Does the Digimon TCG Have a Problem? 

And thus the cycle of "My TCG is too expensive to play anymore" with the Yugioh and MtG players looking at you like you are crazy.

I am fortunate enough to have enough disposable income to build any deck I want. But that doesn't mean I should. I can't justify 300 for a deck. Especially for something I am mainly only going to play at locals due to the lack of consistent and plentiful higher level events. But that is a separate issue that I could go on and on about. Part of the problem is what seems to be a shift in philosophy for how they design sets. Particularly Secret Rares. It used to be that Secret Rares were these more situational cards that only a few decks could really take advantage of. And even then, you would typically only play 1 copy, MAYBE 2. But now, we are seeing Secret Rares that many decks want to play, often at multiple copies. DeathX and Ruin Mode being the main offenders. The other major problem is that they are making Secret Rares that are essential part of certain decks, often cards you want to play 4 copies of. Magnamon X, Rapidmon X, and EX6 Mirei being the main ones that come to mind here. Magna and Mirei are also good examples of another problem, where they make fan favorite characters Secret Rare, which further inflates demand. On top of that, it is never clear how long we will have to wait for reprints, or how accessible they will be. And many of the best cards stay relevant for much longer than in most other games with eternal formats. Hell, some BT1 cards still see play! A smaller point is that the game does still seem to be growing, so naturally demand is getting higher and higher. If Bandai could solve these problems, things would improve.

While it is true that Digimon has gone up in price, it is still want of the cheaper card games to play. That being said, I can't help but wonder if the high prices is a cause of stores buying less or Bandai being able to keep up with printing for it's various games.

I usually pre order a case with buddies and get them at around $70 a box. We’re cool with our stores so we always get a deal. Not everyone is fortunate to have that though so I understand where you’re coming from. Boxes feel super inflated rn and the demand is high for these very popular sets. Especially for the casual players who just wanna have fun opening sets. Smh they just need to print this card game as hard as pokemon tbh. Good discussion video. Love these

It’s because greedy people see the potential to make money so they do it driving up prices until they kill a game by pricing core players out. Same old story. Theirs a whole industry behind pack openings and reselling. The only thing that can save the game is more players.

Maine Digimon Player Here. Up here product is hard to get also. During our BT17 release, we had to do a lottery for boxes because our lgs only had 6 available for 8 ppl. Luck for us it worked out, some ppl had to split boxes but we usually give other ppl cards they needed. But after that we generally don't get more boxes in

1: I buy singles and build decks that way 2: I’m not good at the game 3: If I went to tournament/matches I would lose immediately

The main problem is the secret rare and super rares. bt-16 if you want to play rapid or magna x you gotta get 4 copies of 1 of the secret rares, and they're like $50 a piece. Bt-14 and 15 have all of the essentially important super rare rookies for a lot of archetypes that you need four of (and range from 5 to 10 bucks a go).

While I'm not happy with the increased prices either, I do think it's worth noting that in the questionnaires that Bandai puts out on the official website with each product release they have a question: "Were you able to buy this product at MSRP ($4.49 pack/$107.76 box)?" So according to Bandai's questionnaires we've been massively underpaying for boxes this entire time. It would be nice to see the prices come back down, but honestly I'm not holding my breath for it. Vendors have seen that BT16 and EX6 are still selling at these inflated prices that are even above MSRP and they're probably going to try to keep selling product as close to those prices as they can going forward.

What irks me in a really wrong way is that if you compare TCGplayer singles to CardMarket singles, in CardMaket most of the cards are half the price compared to TCGPlayer This also holds true to sealed product, Infernal Ascension Boxes are around 80 EU vs 120 USD. Sadly CardMarket doesn’t ship to the US and truthfully It’s just a matter of sellers wanting to mark up prices for the fun of it but as long as people keep buying product either sealed or singles at those prices, sellers are not going to lower them.

It feels like bandai is just trying to kill the game but theres enough support for the game that they cant. Also the entry cost now hinges on a deck with 4 secret rares. Low print runs and overpowered secrets are going to kill it eventually.

I am very much in the same boat as you. Nothing close enough to be considered locals, and incredibly far from regionals if I had interest in the competitive scene. EX6 is back up on TCGPlayer but all at least $130, which is almost double what it should be. DCGO is fine, I don't hate it, but it's less fun compared to the social aspect of in-person. (There's also things like being able to more easily run all the meta decks with their high costs online, so unique decks are less common to run across, which kills some of the fun for me)

I have no issue with proxies especially the ones I make. In sleeves they feel and look like real cards. Out of sleeves they look and feel good though you can't really shuffle them. I also have a thing with, if something is unnecessarily hard or annoying I look for an alternative. Proxies is that. I don't care about the real product it's more about the quality of the proxy. I also will still buy the product but I find it difficult to complete decks due to the high price of certain cards. If you want to play the game for cheap you have to wait for cards and boosters to go down in price. Which could take years. So you are left with playing with older out of date decks.

I, like you don't get to play at any locals and play with my friends. EX6 is crazyily overpriced rn, my main local lgs listed it for 80 then 120 so this will be the first time I'm not buying a box on principal. I think either bandai is short printing or there is new buyer hype and they are taking up all the new product to turn a quick profit after bt16 hype (side note the new development team came in for bt14). I will wait and buy the singles when everything tanks in price in 2 to 3 weeks

Bro we have the same lamp and Gunpla/Gallantmon models😂

Game definitely feels way more expensive compared to the bt14/ex5 days. Im lucky to have a healthy locals to play at so singles are usually plentiful but with bt16 supply was low for us and I ended up only building imperial when i wanted to build multiple decks. Ill buy off tcgplayer if i have to but it felt pointless when by time id get the cards ex6 would be so close. Im hoping bt17 has healthier prices, but it feels pretty foolish to do so.

So far just after the first 2:00 and stating that it’s expensive to get product when talking about a box. It will ALWAY be cheaper to get singles if there are cards you know you want. The only time you should by a box is the experience or the not sure what you are wanting or testing your luck for the chase pulls

Digimon prices starting to look like yugioh prices, which I just quit.

Compared to the other tcgs digimon is actually the cheapest

digimon is by far one of the cheapest card games i have played