Thoughts on the recent surge

I've had a lot of thoughts on the recent surge of the OPTCG market, and wanted to share them with the community. These are all my personal thoughts, so feel free to agree and disagree with me, but please be respectful. What I don't like: The surge has pushed the price of product to almost unattainable to average new players. Boxes costing double or triple, even quadruple the price of MSRP is insane to me. It is so dumb to spend so much money on boxes and ripping, making it very hard for new players to get in the hobby What I like: All the base rarity cards are still dirt cheap, or getting even cheaper because of the amount of ripped product brought by the new wave of investors. So even though the alt arts are getting out of reach for most people, the playable cards are mostly reachable, with exclusion of cards like Kuma and Bon Kurei, but those cards were unobtainable even before the investors flooded the market. What I am afraid of: The insane surge might create a financial barrier for new people to get into the hobby. In the long term, it will make the game die slowly. One piece has been a player driven market for 3 years, and it is hard to tell how investors money coming into the market will do to the player-base. I also saw a division in the community about users that frequent TCG investment subreddit getting banned by this community. And honestly I feel very sad about the situation. On one hand I completely understand the disdain of looking at posts of "How much is this worth?", "Should I grade?", etc.. and I am on the same boat as this. But I personally know a lot of nice people that have love for the show and don't have time to play the game, and want to collect cards. That being said, only 1% of the community voted for the poll (which was posted during holidays btw), which sealed the fate for the rest of the community. Let me know yall opinion, and please keep this civilized :) submitted by /u/luluigichuchu [link] [comments]