>>53332726The issue is that it affected the modern market as well. There was a period where stores had to place a limit on sales because scalpers were coming in and buying up the entire stock.
A speculative market is one of the absolute worst things that can happen to a TCG. Magic the Gathering learned that the hard way early on. If your players can't get cards, they get frustrated and quit, meaning you'll have significantly less sales once the speculators get bored and quit. If you overprint to compensate, the speculators lose interest and card shops end up with stacks of unsold product.
Thankfully, Pokemon's extremely generous reprint policy means it was already the cheapest of the major TCGs by a longshot, so the price hike hasn't sent the price of cards into unreasonable territory. It has made the game quite a bit more expensive to play, though.
