Sometimes we all spend too much money on Pokemon cards. It happens. Instead of buying two Elite Trainer Boxes you end up buying four. Instead of five sleeved boosters you find yourself walking out with fifteen. Instead of one booster box of Surging Sparks you buy five. It’s a thing.
It’s an unfortunate thing though because it ends up being quite a lot of money. It feels like The Pokemon Company has worked hard to maintain a price of $5 or more per booster pack regardless of the product. So you can assume every single unit is $5. Fifteen sleeved boosters from the grocery store would be $75 for example. It adds up.
And that’s really a problem for some people because there is a serious element of gambling to the Pokemon trading card game. The Pokemon Company specifically structures sets so there are common cards and very rare cards and naturally everyone wants the rare cards. Except it’s very hard to pull rare cards from a booster pack. So you have to keep opening pack after pack in a futile attempt to get a rare card… all the while you’re spending a fortune.
Everyone thinks okay I’ll spend $5 and pull a $1500 card. But probability says otherwise. You are probably going to get a dud pack that only includes a reverse holo. You are probably NOT going to get anything that we could call good. So there’s $5 down the drain. Or $50. Or even $500.
Do you see how it has elements of gambling? The poor chances plus the constant thought that next time I’ll pull something good all the while they take your money? It’s trap for anyone who wants a dopamine rush or anyone who has gambling problems. And kids are impulsive and kind of have both issues. They like their dopamine and don’t have brains that can really handle gambling. This is a kids product after all.
The odds are not in your favor when it comes to pulling rare cards and you should always keep that in mind when you’re spending too much money on Pokemon cards. You should always set a budget and make sure your spending habits stay within budget. For example, don’t just go to GameStop going yeah I’m going to buy some Pokemon cards! Go in that GameStop going I’m going to buy TWO sleeved boosters of Surging Sparks and that’s it. Don’t get sucked in.
But if you do get sucked into the gambling, I can imagine that it’s kind of hard to explain to people “yeah I was buying too many Pokemon cards” because they don’t know there is a gambling aspect to it. You can still get help though. Your therapist would probably like to know if you’re spending $50 a day on cards.
It’s just all around difficult to keep yourself from spending too much. That’s just the nature of booster packs. They’re designed this way and it’s not really possible to change the design of a booster pack because… the design is the whole idea… So we have this kids gambling product and there’s no real way to change it. We could try guaranteed hit rates out certainly. That will help some.
I imagine that nothing is going to change any time soon though so it’s up to us all to keep a hold on our wallets and not give The Pokemon Company all of our money for a possible dopamine rush.