Scalping is not a new issue. Whenever there is a rare collectible or a new console coming out, it’s often already sold out everywhere but eBay for a ludicrous cost. Nowhere is it worse than the trading card game community. Series like Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic: The Gathering,and especially Pokémonhave fallen victim to the scalping epidemic. To truly understand how bad it has gotten, we need to look at where the problem first began.

While scalping has always been an issue, it has gotten worse since the COVID-19 pandemic. With people locked in their houses, the gaming community saw an influx of newcomers. Alongside the newcomers came people who saw an opportunity for easy profit.

Major YouTube creators and Twitch streamers popularized opening packs of Pokémon cards, hoping to get rare cards worth thousands of dollars. Creators would drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on buying packs to open on stream. This boost in attention is what helped grow the trading card scene from a simple card game to a lucrative goldmine.

With the history outlined, the problems begin to show. The desire to get an expensive card created a gambler’s paradise. To find the exact value of these cards, the card must be rare, and it must have good grading. The main group behind this grading system is Professional Sports Authenticator. Their scores range from 1 to 10. A 10 on that scale is perfect in print alignment and quality. Pokémoncard sets often contain multiple cards worth a few hundred dollars, while Magic: The Gatheringsets have a select few worth a few thousand dollars without even needing to go through the grading process.

With a low barrier of entry due to how inexpensive non-scalped packs are, scalpers buy a store’s stock to either open it themselves for rare cards or sell said stock for exorbitant prices. In the case of Pokémon’sPhantasmal Force set, scalpers preordered all available stock and sold it on secondary resale sites for up to $300 for a single booster box, even though no product was shipped to them.

It is not uncommon to find videos circulating of packs still on the shelves, torn open. Even the organization behind grading cards, Professional Sports Authenticator, has been accused of lowering card grades and, after buying those sabotaged cards, changing their grades to sell them back at an exponential increase.

With mass instability in the community, fans of these series have been in an uproar. There are frequent discussions on websites like Reddit about how it has become harder to enjoy their chosen card game due to the high prices of cards. The struggle to build a good deck cheaply varies from game to game.

For example, when looking at Yu-Gi-Oh,the most powerful card combinations range from $200-$300. In contrast, the top 32 most powerful decks in Magic: The Gathering,on average, cost about $400. The second most popular deck in the last two months alone is $608. The TCGcommunity at large has felt that the cost of the hobby is killing the enjoyment of the series, as put by user Efreet0 on Reddit, “Unfortunately, turning games into fake economies has ruined the hobby for the average person.”

However, fans have not been taking the problem lightly. For the case of Magic: The Gathering, they have made a new format of play called the Pauper. The Pauper format only allows the cheap common cards to be used in a deck, meaning the prices rarely go above $100. E

very time a new game extension comes out, the community rallies together, so Wizards of the Coast knows that there is an issue with the release. Some even call for boycotts, though they rarely get off the ground. Which leads us to…

The companies behind TCGs have been handling the situation in drastically different ways. Wizards of the Coast, the producers of Magic: The Gathering, have been working against the community as of late with a controversial change to their card production method.

Originally, cards were made in a print-by-demand style system that, while time consuming for the consumer, made it so that cards were readily available. As of January 2024, they switched to a limited-print-run style for their Secret Lair card sets to save shipping times. As a result, the scalping market boomed due to the newfound scarcity of cards.

In contrast, Creatures Inc., the parent company of Pokémon, has been fighting against the rising scalper epidemic. For their Phantasmal Force expansion, they cancelled thousands of orders because of suspected bot activity. Alongside this, there has been a noted priority to reprint cards and release more packs to combat scalpers buying out stock before the average consumer can. The Pokémon Center storefront has started removing cards’ packaging before they sell them, so scalpers have a harder time selling their card packs. While this is a Japan-only store focused on selling the merchandise, other stores have been following its example. Independent TCG shops have been limiting purchases of packs to combat scalpers buying their whole stock.

Despite the efforts of retailers and the community, fighting scalpers has been a losing game. With online purchases becoming more commonplace, scalpers have programs set up to automatically purchase stock the moment it becomes available. Trust in the grading organization has collapsed due to its own market manipulation. Even some of the companies producing the cards have been creating artificial scarcity to boost their sales numbers. There is little stopping scalpers from buying products before everyone else has a chance to.

The true heart of the problem is that fans have changed priorities. What was once a hobby for people to play together became a value-first cash grab for a sizable segment of the community, to the detriment of those who wish to play the game. Even with the change of mindset, it isn’t an unmanageable situation. For fans of these series who wish to stop the scalping epidemic, the best way to fight against it is not buying cards from these people in the first place.

Even if you are willing to spend the cash these scammers demand, preventing them from getting a return on their cards is the best way to stunt their efforts. Some members of the community have been taking it a step further by stealing card packs out of these people’s carts. With constant community vigilance, this epidemic can be managed.