Even for the biggest and most popular games, getting products at MSRP (Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price) should indeed be the norm; nevertheless, for those like the Pokémon TCG, ‘market price’ has become the go-to metric for many collectors for one big reason.
Depending on your perspective as a Pokemon fan, referring to the concept as a gateway to ‘inflated’ or ‘rip-off’ pricing is totally valid.
That said, when actually getting down to the logistics of what it means to get a box of new Pokémon cards at MSRP today, the “market price”, well, market — has been the response to a growing problem with the collectables market as a whole, and is still a legitimate way to enjoy the Pokémon TCG (very much within reason).
Buying at MSRP Is Almost Impossible Right Now
To first put it plainly before going into the nitty-gritty, the rise of paying “market price” for Pokemon cards over MSRP ultimately comes down to one classic concept: supply vs. demand.
Over the past couple of years, especially, the demand for the latest boxes of Pokemon cards from new expansions and special collections has gotten so high that supply has consequently not been able to keep up with the demand.
What started all this, of course, was the mainstream discovery of valuable ‘chase cards’ — those regarded with astronomical value due to their rarity, like the famous $1,300+ Umbreon ex from Prismatic Evolutions.
From then on, in a sort of snowball effect, the market became diluted by many buyers buying as much stock as possible, in hopes of pulling the rarest and most expensive cards for profit — nefarious scalpers either flooding retail stores like Costco to physically hoard any stock, or utilising bots to sweep up any stock drops online.
Even if you're regularly online as a full-time remote worker or something similar, any sites selling Pokemon stock either get met with huge crashes, or instanly long queues with everyting sold out at MSRP by the time you can actually get in and shop.
With all of that, you would normally be faced with either needing to practically camp out in front of retail stores before opening hours, or regularly check online stores — such as Best Buy and Target — in hopes of getting lucky to be visiting a site when a stock drop happens. In contrast, the other option is simply giving in to the scalpers and forking over whatever extortionate prices they’re willing to charge.
For Many, "Market Price" is the Tolerable Alternative
Responding to the dire need for some form of regulation in the trading card market, market price estimations are essentially the slightly happier medium option.
Calculated by dedicated online marketplaces like TCGplayer, market price is a way of attempting fair estimation for a product when MSRP isn’t an option — weighing up factors about a card or product like its general rarity, artwork, contents, and any impact it might make on its card game’s meta.
Applicable to essentially any other card game like Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, or the One Piece Card Game, market price has become the new metric for letting Pokemon collectors know whether a higher-than-MSRP price is fair in respect to its demand vs supply, if you’re simply getting ripped off, or if a price is suspiciously so low by comparison, it might be a scammer listing.
For example, there are some eBay sellers charging over $350 for one of the Pokemon TCG’s Ascended Heroes Elite Trainer Boxes; whereas, on TCGplayer, the market price is estimated at a much lower $153.54 — with, at the time of writing, listings there selling for $148 at the lowest.
It’s Still Okay to Be Annoyed About MSRP
While it’s definitely better paying a tamer market price than whatever an unchecked scalper thinks is worthy, it’s also completely fair to remain upset over the current state of the Pokemon TCG, where buying at market price still isn’t feasible.
After all, if the company that makes the actual product declares that said product should only be worth so many dollars or British pounds, it’s right to believe that you should be only paying that price, and not a penny more.
The next go-to thought for anyone just getting into the TCG is that the Pokemon Company should just print enough cards so there’s enough for everyone and eliminate the scalper market altogether.
However, that is actually what the Pokemon Company has been doing. Just last year alone, over 10 billion Pokemon cards were printed; in context, that’s out of the 85 billion since the card game’s conception — meaning 11% of a 30-year-old card game’s output was carried out in just 12 months.
What’s more, when it comes to the 30th Celebration expansion, vastly improved pull rates for the more in-demand cards have deeply hit scalper operations and have had resellers moan that it isn’t ‘profitable enough’, since more people getting to pull their chase cards have lowered their market prices as a result.
Despite those major wins for the actual fandoms aside, though, they aren’t enough — at least, not yet. If something is popular enough, tickets, products, goods, etc, will continue to sell despite the controversy around it. In this case, the overall demand for Pokemon TCG cards is still so astronomically high that it still isn’t currently enough to eliminate the need to shop by market price and bring back MSRP as the default.
Those hoarding product just to resell have lost out on some profit incentive, sure, but currently not enough to stop them wanting to spend the time raiding physical and digital shelves entirely. Like the aforementioned snowball effect that kickstarted Pokemon’s lucrative reseller market in the first place, it needs to steadily wind back down in the same way — as more scalpers slowly back out and leave product for the pure fans.
Unfortunately, that will take a long while, and plenty of Pokemon lovers don’t want to take an uncertain amount of time out of the hobby they enjoy. That’s why the ‘market price’ way of buying Pokemon cards is still the go-to metric even now: for those just wanting the best possible price for product that’s readily available — if they don’t want to spend time fighting off scalpers for MSRP — and can make an informed decision as to whether that’s right for them.
For those who can only currently afford to buy Pokemon cards at MSRP, retailer initiatives like Amazon’s invite-only listings are a great way to still score product at their intended price. On the other hand, those required restocks are still being spread across an increasingly keen customer base — making actual invites hard to come by.
Shopping by market price still may not be the perfect resolution for those who only wish to shop by MSRP, but for buyers who wish to buy Pokemon cards at a reasonable rate via the safest method available — it’s in most cases, the best we have until things get better.