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Target stops selling Pokémon cards in store, citing safety concerns
- ______- 5y agoIt would be cool if the cards could be NFT'd[0] as in some sort of digital collectible that you could own. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fungible_token https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fungible_token
- whateveracct 5y agoWhy? People want the physical card.
- klmadfejno 5y agoAs a kid, nobody had a clue how to play the game properly. But the pokemon tcg video game forced you to play it properly, and was pretty fun. Digital formats have appeal.
- NoOneNew 5y agoI was a kid when Pokemon first hit the states. All of us that collected them knew how to play. The game wasn't difficult and it already attracted a nerdy crowd to boot. At that, "house rules" are typically more fun than original. A digital version would stifle that.
- wincy 5y agoMe and my friends went to Toys’R’Us every Saturday for the weekly tournament back in the late 90s, we all knew how to play properly.
- whateveracct 5y agoBut the TCG game let you get any card in the game without paying extra or there being limits to ownership. That's a good digital format, and adding NFTs to it provides no value-add. Probably negative value-add.
- klmadfejno 5y agoI think I agree. The problem with a traditional TCG is that there's a small set of cards. One could imagine a really cool NFT based game with only unique cards, and permadeath rules that cause you to actually lose the card when used or lost or whatever.
- Jarwain 5y agoMaybe treat the NFT as a license of ownership that must be transferred if the card is traded, and let the owner of the NFT reprint the card for a fee in case the card is damaged or otherwise lost
- gspr 5y agoWhat problem does this solve?
- cle 5y agoThe card's ownership is public knowledge? Like, if the physical card is stolen or forged, then it's trivial to see that it's illegitimate. (Not an NFT expert, correct me if I'm wrong please.)
- gspr 5y agoHow does it do this?
- cle 5y agoI assume by using the private key to sign a message. If the card holder doesn't also hold the NFT, they can't transfer the NFT to the buyer. My understanding is that NFTs are useful when the cost of preventing theft, forgeries, etc. is higher than the cost of protecting a private key. If "ownership" is agreed to require proof of holding the NFT as well, then it's not good enough to steal some cards from Target, you have to also steal the private key for each card, or coerce the owner to transfer the NFTs to you, etc. I guess we could think of it as a kind of two factor auth?
- gspr 5y agoYou're describing a contract. But specifically done digitally. We've been able to do that since the 70s. What do NFTs add?
- swiley 5y agoThe reason I used to buy these was to play the game with my siblings and friends. If I wanted to have a computer involved I would have just played the official video game (which is pretty cool too, but only some of my friends enjoyed that.)
- gspr 5y agoNFTs are pure, unadulterated insanity.
- kizer 5y agoFrom what I’ve read and come to understand, NFTs may one day become meaningful if they are legally recognized as a claim to ownership. Then, they can serve as a decentralized, easily sold form of copyright. To sell IP for example now, you need a bunch of lawyers and everything is all on paper anyways. There’s nothing tangible to exchange; it’s all dependent on contracts, lawyers. NFTs could expedite this process according to people whom I’ve asked what possible usefulness NFTs could have.
- gspr 5y agoBullshit. You're describing a system to replace the paper and ink part of copyright, at best. What you're proposing would still need law behind it to be meaningful as a replacement for copyright itself. So then what's the point? Only the law stops you from using IP without permission today. And only the law will stop you with what you propose.
- im3w1l 5y ago> So then what's the point? It's useful to keep track of ownership of digital goods. And if you did it in a centralized way there are issues with that. We have seen with Amazon and Apple that there can be issues with ownership getting revoked, or services being discontinued as with Google music. It may also not be transferrable. And if you instead make the Government keep track of who owns what there can be some privacy concerns.
- manigandham 5y agoOwnership means nothing without adjudication and enforcement, and that's still centralized which means ownership is centralized. NFTs don't change anything, they're not real ownership.
- ironmagma 5y agoThat would be good for Digimon - arguably what that brand should have been all along.
- dehrmann 5y agoGood luck recovering those NFTs you bought and forgot about 20 years ago. At least people's old MTG cards might still be in the back of a childhood closed.
- Djvacto 5y agoMy local wal-mart recently moved their cards to behind the customer service desk. I had seen wal-mart TCG sections completely trashed (littered with open packaging, or boxes torn open and partially scavenged), and I know that even without this destructive method, there are other ways to "cheat" by weighing packs with a scale. Seems like locking them in a case like video games is probably in the future for most physical stores that continue carrying them? Even before fistfights over cards from this year.
- morsch 5y agoYou can determine whether a pack is likely to contain a valuable card by weighing it? Wow.
- swiley 5y agoOh wow I didn't think about that but yeah! the valuable ones tend to have holographic film and other weirdness that would make them slightly heavier.
- Djvacto 5y agohttps://indoorgamebunker.com/how-to-weigh-pokemon-packs/ https://indoorgamebunker.com/how-to-weigh-pokemon-packs/ Yep! It's fascinating, aside from how it shouldn't be done. Cards that are holographic seem to weigh more.
- whateveracct 5y agoIt must suck to be a competitor now. The good cards tended to be pricey to buy in eaches before this mania.
- Djvacto 5y agoI played some of these for fun with a few friends (more playtime in Yu-gi-oh than pokemon, granted). What I've found fun, especially as the game has evolved to well past the number of mechanics we would nostalgically like to play with, is to build sets of balanced decks that we can each randomly play to pick with, facing pre-builts of similar power against each other, so it's back to being a game of chance and basic strategy at playtime. We do miss (and sometimes use online players to do so) playing with deck design as part of the competition, since using digital cards we aren't as limited by wallets.
- whateveracct 5y agoThis reminds me of those championship decks they sell every year (with different backs so you can't use the cards officially.) Playing with a pre-built pro deck is super fun. It's amazing how fast they set up with their little engines.
- FalconSensei 5y agoI did that with Magic. It was super fun, specially because I sucked at deck building and also didn't want to spent all my money trying to get cards that could (not) be useful to me
- AfterShave 5y agoAs a dedicated Johnny player in any kind of game. Having to shell out for that 1/10 amazing win before trying something new is harsh. I thank the internet for proxies and fan clients.
- mitchdoogle 5y agoIs there something preventing stores from selling these for more money?
- neaden 5y agoThey are being stolen, so selling them for more would just make it even more likely to get shoplifted.
- dariusj18 5y agoThat's not what the article is talking about. "in response to reports of violent confrontations related to the collectibles"
- MisterBastahrd 5y agoMRP and MAP mostly. Retailers usually have agreements with vendors to sell at the manufacturer's retail price and to advertise at the manufacturer's advertised price. This came out of a 2007 Supreme Court decision: Leegin Leather Products vs. PSKS Inc. I only know about this because I used to purchase a lot of cigars from a large volume discounter and they were forced to raise prices dramatically due to the outcome of that ruling. Pokemon cards are a gambling racket. No manufacturer is going to be happy with their direct customers raising the bar to entry on said racket.
- shadowgovt 5y agoMAP is a factor online too. Google Shopping, Amazon marketplace... All of them have MAP as an input field for data providers that describe products they make. In Google's case, it creates a floor on the value that Shopping will list for the price of a product (though you can sometimes find cheaper via a non-Shopping main page search, or by going through the main portal of an online retailer).
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Joker_vD 5y ago
- justinlink 5y agoFor the tiny amount of revenue this product likely generates for Target, and that the relationship with the manufacturer is probably of little concern to them makes a lot of sense. Factoring in theft, safety issues, and associate time spent they have to be selling this product at a significant loss.
- thrav 5y agoIt gets people in the stores though. That’s valuable.
- djrogers 5y agoOnly to a certain extent. If they got an extra 50 people into a store on a drop day, is that really going to help much when weighed against the downsides? My target has 50 people walk in and out several times an hour, so unless these campers are buying a bunch of other stuff while there, there's not a lot of value in it.
- tomlagier 5y agoThese cards are marketed at kids, and kids also buy junk food and soda which are high-markup items.
- scruple 5y agoI was at my Target very early last week to pick up gift cards for a friend. There was a line of at least 3 dozen adults queued up outside to get in for the TCGs. They had special lines for them to check out, also filled with adults. Kids are at school while these booster packs are being bought out...
- 29athrowaway 5y agoLet them fight. Then collect stats for their performance, manufacture cards for each one of them and make a trading card game. Then wait until people fight over those cards and do it again.
- computronus 5y agoMetamon?
- 29athrowaway 5y agoスーパーモンスター Supermarket monsters
- schemescape 5y ago> MLB, NFL, NBA and Pokémon trading cards It’s not just Pokémon cards, apparently.
- mdoms 5y agoI have seen so many things skyrocket in value over the past year, from Pokeman cards to classics cars to houses, cryptocurrencies, tech stocks and on and on. Some of these are assets and some are collectibles and some are consumables. But none of it seems to be driven by general inflation. Have we seen this kind of scenario in economics before? Is this a known phenomenon? I don't know jack about economics, but to be perfectly honest it's making me very anxious - not because of the high prices, but because I know moments of exuberance are often paid for in the not too distant future.
- Jerry2 5y ago> Have we seen this kind of scenario in economics before? Is this a known phenomenon? Sure, Tulip mania. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
- alisonkisk 5y agoThat wasn't caused by printing money like today's events.
- __turbobrew__ 5y agoThe Fed goes brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
- jhwhite 5y agoI was in Target a week ago and the sign in ours said they're limiting packs to 1 per customer. I had no idea it was over safety concerns.
- w0mbat 5y agoI heard the problem was not theft, it was big guys showing up at store opening and bulk-buying the whole stock of cards, threatening staff with violence if not allowed to do so. Then the supplemental problem of normal customers complaining all day that the cards are sold out.
- fighterpilot 5y agoThe original loot-boxes
- AndrewOMartin 5y ago"We prefer the term surprise mechanics" https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmcumeds/1846/184606.htm https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmcu...
- fighterpilot 5y agoSocial media is exploiting the same thing in the brain (dopamine response)