I was waiting for a shipment of some Pokemon Cards today and it got me to thinking how a few minor changes to a multi-billion dollar project could make life easier for millions of customers yet they don't seem to care enough to do so.
For instance, I purchased some packs a few months ago from a streamer since they're kind of hard to come by and close to impossible to find locally. Since they kind of make content out of it, they open the packs for you and then ship out the cards or just the valuable hits your way. Now while I do trust this streamer, I think for us here it's become normal to not need to rely on trust in this technology we've come to know.
The way this could be exploited is that the streamer could replace your cards with other identical cards. Since these cards can be graded, this means that he could take a closer look at what you have and if yours look better, replace his own cards with yours and then send them in for grading. Naturally yours would then on average come back in worse grade, because he has control over them.
This isn't the only place where there's leeway however, the grading company could also do something like this because the cards aren't serialized. The card you see being opened up on stream may not be the card you end up getting in the end.
Such a small issue, placing serial numbers at the bottom of the card, yet they refrain from doing so.
Other factors that plague the physical trading card world are things like re-sealing. Where people carefully open up packs, check if there's something valueable and rare in them, take it out and place something less valueable and then re-seal the packs to re-sell. A simple qr code card inside the packs verifying the contents of it where what they should've been could easily fix this as well but they don't bother with that. They do have a qr code card but it's mainly there to scan for some digital cards that may not be the same as the contents in another game/app.
Naturally things like these are already fixed in the nft world, for instance, our alpha vial sale that's ongoing currently at holozing.com, once that is over people will know that x amount of vials were sold which means only x amount of starter creatures will exist from the alpha vials. Moreso they'll also be serialized so you could tell who the account is to hold the first ever sold vial, who the account is to open the first vial and receive the first Wrackoo for instance and so on. There's immutable history on the cards as well, you'll be able to tell that this Wrackoo that acidyo opened up now belongs to another account, etc.
Either way, it's something I've been thinking of lately and plan to offer to physical cards as well when the time comes that we delve into that, and naturally when the funding allows for it.
It's just baffling to me that giant corporations like this wouldn't go the extra mile to make the trading and collecting scene less scammy. Many collectors/traders don't even think about it or demand more, they've just gotten used to things just being the way they are and accepting it for the way it is. Makes me think about the fiat world and many still not caring to learn or find out what's awaiting them and already ready to be used and taken advantage of.
See I have thought about this for a while but also further down the rabbit hole as well.
Pokémon Products are NOTORIOUS for being wasteful. There massive Premium Collection Boxes are so massive and have like 8 packs in them. Or there metal tins that have like 3 packs in them etc etc.
I wondered for so long why doesn't the Pokémon company (for example in the Metal tins) package them in a way to save space but also include various inserts into the tin for storage. Like think about if you open a tin and then open the packs but now there are dividers and such where you can store your Pokémon cards back inside that same tin they came from.
Serialization is in the same area where there are soo many things that Pokémon Company "could" do to be better but WHY?
Adding a Serial # to each card or adding packaging things would cost them money. But what do they get out of it? Sure we as the end user would get better piece of mind or less wasteful etc etc but Pokémon specifically knows that every set they release right now is going to sell out immediately so they are not worried about losing customers or not selling their products so they don't NEED to innovate or change things to bring people back to buy their products.
Yeah them not caring is probably the main reason to a lot of customer disatisfaction.
Dunno, it being a japanese company and all kind of makes me wanna believe they'd be thorough about stuff so it feels like an extra disappointment than if it was just another company from somewhere else.
Yeah but the original Japanese company handles the bigger Pokemon Licensing and such but there is a American/English company doing the rest... and us Americans are lazy and greedy :)
Curtesy of AI:
In Japan: Pokémon cards are created, designed, and first released by The Pokémon Company (TPC), which is a joint venture between Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures Inc. They handle the original Japanese sets.
Outside Japan: The English-language (and other international versions) are produced by The Pokémon Company International (TPCi). That’s a subsidiary of TPC that’s headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, USA, and London, UK.
So:
The Japanese sets are the originals.
TPCi adapts and translates them for English and other languages, sometimes changing card art, names, release timing, or even the set structure to fit Western markets.
Wizards of the Coast used to handle English cards from 1999–2003, but since 2003, it’s all been done in-house by The Pokémon Company International.
Also the people autodownvoting you are starting to really piss me off lol Like with my such a small vote amount.. When I vote/heart a comment of yours.. you don't even get it do you? it just goes to those people?
If you look at the stake of those downvoters, they have hardly any HP anyway.
The biggest one barely has 1K HP. So the downvotes have almost zero impact.
so it's also because I have little HivePower then as well. Because my 100% upvote is worth 0.019 and counting up the downvotes of 0.005, 0.003, 0.002 that is 0.01 so half of my upvote.
I've been giving my own comments some small votes to counter them so whoever votes them naturally wouldn't lost out curaiton rewards, but kinda been forgetting about it and the list of crazies has seem to have gotten longer lately, lol.
Probably best to save your vp for other users however! Appreciate it.
Yes, exactly.
well shoot haha. But that makes me feel better that as I grow at least I can start to actually tip acidyo lol
As someone who collects Pokemon, One Piece even Digimon and DragonBall cards but just for fun though, not too expensive ones, always raw or by buying a booster box just for the nostalgia and great art work and based on my research i realised the following:
The reason that they don't do what you tell them, which is quite easy to implement, is because even if most of us want more affordable cards and believe that these policies will help, in reality, a lot of scalpers have actually helped increase the demand and value.
Ofc there should be measures against all of these but we can actually do a lot more than we think.
For instance, i keep hearing that some sets and cards are nearly impossible to buy because the prices are like x2-3-4. Simply don't buy, or buy the same card in a Japanese or Korean version. Usually it's half the price. I decided to complete a master set and most of the newest English version ones were extremely expensive. I decided to pursue an older Japanese one, the artwork is great, the cards are half the price of the English ones or even cheaper and booster box was only 60$! In general though, as people we tend to look for the newest sets or the most "marketed" cards, or the most "investable" ones ;)
I think the big problem is that the really valuable cards are already very old. Pokémon cards have been around for at least 20 years. Even though QR codes were invented in 1994, it took many years before we as consumers actually started using them. The first QR code I saw was probably in 2012. At that time, we only saw it as a simple way to share links with each other. It was only in the last two years that my parents more or less understood the purpose of QR codes.
I naturally agree with you that QR codes can be used to track the supply chain of collector's items. I would even go further and install NFC chips. For example, you could assign an ID to each card and install the NFC chip in it. This would eliminate the problem of having to scan a code. Of course, the problem now is how to protect end consumers from scams, because collectors can now scan the packs before buying them. But that's a whole other issue that I don't want to go into further.
The most probably thing is that majority of people don't ask/think about that so there's none or little voices asking this and why would a company invest money for something not necessary? Saving all the serials and such requires additional infrastructure, save the data "forever", like this instead they just print and that's it... A blockchain like hive would suit that task but I can't see big corps moving to blockchains🤣
To begin with, the packs not being available in your local store, that you need to go to streamers for packs is already a problem of itself, and even if they become available, scalpers will just take all of it, which is another problem. One thing I hate about card collection these days is that it has stopped being a child's hobby.
I've never really been into collecting cards until NFTs came along, but that does seem like it would be something fairly easy for them to implement.
This post has been shared on Reddit by @memess through the HivePosh initiative.
I wonder what the cost impact would be to add the QR codes to packs and serial numbers on each card. Perhaps they have considered it but decided against it because the cost impact would be too much?
Or could be like @cherokee4life said and they simply don't care because they don't need to innovate or change because people are already buying the product like crazy.
It's really funny how NFTs have introduced "serial numbers" implicitly and therefore are able to show their physical counterparts how to do things properly. After all, the stuff you're describing (although it feels it's a pretty specific case) couldn't happen with NFTs. Sadly enough, I don't think that any producer of physical cards would ever do that, as it would require quite a substantial change in their production cycles...
It sounds like the most logical solution. I think the issue will come from a possible devaluation of any cards that don't contain SN. The QR sticker inside the pack is also a good idea, but it has to be made in a way where it cannot be faked.
Of course later a non-serialized card can become more valuable - being the older and hence more valuable. But as with any change, the first reaction is almost always negative.
Sterilization like much fiat paper-money has would also help with making it so that fakes are harder to make/sell.
So if banks care enough to have it to make it easier to track etc, it seems like cards which are often quite valuable could benefit from the same.
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STOPirl this is very common
I agree, serialization would make a huge difference. It seems like such a simple fix but companies usually don’t care as long as people keep buying stuff but I do agree with you
This information is very important. Thank you.
Web3 is the perfect example of solving fraud gaps by design.
yea.. that is too bad. I hope u don't get cheated at all! 😉😎😁🤙
How cool would it be if Pokemon would use Blockchain for trading cards to see the Trading History.