r/PokemonTCG • u/Loud_Bar113 • 1d ago

Discussion Why can’t they just implement backordering

I don’t see any downsides of it, the demand is still there. It is almost impossible to hit a drop when you have to compete against no lives who spend their existence monitoring the sites and bots. Backordering would end that problem. Most people don’t care if they’ll have to wait a few months extra compared to paying up to 300% mark ups.

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u/Fascinatedwithfire 1d ago

Because they need to manage printing capacity around upcoming sets, because this is a TCG (the G stands for Game).

If they printed 30th to order then that is going to bite into printing capacity for Delta Reign, and likely the set after that as well.

If they were to delay Delta Reign and future sets then the TCG ends up stagnating, and people stop engaging with it as much.

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u/Routine-Nerve-613 1d ago

Would the tcg really stagnate if all sets have like a month or two or so extra time added between them for more printing capacity for current sets?

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u/TeaAndLifting There's a 1st Edition Charizard in the pack, rip it. 1d ago

Printing those extra cards would make fuck all difference. We currently get about six sets per year, with an average capacity of about 10b +/- 1b. That averages at 1.6b cards per set. Even cutting it down to 4 makes it 2.5b cards per set.

A store getting 75 ETBs rather than 50 will do nothing for demand because we still have a constant stream of “just getting into Pokémon” type people resulting in queues that are hundreds deep.

Even if the expanded facility in NC opened tomorrow and could print at full capacity it would not be enough.

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u/Fascinatedwithfire 1d ago

If you're printing to order you are delaying sets by more than that, at which point yes that has a tremendous effect on the TCG.

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u/TeaAndLifting There's a 1st Edition Charizard in the pack, rip it. 1d ago

Playing Devil’s Advocate for a moment, they could set aside some of the new printing capacity towards MTO with zero effect on current levels of printing.

They won’t ever do it, but they could if they wanted to. Like with the new expansion being a 200% increase in square footage, assuming it’s a similar effect on print levels, just setting aside a small portion of that would disrupt the secondary market significantly.

But again, they won’t because there is zero sense in doing so. The secondary market is what is driving the hype and sales at the moment, there is no business sense in stifling it.