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Extremely Normal and Well Adapted Adults Go to COSTCO to Buy Pokemon Cards (for their kids, of course)

I'm neither normal nor am I well adapted but I don't buy Pokemon cards.

I do have those Pokemon encyclopedia although.
 
Scalpers are absolutely ruining this hobby.

Preorders for the next English set that come out in March sold out in literal seconds when they became available like a week and a half ago.
 
digital_ghost said:
I threw out my whole collection as a kid because my pastor convinced me they had evil spirits.

Seeing graded cards go for good sums of money today makes me regret throwing my Pokémon collection away.
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judging by this video I'd say he was right,
people look like a bunch of hyena's circling a carcas
 
natjjohn said:
Not sure why Costco didn't have a limit on it. Having gotten Pokémon cards from Costco a few months ago and there was a limit.

Also, it's still pretty easy to get Pokémon cards so this has no impact on the kids.

Gaf has turned into this:

wont-somebody-please-think-of-the-children-think-of-the-children.gif
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One of the videos said "limit of 10".

But you don't even have to think of the children (not that you shouldn't) to point out how ludicrously ridiculous this behavior is. Totally beneath human society, and really worrisome for if stuff ever hits the fan, this is thee rough age of men that will be set forth to try to defend and rebuild.

Yeah...
 
Why would a store drop a pallet of "ANYTHING" and then let people act like savages for them? It doesn't take that much effort to keep the cards and patrons in line, just don't drop the items like rice from a helicopter over a refugee camp.


I love people but I hate this behavior.
 
Soapbox Killer said:
Why would a store drop a pallet of "ANYTHING" and then let people act like savages for them? It doesn't take that much effort to keep the cards and patrons in line, just don't drop the items like rice from a helicopter over a refugee camp.


I love people but I hate this behavior.
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It's Costco.

The floor clerks only care about inventory and pallets. And when it's time to put out product, all they care about is dropping it and bolting to the next pallet.

These people have zero consideration for etiquette or product knowledge. Nor do the managers or customer service desk. Costco is a kind of store where the employees are purely transactional.... put out product, check them out at a cashier, or refund them a the customer service desk. That's it. I dont even remember Costco stores ever do a Max Limit on purchases. I've seen it online. But not in store.

The only people who have knowledge and some form of control and organization actually comes from the departments like optical, car shop, prescription drugs who have trained people and their products arent pallet drops.
 
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Heimdall_Xtreme said:
Here in Mexico we criticize them a lot, but they are stupid because that food spoils in a few days and they lose money.
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AJUMP23 said:
What is the food? What do the Mexicans crave?
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I was wondering that too. What was the occasion for a made scramble for some kind of cake?

It doesn't make sense for mad mobbing because Costco is a store that typically has shit loads of that stuff coming in to restock, especially deals which can last more than a week. Some are 2-4 weeks long. More pallet drops will come another day. They might even have more in the back but the stock guys will get around to bringing those on the floor tomorrow.

There's a possibility these are store owners buying dirt cheap product to resell too like a scalper at their store or restaurant. You can always tell by how much they buy.
 
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Heimdall_Xtreme said:
Here in Mexico we criticize them a lot, but they are stupid because that food spoils in a few days and they lose money.
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StreetsofBeige said:
I was wondering that too. What was the occasion for a made scramble for some kind of cake?

It doesn't make sense for mad mobbing because Costco is a store that typically has shit loads of that stuff coming in to restock, especially deals which can last more than a week. Some are 2-4 weeks long. More pallet drops will come another day. They might even have more in the back but the stock guys will get around to bringing those on the floor tomorrow.

There's a possibility these are store owners buying dirt cheap product to resell too like a scalper at their store or restaurant. You can always tell by how much they buy.
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It's a King cake, because in Mexico there is a date to celebrate the Three Wise Men.

So we celebrate that day with that King cake which is a good price, but those people come and triple the price for the holiday, that's why they do that.
 
Its all up to the floor manager on how to handle it. Most don't care and just let the pigs get at it. (nvm, giving pigs a bad name, actual pigs are actually organized when feeding from a slopbin)

Best I saw was where they handed out tickets beforehand to the people in line, and already pre-filled the carts to max, and each ticket let you take one of the carts.
 
Yeah after the new app got me back into it I flirted with the idea of getting some 151 cards but nah ain't nobody got time for that. Damn it's like it's even worse than when I was a kid, and that was insanity.
 
Not sure what's more retarded: People that do this shit on the videos, or the people willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a piece or carton.

Also didn't even know this was still a thing. Seems to be even more of a thing now than it was for me in the 90s.
 
Capitalism has failed us. It's not the people's fault. The prices should have been so high as not to create such a demand frenzy.
 
navii said:
Capitalism has failed us. It's not the people's fault. The prices should have been so high as not to create such a demand frenzy.
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Costcos mandate is low prices and low profit margins where they max out at about a 15% margin. That's it. So when a supplier sells it to them at Price X, Costco only marks it up a bit. It creates wild swings in value the bigger the starting gap between cost and price. Other stores would jack it up big but Costco won't.

Clothing and shoes are good examples of categories with traditionally high mark ups. That's why jeans at a store costs $100 but similar jeans at Costco same brand are $25. The jeans cost each store probably only about $20 each. So that's why you see huge differences in prices between Costco and other stores.
 
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StreetsofBeige said:
Costcos mandate is low prices and low profit margins where they max out at about a 15% margin. That's it. So when a supplier sells it to them at Price X, Costco only marks it up a bit. It creates wild swings in value the bigger the starting gap between cost and price. Other stores would jack it up big but Costco won't.

Clothing and shoes are good examples of categories with traditionally high mark ups. That's why jeans at a store costs $100 but similar jeans at Costco same brand are $25. The jeans cost each store probably only about $20 each. So that's why you see huge differences in prices between Costco and other stores.
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That might be true for clothes or food, but even that is dubious, more likely some old wives tale that represented a nugget of truth long ago that has been passed along as a marketing story. Having worked at BB in the past with access to the store cost on many items, I can tell you with 1000% certainty Costco's margins on stuff like electronics and small/major appliances are nowhere close to 15%, even diluting it with comically ridiculous amounts of overhead and cost of business expenses. For starters 95% of name brand stuff is price controlled these days and they literally wouldn't be allowed to sell it 15% over invoice even if they wanted to, the major manufacturers would collude and pull their entire allotment by the end of a business day. Protip, the $3000 77" OLED at Costco that's simultaniously $2000 on Greentoe is still being sold for a handsome profit even at $2000.
 
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Haint said:
That might be true for clothes or food, but even that is dubious, more likely some old wives tale that represented a nugget of truth long ago that has been passed along as a marketing story. Having worked at BB in the past with access to the store cost on many items, I can tell you with 1000% certainty Costco's margins on stuff like electronics and small/major appliances are nowhere close to 15%, even diluting it with comically ridiculous amounts of overhead and cost of business expenses. For starters 95% of name brand stuff is price controlled these days and they literally wouldn't be allowed to sell it 15% over invoice even if they wanted to, the major manufacturers would collude and pull their entire allotment by the end of a business day. Protip, the $3000 77" OLED at Costco that's simultaniously $2000 on Greentoe is still being sold for a handsome profit even at $2000.
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I work in the industry. You can even google it yourself as it's common knowledge. Costco is not selling a $3000 tv at a dirt cheap cost price.

Unless things changed a lot the past 15 years, I used to work at an electronics company too. The reason why electronics stores sell for cheap is because they get monthly or quarterly discounts from the supplier to flush out inventory so the prices of electronics swing wildly so Future Shop or Best Buy Canada back in the day aren't stuck with something at a high cost all year.

Even for small stuff like food, even if they can make higher margins they don't. They will literally ask for a higher invoice price so the margin maxes at 15% at the agreed to retail price. Or if the retail price suggested by the acct manager makes sense, Costco will just say set a price that makes it 15%. So we literally just make up an invoice price afterwards in a weird reverse cost way.

For small electrics it's still 15% (give or take as the lowest I've seen is 12%). My current company sells small electrical gadgets too and it's the same method as food and cleaning supplies.

Pending how systems are set up, the invoice cost you see is probably just that. Invoice cost. You wouldnt see all the back end discounts given since those are rebates back to the store after unless your systems showed everything. Your system probably wouldn't show other discounts a store gets from suppliers like terms and refund allowances either which aren't part of retail margin math.
 
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StreetsofBeige said:
I work in the industry. You can even google it yourself as it's common knowledge. Costco is not selling a $3000 tv at a dirt cheap cost price.
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I don't doubt it's parroted as a marketing and branding story for the business, what I'm saying they absolutely are not capping every item at a 15% margin. Which you seem to agree with based on your TV comment? If it's referring to a diluted net margin (which it has to be), literally any business could "factually" make the same claim with a modicum of book cooking. In other words, it's objectively false in a universal sense, but subjectively true by their limited definition of it.
 
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Haint said:
I don't doubt it's parroted as a marketing and branding story for the business, what I'm saying they absolutely are not capping every item at a 15% margin. Which you seem to agree with based on your TV comment? If it's referring to a diluted net margin (which it has to be), literally any business could "factually" make the same claim with a modicum of book cooking. In other words, it's objectively false in a universal sense, but subjectively true by their limited definition of it.
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With so many products I'm sure there's outliers.

Just like the 15% max isn't even a max since when things go on sale the companies I work for at least fund the entire discount. So their margin goes up when it's on sale to roughly 20-25%.

It's the only account I can think of off the top of my head that mandates full compensation. At least all the companies I've worked for pay full. Other stores will self fund some of it themselves.
 
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newest chapter in the 'Extremely Normal and Well Adapted Adults' saga.
Going to Mcds and buying out all the 2025 McD Pokemon cards in the happy meals. Known secret is that you can actually request to buy the McD toy separately, and you don't have to buy the happy meal itself, just pay for the toy.

These cards are reprints of regular cards that 0 difference from them other than a different numeral number on the corner. (01/15) Upside is that hopefully these people get burned because all these sets end up being like a $1 each after a year and its all over because there's literally nothing special about them.
 
GateofD said:
MSRP $59.99 so say $65 with tax.

They sell on ebay for $100-$120.
Ebay takes about 15%. So after that, about $30 or less per box.
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Majima Everywhere System said:
Thank you, these people are monsters. Looks like they were grabbing (limit of 10) so that is a lot of degrading yourself for less than $300.
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Many of the people you see in the video are not scalping these boxes, they are going to sit on them. This particular product is the final release for the Pokémon 151 set, which is a special re-release of the original Pokémon. Products from earlier in the 151 set MSRP'd for $60 and are currently $200+. After this release, there will be no further 151 products printed, and prices are going to skyrocket for 151 sealed products.

10 boxes x $65 = $650
10 boxes x $200 = $2,000

This is why people are fighting in Costco, not because they want to scalp for a $30 resale profit. Pokémon is the highest grossing media franchise of all time. These will be $300-$400 in 5 years, maybe even more due to the unique aspect of this particular product. Doubling your money is guaranteed, 3x or 4x is almost certain. If the product tanks in price.....well, you can crack it open and enjoy the cards. $650 is not a lot of money to spend on a hobby. The loss of dignity is another question entirely.
 
That's fair, we were all informed of the need to catch them all decades ago.

I've played a few Pokémon and the latest TCG game. I even woke up early to see the first episode air in America…because maybe I would get interested. I feel there is no getting through to some people for this franchise.
 
I know it's probably a silly question but what prevents those scalpers to directly buy from the distribution channels?
 
gundalf said:
I know it's probably a silly question but what prevents those scalpers to directly buy from the distribution channels?
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I think there are fees, licensing and paperwork involved to buy directly from a distributor - like you need to be an actual business entity.

The people fighting at Costco are most likely just private individuals looking to make extra money but not commit to doing this as a true "business" or whatever.
 
ManaByte said:
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LOL.

Hard to tell, but I like how the green jacket guy who got elbowed looks like he might be 50+ years old with grey hair. And he's trying to tackle a big younger guy over Pokemon. Give him an A+ for effort. Guy still holding on hoping for a box.

Manchildren at their finest. You wont see dumb shit like this at Williams Sonoma.
 
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Here is a video of a Pokémon tourney from last weekend.



I believe this was the same hall Pax South used back in the day but this was much larger. It was...CRAZY packed.
 
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Side note: Never played Pokemon except with my nieces when they were young and I had no idea what I was doing.

But I googled about tournament rules and they say there are 60 card limits and certain cards or sets have to be included as part of a deck.

How is this reinforced? Before a game starts, each player shows each other their deck so there's no cheating or their deck breaks rules? Or is it just mutual trust where a cheater hopes the opponent doesnt track in detail what they got in their deck?
 
StreetsofBeige said:
Side note: Never played Pokemon except with my nieces when they were young and I had no idea what I was doing.

But I googled about tournament rules and they say there are 60 card limits and certain cards or sets have to be included as part of a deck.

How is this reinforced? Before a game starts, each player shows each other their deck so there's no cheating or their deck breaks rules? Or is it just mutual trust where a cheater hopes the opponent doesnt track in detail what they got in their deck?
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Older sets rotate out of current standard as new cards are released. If its a larger tournament, you have to register the deck your playing. People that play know which sets are in rotation and know if you have some 5+ year old card that isn't allowed.
 
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