipate. It will be interesting to see how the market dynamics change once the factory is complete.

	▲	johnnyanmac 36 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> it seems more likely that the heavy presence of scalpers making it difficult for average people to acquire product at MSRP has been causing the demand to skyrocket, in addition to celebrities like Jake Paul hype streaming. Those are definitely factors, but even the most influential celebrity can't sell a turd (see: the insane advertising push for NFT's). There has to be some value in the cards themselves for an influencer to multiply it, then that lack of supply from time makes it easy for scalpers to scalp. >they have no problem printing cards that look identical to the originals other than a small logo, which many people get and feel no need to acquire the original Charizard. Yup. I personally am fine satisfying my nostalgia with some later print edition that is $10 instead of $1000 for some "early print" version. I don't fully understand this value of "I must have the original print!", but that admittedly existed long long before we had social media campaigns to influence such desire.