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.
(special circumstances like very old first edition prints still hold value for obvious reasons, but The Pokemon Company can't realistically make profit off of them now that they are out of print)
Currently they aren't able to do so because of a combination of an insane increase in demand and COVID, but ultimately this seems like a temporary problem that fixes itself once they get facilities in order to meet the demand.
The fact that the card pack has a randomness element makes the card pack more valuable in the first place. This is exactly how gamification and random reward schedules drive revenue.
The point of the product is to gamble, not to determine in advance which one has the best outcome or odds.
In much the same way that a casino won't let you hover around and count cards, or watch a machine all day and only play when you've determined that it's about to cache out. They take other countermeasures against that stuff these days but you get the idea.
The manufacturer’s goal is to leverage the addictive behavior associated with gambling to get money while not being restricted in market reach (as to venues, eligible purchasers) or profits by regulations and taxes targeting gambling, sure.
That’s not the buyer’s goal, though, and I see no reason that the manufacturer’s buyer-hostile attempt to hack around laws designed to protect against and provide resources to mitigate exactly the kind of predation it is engaging in deserves particular respect.
> In much the same way that a casino won't let you hover around and count cards
Casinos, by law, where permitted to operate at all, in many jurisdictions wouldn’t let most of the market for the goods in question even on the floor except to make through transit, specifically to protect them from gambling.
If the people that care most about rare cards target them more effectively rather than buying however many packs needed to get them randomly, how can it not?
And, also, if those playing by the rules that the manufacturer set up get less of a “ooh shiny” bump to keep playing by the rules than is designed, again, how can it not?
In the small, it still mostly feels like you're unfairly changing the rules of the game out from underneath the next person to walk in the store. By analogy, it's not ethical to rig someone else's slot machine to steal people's money and pay it out only to you - even if you think slot machines themselves are unethical. Claiming to be be curing them of their gambling addiction seems... convenient.
You know that, and I know that, but legal weenies and regulators go to great pains to make it clear that it's not gambling, as do defenders of the "sport". And to be clear I love me some MtG, so I am not criticizing the model or the industry.
That said, if weighing the packs as a viable strategy became common knowledge and is even a marginally reliable method for gaming the system, then there would be a solid case to be made that the companies that produce that these cards need explicit countermeasures to prevent that strategy.
If they don't, and there is a real secondary market, then there is nothing stopping an FLGS from selling individual packs from a box after having weighed all of the packs. The only way to protect yourself from the game being rigged would be to buy guaranteed unopened boxes.
People who buy Pokemon/MtG cards have an interesting relationship with WotC.
They're usually perfectly willing to buy cards on the secondary market (which doesn't make WotC money) but they're constitutionally unable to play "real" (non-"casual") matches — even in tournaments WotC has no relationship to! — if the cards are https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Proxy_card s.
I've never been clear on what the difference is. Both the secondary market, and proxies, result in perfectly usable cards, and result in WotC making no money from you. But one's acceptable to the community, while the other very much isn't.
I have a feeling it's probably to do with the community having a lot of collectors in it, who want their rare cards to retain value, and who fear that that value would be lost if there's no reason to play with the card, only to hide it away in a binder while playing with a proxy.
I think most people into collectible card games know boosters aren't to be trusted in general.
Thats just my opinion though, I know moral debates like this are highly subjective.
It's not like buying an item at retail can enforce a "terms of service" like a EULA
I'm free to ignore a box if it's dented or damaged. Weighing it to see if it's missing parts (like a return) is perfectly reasonable.
How is that any different?
Your position is ridiculous; if the manufacturer wanted to enforce randomness then they'd need to make the retail units all weigh the same.
Even if you weigh the decks you’re still gambling, as you have no idea what is inside the packs until you break the seal. You’re just cheating to improve your odds.
If you don’t want to gamble then the obvious solution is to buy individual cards and not cheat others out of random decks.
I think it’s more ridiculous that your position is advocating bringing a gram scale into Target with you so that you can weigh cards off the shelf in order to gain a slight advantage.
Actually, he is also free to weigh the packs, as that is completely legally allowed.
There is nothing illegal about that. It is fully within his right, and the manufactures do not call it gambling anyway.
It isn’t illegal to cheat at your local pickup basketball game either, that doesn’t make it a good thing to do.
The manufactures themselves are not setting up terms of service, or gambling rules, that prevent these sorts of things.
Its not cheating anything, when the manufactures are not preventing it and are not saying this is against some gambling rule.
Imagine that I went to a store, identified every booster pack with a rare card in it via weight, and then bought all of them. Then let's imagine someone else walks in. This buyer is a reasonable person, but not savvy enough to know that booster packs with rare cards are easily identified. He buys the packs thinking that his chances of getting a rare card are 5% when they are really 0%.
Do you feel that that was wrong of me to do? Or was it the other buyer's fault for not being smart enough to already know that someone like me would have come along and done what I did?
In this case it is OK, because this isn't gambling, according to what the manufactures claim, and they go to great lengths to claim that it is not gambling.
If it is not covered under gambling laws, and the manufactures declare that all cards have no monetary value, then I see no problem at all.
> Do you feel that that was wrong of me to do?
No, it is not wrong at all, because the manufactures say that it is not gambling. Therefore this is fair game.