[Djvacto]

My local wal-mart recently moved their cards to behind the customer service desk.

I had seen wal-mart TCG sections completely trashed (littered with open packaging, or boxes torn open and partially scavenged), and I know that even without this destructive method, there are other ways to "cheat" by weighing packs with a scale.

Seems like locking them in a case like video games is probably in the future for most physical stores that continue carrying them? Even before fistfights over cards from this year.

[morsch]

You can determine whether a pack is likely to contain a valuable card by weighing it? Wow.

[SllX]

Foil weighs more than paper. Don’t think I could do it now, but when I was a little kid with little kid arms, I could slightly perceive the difference in weight between Yu-Gi-Oh packs. Had a pretty good success rate too, but it annoyed the folks at Blockbuster watching me rummage through the box at the register doing this so the real challenge was finding a store that would let me pick my packs.

[barbazoo]

This reminds me of my grandma who claimed she could tell if a Kinder Surprise egg had a plastic toy or one of the, often more desired, figurines in it by shaking it a certain way. That always impressed me. I wonder if that's why she did it or if it was to amuse me. I miss my grandma.

[throwaway894345]

In general, it's easier to approximate a difference in the weight of two objects by shaking them rather than merely holding them in either hand.

[kizer]

Are Yu-Gi-Oh cards worth much now? Have a huge collection. Unfortunately my we’ll-meaning mom wrote my initials in sharpie on the back of a bunch of the cards so that people wouldn’t steal them, LOL. I’m wondering what kind of cleaner will take the sharpie off but not damage the cards.

[lstodd]

Isopropyl alcohol would do it. Extremely unlikely to do any damage, but try on one first just in case. Use cotton pads. And get some 99.99% stuff, not this "rubbing" crap.

[syntheticnature]

Probably merely having played with them will nick a big chunk of the value; collectors are looking for perfect condition, mint cards.

That said, I found https://yugiohprices.com/ if you wanted to take a look; there are some super-valuable ones, but it sounds like they were extreme rarities for special events, and otherwise the top card is just $444.44.

[mistersquid]

> I’m wondering what kind of cleaner will take the sharpie off but not damage the cards.

If you ever were established as a go-to knowledge source for Yu-Gi-Oh or an adjacent domain, those sharpie initials could actually increase the value of those cards…

[kizer]

...good point. If I’m famous one day, the cards could be significantly more valuable.

I’m not strapped for cash (knock on wood) right now so I plan to hold on to them indefinitely, until an obvious reason to sell or give them away appears.

[lotyrin]

Try a dry-erase pen or dry-erase solvent

[tablespoon]

Rubbing alcohol dissolves sharpie ink, but it's probably only worth trying if the surface is coated and nonporous. I use alcohol prep pads for this.

[Djvacto]

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.

[mort96]

Why shouldn’t it be done? Weighing items before buying seems completely legit to me.

[nrook]

Indeed. The Pokémon Company is running a children's casino: it's hard to imagine a business model less ethical than that.

[yifanl]

Keep in mind that The Pokemon Company don't make profit off of secondary sales, so they don't really have much incentive to make it a casino. In fact, I believe in the past they avoided this problem by printing cards to such capacity that prices don't dramatically rise due to lack of scarcity.

(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.

[mhluongo]

> Keep in mind that The Pokemon Company don't make profit off of secondary sales, so they don't really have much incentive to make it a casino. In fact, I believe in the past they avoided this problem by printing cards to such capacity that prices don't dramatically rise due to lack of scarcity.

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.

[kadoban]

Lottery tickets don't get profit off of any secondary market either. I think you're focusing on the wrong part.

[anonymousab]

> Why shouldn’t it be done?

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.

[dragonwriter]

> The point of the product is to gamble, not to determine in advance which one has the best outcome or odds.

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.

[dTal]

Because it's a zero-sum game with other customers. "Cheating" doesn't hurt the company at all, but it does lower everyone else's chances.

[ygjb]

> The point of the product is to gamble

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.

[derefr]

> as do defenders of the "sport"

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.

[mort96]

But a store isn't a casino, it's a store. AFAIK, a company can't prohibit anyone from inspecting their product on store shelves before buying. I would certainly expect to be able to weigh, say, a pack of batteries, and use their weigh as a part of my buying decision.

[colejohnson66]

The store can do whatever they want (within discrimination laws). If they say Hot Wheels collectors can’t look at every single one on the shelf, and doing so will get you banned, they can do that.

[david-cako]

Sort of, but it's unfair when you're buying booster packs online from folks that might be selling you pre-weighed packs from booster boxes. For this reason, you're really best off only buying booster boxes or individual cards online unless you really trust the seller.

[city41]

It used to be you could see what cards were in a Magic the Gathering booster without opening it by pushing each card one at a time to the edge of the pack and shining a bright light behind it. The edge of the packaging was white, so the name of the card would shine through.

I think most people into collectible card games know boosters aren't to be trusted in general.

[tasogare]

In addition to weighting, there was also a know vulnerability in the pseudo-rng method used in printing that allowed to know which boisters of a box were the most likely to contains the good cards (speaking of MTG).

[Djvacto]

Mostly because by taking the high value packs, one leaves nothing for the other players/collectors (especially children, for whom boosters are the only potential source of rare cards, since they're unlikely to have the funds nor internet access to buy individual cards online).

[somehnguy]

If you want a specific card you should buy that specific card. Packs are not designed so you know what is in them. Weighing them seems like petty cheating to me.

Thats just my opinion though, I know moral debates like this are highly subjective.

[fl0wenol]

... but what if I don't want to gamble?

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.

[somehnguy]

Again, if you don’t want to gamble then you’re free to buy individual cards where you know exactly what you’re getting.

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.

[alisonkisk]

Putting variable value cards in the packs is cheating.

[salamandersauce]

What I find humorous about it is Pokemon puts these code cards that give you a booster in the online game. They have a greyish one and a green one. If you get a green one you got a foil 100% in the pack so what I don't get is why don't they just make the grey one thicker to compensate for the weight difference?

[reedjosh]

Maybe card makers should add fluff to match the weights? Like a thin piece of paper in packs without foils?

[boomboomsubban]

I think they addressed it by just making one card in every pack foil, but keeping the chance you get a foil chase card the same.

[bena]

That's difficult because of the way the cards are packed.

[swiley]

Oh wow I didn't think about that but yeah! the valuable ones tend to have holographic film and other weirdness that would make them slightly heavier.

[bombcar]

This could easily be defeated by simply having a holographic card in every pack - just most of the time it's a relatively worthless one.

[graywh]

TPCi started putting different filler non-cards in the packs and it's been hard to weigh them for years now.

[josefresco]

I've always seen (at Walmart and other department stores) collectibles and trading cards in a special isle near checkout seemingly to thwart theft. Some items were/are actually behind checkout, not accessible without asking.

[adamrezich]

I think this is a new Walmart policy because the local Walmarts here just started doing this too.

[Djvacto]

Yeah it is definitely just weeks old at most, from what I can tell.

I don't go super often, but definitely a few weeks back it was still the old way, and this week they were moved.

[HenryKissinger]

It's pathetic what people will do for money.