I’ve been trying to find pokemon cards, but everywhere I go, they’re sold out. I’ve tried Osaka, Okayama, and Hyogo, but every store that sells them says they’re sold out. Finally I managed to find a booster box in a shop in Okayama, but in the 30 seconds my wife walked off to find a staff to open the glass for us, some other guy came with a staff and bought every single booster box, then laughed at me while I stood there and watched. I know they’re scalped hard, but there’s got to be some stores chains that are more likely to have them.
I don’t want to go to book off and buy them one by one. Half the fun is opening them and seeing what you get, ya know?
Thanks for the help.
11 comments
Depends on the shop.
Some stores have raffles a few weeks before release dates, some stores only let you buy 1-10 packs per person, while some stores sell boxes FCFS.
Most stress free way to get shrinked boxes is to just enter the lottos on pokemon center online, I seem to win about 60% of the time.
Eh, I gave up on the hobby. Pokémon cards here are scalped to hell. Flea market apps like Mercari and Yahoo auctions are flooded with boxes resold at many times retail price.
If you really want to try, your best bet will be to enter the raffles that lots of stores hold to buy boxes. FCFS is kinda impossible if you live in an urban area since lots of people start lining up way ahead of time.
You can also try going to 倉庫系買取 second hand shops. They usually have loads of gacha for sealed boxes, but you’re likely to spend way over retail price.
are you trying to get unopened, nice booster boxes? 2 of the local hobby card shops I visit both have drawers full of Pokemon cards (obviously already opened and just placed in at random) and sell for like 30 yen per card, so you dig through and pick out the ones you want. I know you can’t get anything rare or good that way but if you just want to have some Japanese Pokemon cards, that’s always an option
Timing. You’re currently in between releases, the next set is Dec 1st. Have you tried convenience stores? They often have them where I am.
I’m personally selling off my collection though, it’s a lot of fun to play but fighting scalpers makes it less fun tbh. I’ll keep playing. It just not get sealed bbs to put away 😩
Can someone explain why the Pokemon cards got so popular for scalpers over the past year? All the time I see queues of people lining up for them, but it seems to be a recent thing.
If you really want Japanese card and dont feel like spending many weeks visiting countless shops in the hope of finding one box resold at 5x the normal price, i suggest to purchase them oversea.
Right now, i can very easily purchase japanese card in Canada and US (yes for a premium price, it is what it is) and have them shipped to Yokohama. Bundle it with a couple more other things like english cards and whatnot, it ends up at a nice price.
Otherwise, you have to participate in the many lotery that almost every shop will have couple weeks (sometime months!) before the release date and hope for the best.
The only way to get booster packs nowadays is to join lotteries. So if you really want to buy booster packs/ boxes follow some accounts on twitter/ X that give updates on all the lotteries and join every single one of them. Since the time limit to join for most lotteries for the December set are already over your best bet is to go the convenience stores the night before or day of the release and ask what time they will start selling and wait there.
I bought a box off of Amazon.jp, I was lucky and got 2 packs from a 7-11 once.
They had booster packs last night at Edion. No one in the store, no one buying.
They have them at Family Mart all the time, usually can find them at the Pokemon Center as well. None of the recent sets are all that valuable or good.
It’s better to buy singles anyway.
Just the cards you need, and they are much cheaper because those people are paying for the slim chance of getting an expensive card.
You should find a family mart or other convenience store that gets cards and limits the amount of packs bought.