• posted on 10-09-2026 in irl

For context im an og pokemon tcg collector and player. Was more fun back then, less artificial hype; plus retail stores had retail prices not reseller prices etc etc. oh and we had places to actually shop like Toys R Us, Kb toys and malls...

That said, i see many young trainers making the rookie mistakes while chasing hype, fomo and clickbait online. And unfortunately, i also see many people on ebay listing "collections" for wayyy higher than the collective demand for the cards they are selling. Stuff like 1000 card binders with commons and rares from all the chase packs they opened; desperately hoping to gain some of their money spent back...

So, some simple and quick buying tips for new pokemon tcg trainers:

1.) Don't chase

unless you have a new pack smell addiction, i would highly recommend that you do not chase hyped sets and cards. Nowadays they overprint everything and manufacture scarcity with gated drops and whitelisted vendors. You will almost definitely open a box of packs and fail to pull what you actually wanted... and if you do its a good chance the card is low grade. and not in an unique error card way, but a meh no one wants kinda way.

2.) Cherry Pick

just buy the card art you want. will be cheaper and you can select the card with your ocd discretion. This even applies to some entire sets, you can literally just buy each card for less than opening packs/boxes. seasoned pack rippers will tell you straight up, people on tiktok or youtube will not however.

3.)Preorder reasonably

some stores put a 100% boost on the price, avoid this as prices will nose dive when the set ships. it happened with the pitch black set, absolute price destruction and just a few weeks later another set dropped furthering the demand decline. On the 30th set preorder i was able to get the knock out box for $10, after selling out people on ebay were charging like $60. and now its like $30 or less if you look. i know i know you want to spend more when you don't have to because....?

4.)Avoid importing

sometimes the temptation is real with importing pokemon card tcg stuff from Jp. however depending on the seller and item size, packages risk being damaged in transit. happened recently to me with a Charizard deck box from Jp. Experienced seller and brand new etc etc. On arrival, the bubble mailer had visible damage. The deck box had crushed corners and dents. Perhaps customs didn't like pokemon cards very much, idk. Thankfully the seller actually gave me a full refund after i proved my case with opening pictures.

thats a noteworthy thing to add, record or take pictures of package openings when/if you do import. really helps if you have an issue. and when you can find the item domestically and verify that perfect item in the pictures is the one you will indeed receive, boxed not enveloped.

5.) Go to the irl store.

Not target or best buy or walmart. and none of those people on paid discord notification bot lists [lmao]. Think Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Aldi's and stuff like that. You've probably heard of the checklane blisters pokemon blister packs, well you can find them for retail price or less literally at the checkout lane in regular stores.

Back in the day it was more common, every 7/11 and convenient store had packs. But even now the Dollar Store has packs. You may get lucky at places like Marshalls or Burlington dept stores too; those guys have random seasonal stocks of everything and sometimes its packs of pokemon cards.
try to practice fomo markup avoidance whilst online and have fun <3