I live in the middle of buttfuck nowhere midwest, and I work 40/week retail at a meijers (fancy wal-mart) because I'm 19 and also going to college.
Because of this dumbass Pokemon card craze, we now have to sell the Pokemon cards at specific times of the day behind the counter in the electronics section.
Every week, without fail, there will be a line of at least fifty grown ass adults, sometimes waiting for over two hours in line, trying to buy all the cards they can.
When I was in middle school and could finally understand how to play the game and found people to play it with, Pokemon cards became my life. I made played it every day during lunch with my friends and grew a lot closer to my brother. To this day, I still credit a lot of our close relationship to playing some dumb trading card game and constantly and building decks with our weird hand me down card collections. I was a real loser with nothing going for me (still am), but in those days, whenever I took a prize card or pulled a mega-evo, I felt decent about my life.
I eventually fell out of the game because shit was getting way too competitive with the rich kids at my school who could drop insane amounts of money on cards, but I still look back at those days fondly.
Seeing the market being attacked by resellers enrages me.
I get being an adult collector, but you have access to internet shopping. You have access to eBay, amazon, and pokeoncenter.com. When I was a kid, it was basically impossible to buy anything online because it involved hassling my parents. Going to meijer, wal-mart, and target was how I got my Pokemon cards.
All I'm going to say is at least save some for the kids. Every week, some adult with a child comes to the electronics section asking about cards for their kids, only for me to have to say that we don't have any.
This shit is getting ridiculous.
Let the kids of today have the memories that made the cards so special to begin with.