Is This the DEATH of Sealed Pokemon Card Investing? 

We need to do everything we can to reject this. Boycott sellers and businesses that use it. Give them grief for it. Make things so difficult for them, they won't want to do it.

It's up to the entire market (not just Pokemon, sports cards, Magic, Yu Gi Oh, One Piece etc) to adapt to this. There's no turning back unless they figure out how to combat scanning. In 5 years if we have consumer CT-Scanners for a few hundred dollars like 3d Printers, then it's going to be a huge issue even for modern.

Couldn’t agree more with your sentiments. I’ve recently quit playing competitive online games because people are always looking for ways to get unfair advantages, usually in the form of cheating with some 3rd party software. Less and less things are enjoyable as seemingly everything is becoming meta-gamed, ruined, and used for financial gains and greed. I started collecting Pokemon cards last month and now this CT stuff is becoming more widely reported on. Humans can be really despicable.

My mumma always said a booster pack was like a box of chocolates - you never knew what you were going to get. Now she says it is like a pack of lamingtons- quite clear and full of plain.

I’ve been arguing the point that after a certain amount of years the sealed booster box becomes the collectible. Base Black and White, Diamond & Pearl, Platinum boxes are $3k-8k and the chase cards are all less than $100. There’s no reason to ever scan those boxes. The buyer knows there’s no chance of ever recouping the investment by opening the box.

Thanks for covering this and taking the ethical stance as opposed to the purely informational one.

Well said mate. There is so much to say about this but i think we all agree its not in the spirit of Pokemon or the hobby. Im 100% against it and i think the community needs to come together and reject scanning. I have seen channels getting paid or partnered to promote this and I personally wont support any channels trying to normalise this crap in the community.

It’s damn negative. I’m going to London card show on Saturday and I will be in the market for some sealed packs. It’s bad enough if they’ve been weighed without me knowing, but scanned?! So what the seller could scan a bunch of packs, open all the good packs and sell the ones they know have nothing in them?! That’s sickening! Even more so with boxes. The thing is, the scanning sellers won’t even declare they’ve been scanned. That’s the terrible thing!

I pulled a zard in 2001 after buying 4 or 5 loose packs from a convenience store. I was skateboarding with my buddies that day. I was 11. The packs were 4 bucks each. Pulled that zard from a venusaur art pack. Ill never forget that moment but I did GIVE away my entire collection in 2003-2004 when we became teenagers and it wasn't cool to collect pokemon anymore. Stupidest mistake I've ever made.

I agree with everything you say. One thing to add though is that sealed investing isn’t the hobby as a whole. I collect and I also have sealed investment-but the gambling side of buying sealed isn’t the whole hobby. When I was a kid I collected stamps. Totally transparent hobby where you always know what you’re buying. Introducing the concept of the buzz of not knowing what you’ll pull is a relatively recent part of the concept of collecting as a hobby. CT scans might ultimately destroy sealed investing but in terms of the hobby of collecting maybe it’s irrelevant-or maybe it’ll bring the market into a space that’s less focused on profit and more focused on love of the cards.

I personally don’t like it… what security measures are there from stopping them swapping your booster pack for one of their own that they’ve already scanned with no major hits. For example you send in an evolving skies booster pack for scanning and it contains a Moonbreon inside, they could easily swap your pack for one of their dud packs and say your pack only had a pinsir holo inside. Great work Michael🤙

It's definitely not going to draw any new people into the hobby, if the thrill of the chase is removed. That's something that should worry everyone.

PokeOz with a great take, He doesn't miss!

I'll standby the fact the sealed booster boxes eventually out-price the chase cards within the set, and the box will then be useless to scan. Sets like SWSH base get their value from the scarcity of the sealed booster box, not the expected contents within. So certain aspects of sealed collecting will largely be unaffected. Vintage is probably boned though.

And what’s scary is that for older packs worth more than 75$ per pack the math makes sense to do that and there’s profit to be made , if you spend 75$ and you see nothing of value ? Let’s say gym trainer , you sell it for more than the 75$ because it’s worth more , then if you find something you open it , so yeah that’s the worse part is the the profit margins makes sense to spend 75$ per vintage pack

Oz man with another platinum take, taking an ethical stand on this is the right move. I sure do share your frustrations. In a hobby rife with bad actors, this feels like the last straw. You also touched on a major point that others are missing, this WILL scale to become viable for modern packs/boosters, its not if, its WHEN. I liked your predictions about scanning larger quantities for reduced prices. Great vid man!

I see one bit of positivity in this development is that it will force card companies (TCG and sports) to develop ways to prevent this in future packaging - and hopefully even have them thinking of other ways to evolve the card hobby.

Thanks for taking a stance on this. I don't see how anyone could say that scanning is ethical or good for the hobby unless they were benefitting from scanning themselves tbh.

I’m sure if CT scanning becomes commercially available then Pokemon, a multi-billion dollar company, will put RnD resources into developing some packaging that’ll limit CT tech. I hope they would. The problem would be when we, the consumers, pay for it through product cost increases. Absolutely against this.

I think this whole ordeal will just blow over and we'll forget about. When we do remember it in the future, we'll just laugh about it.

Imagine having 0 chance of pulling your favorite card

I may be being overly optimistic here but with your scenario about selling an evolving skies box with a "guaranteed" Umbreon vmax seems to bring into question why this would even matter. The price of the box and umbreon(raw) are pretty close and odds are in the future that the box will outpace the price of the umbreon so my question would be, why bother buying the box for more. You will almost certainly get an Umbreon for less than the box price in 3 years. If it was a sealed investment then it really doesn't matter whats inside? At worst I think it could become like weighing, first it was heavy packs and light packs now its heavy and "unweighed"(so light) and people buy based on that assumption. Maybe we do have scanned at a premium and "unscanned"(so no hits).

They can also use this to see if it's not a fake box.

Interesting take on this issue! No one seems to be asking this question though - CT scanners are very expensive machines and they produce potentially dangerous radiation. The technology is not easily scalable for mass use in pack scanning in my opinion. I would question the ethics of its use in this format when there is a shortage of CT scanning machines in the world as a whole for medical use. I have patients who are waiting for potentially life saving scans for months because of the lack of resource!

'if you've been living under a rock' 😅 i just joined the hobby cos i have the financial means, this hit me like a rock on the head 😂😂 im still learning to research market prices 😂

My whole things is I’m working towards getting one of each pack. And now there is a chance a future seller I’ve bought from has scanned his packs and only sells the lower tier pull packs. And buyer not gonna have a clue otherwise.

I have a feeling companies would start to use a wrapping or packaging that negates scanning. I’m sure they could come up with a strategy. As for older products sad days lol

lead packaging or something is the new way forward to keep the integrity of the product intact

Would Pokémon change there packaging to prevent people from scanning them? Suppliers could scan the packs and sell hit packs at a premium and then sell the other packs to people at the normal price. Or they could sell those packs at a cheaper price and it could possibly make it cheaper to finish a set

One of my goals within the next decade is to purchase a base set unlimited booster box and go for a Charizard. I never pulled one as a kid. I was thinking of getting a full booster box before this scanning nonsense, but now, I'm even more positive that I'll never purchase loose packs. Do you really think that an entire booster box can be scanned? Wouldn't the images be stacked and cause confusion as to which cards were actually inside? It's basically one holo stacked on top of another, which would result in a blurred image.

Scanning is taking weighing packs to the next level...it feels bad

Even at 2 dollars a pack it’s not worth sending modern! The hits are in like 1 of 900 packs that would be 1800 to find a giratina. This is soooooooo dumb and only scammers and dumb people would use it 🙃

It'll most likely never be worth it for anything modern. Might be cool if you've got some heavy base packs or something. Booster boxes are incredibly hard to do so that's not an issue as of yet anyway. Honestly I think people are making a mountain out of a molehill.

No different to raw vs graded. Do you take the risk and buy raw based on photos and description or do you pay a premium and get the condition you're after. In this case, do you buy the single pack that may or may not have been scanned and may or may not contain value, or do you buy the pack that has been scanned and holds a holo for a premium. If I'm in the market for sealed I'm paying a premium for the pack with the scanned blastoise inside. The only problem with this for now is trusting the scans are of the product you're buying, hopefully they can fix that.

Welp you have explained it far better than me brother. I think this is all the information the people need to know about, cheers!

like NOSTALGIA NOMICS said this is only bad for breakers and pack resellers.....for us collectors we keep boosters and etbs sealed and we dont open them so we dont care if its the shittiest or best cards inside and sealed product always keeps going up and 99% of the time the sealed box will be worth more than the top chase card so not worth opening anyways

Wouldn't pokemon be able to just create some kind of a metallic / holo card at the front and back of each pack that blocks CT scanning? Like a card that has the pokemon logo but extra holo / metallic so then the scan is blocked.

why Michael, awesome vid was keen to see your opinion on this issue, I feel the same way, sorry to be off topic but I wanted to know what kind of protectors you use for your booster boxes

Lastly , whats ironic and funny is that scanning and knowing what the top chase card is could actually tank the value of the box , because once you know the chase card the market value becomes that chase card because you wouldn’t value a box more than the top hit if you know what it is.

I think this is terrible all around. It ruins the whole fun and mystery of not knowing what you might pull. It also ruins the sealed market where you always have to wonder whether a booster box was scanned or not.

When you go to a vendor it’s usually weighed or unweighed !” Now it’s gonna be “scanned or unscanned ?” 🤣🤣

So should we continue to dump tons of money into sealed product. Man that would be rough for booster box prices to go down to 25 bucks

If it starts to impact modern products, then it could impact Pokemon co. revenue indirectly, and I doubt they would tolerate that. They might start to coat packs with something that CT scans cannot penetrate (tungsten, gold, silver..) but that is too expensive. They might even pursue lawsuits against these official scanning companies. We just dont know yet... But knowing how this would affect other card games also, and knowing how predatory Hasbro and Magic the gathering is, I wouldnt be surprised if they send the Pinkertons to beat up these scanners 😂. We cannot have nice things in this world because it is inhabited by lesser men.

I'll watch the video now... Love your content and hope you are honest in this as always mate

I think this is going to be a long term/permanent problem and will get worst with time. It really kills the hobby, with scalpers and scammers already abundant in the hobby this is another thing to worry about. Although the community is strong and majority is against this is, there is always the other side. Greed is the main problem here and I can't see this going away any time soon.

I’m not worried at all because I know how it’s going to play out. Basically heavy vintage packs are going to be affected and that’s it. So if someone has a heavy base set pack for example it’s going to be sold as if there is a Chansey or Hitmonchan inside. The big premium that comes with potentially being able to pull a Zard or Blastoise will disappear. Should be great for sealed collectors who don’t do vintage nonsense.

Nobody will take your sealed collections seriously in the future. Your sealed are worth nothing if buyers assume you’ve scanned it. Prices, on vintage at least are guaranteed to crumble. There’s no way to verify whether it’s been scanned without scanning it. Sell quick and invest in something that isn’t a scammable cardboard lottery

I think this will make people very wary of the hobby in general. Especially when it comes to buying sealed. Even if the price never comes to the point where ultra modern, at the time of release, can be scanned. It might mean that products only appreciate based on sealed collectibility, which may slow down due to less rippers. Especially when we factor in sets where 90% of boxes don’t pay for themselves. Ppl just won’t want to open those. So it may be reasonable to say that in the near future, we could see a slow down or even halt in booster box appreciation.

Not sure whether I’m thinking logically here or not but if people are aware of this CT scanning then wouldn’t this drive the price of packs up in the original instance to find out what’s inside? For example you have a pack from the 2000s, supply is slowing down and people are wanting to know what’s inside now there is this new technology, so wouldn’t this drive prices up further due to scarce availability and the fact that there is technology available to see inside the pack?

Yo what if they scan them, see a hit, keep the pack and give you a shit pack they have on hand?

My take is it changes everything for very few and it changes little to nothing for almost everybody. For now at least. It could theoretically be improved on and made cheap and have massive implications for the hobby that Pokemon must reply to (make unable to be done) but I think that is an unlikely

the other problem is like if there scanned and there’s a hit they keep it and if there’s no hit they sell it that’s the problem

My take on this is similar to my take on AI technology. 1. The tech isn't inherently immoral, obviously, since this is primarily used for medical purposes. 2. Whatever you think is immoral about using the tech in this way is already being done with more crude methods. (In the case of AI it's either scamming, tracing, or plagarizing. In this case it's ripping and resealing, weighing, and again counterfeiting/scamming). 3. This tech makes it easier and more precise for people to know what's inside a pack and pass it off as if it's still a mystery in some way. 4. There will be people who see nothing immoral with using the tech to find out what's inside a pack, and therefore a market for it will emerge absent government regulation (black market if it is regulated). 5. It will impact the wider market absolutely. Even if it only directly impacts the price of vintage packs, this will have a ripple effect. For example if every known base set pack was scanned, likely the average price would remain similar, although it may fall, but the discrepancy between scanned with Charizard and scanned no Charizard / unscanned packs will be massive since the main thing holding the price of sealed so high is the idea that you might get the Charizard. (Unscanned is lumped in with the no Charizard because people who are in the market for Charizard packs won't want to bet on it, similarly to how loose packs are worth less than boxes because they may have been weighed and all the good ones are gone.) Anyways, for those not willing to participate in the new market, they know it's going on (you likely are averse to loose pack sellers on ebay) and will be less willing to pay the same big bucks for the unscanned that they currently are willing to pay. As a result, the more modern stuff starts to reach price parity with the vintage stuff, and so more people want to buy it because they think it's not getting scanned, raising the price, eventually lending it to being scanned as well. All this to say I think a secondary market will emerge for the hypothetical PSA 11 mentioned in the original video on it, which will probably be more valuable than the 10s (maybe, I'll explain later) and that may push the price of current opened and sealed collections overall down, but in a world where that happens and most collectors feel the impact of it, they will also be engaging in the scanning part of the hobby and it will be affordable. If the scans can't determine centering or other flaws which could be graded, then opened 10s would probably command an even higher price, to the point that scanned might be as valuable as ungraded opened, which almost defeats the purpose of it in the first place. If you can't guarantee that what's in the pack is a perfect Charizard, why not buy an ungraded one? (Maybe I should give a modern example like umbreon since probably all vintage Charizards are either graded or heavily used, or not found yet.) Follow your heart, but know that if this is something that can be done for profit, a company will emerge that will do this, and it will affect the whole market, it's just a matter of how long it takes. If emerging companies are blackballed so hard by the collectors that pokemon company makes a statement of condemnation or something, it may be cost-prohibitive to get off the ground, I don't know how much it actually costs to do a scan once you own the machine, my guess is not much. I also don't think it affects the child like wonder of it unless like, you go to a local card shop and even they are selling modern boxes separated out into big hits and small hits. Even in that scenario though, you could preserve some of the wonder, but obviously it's more paywalled than it already is.

Hey Michael - sorry I’ve dropped off a bit. Great to come back to see your content again. I don’t know enough about the CT technology - can it scan thru sealed cases and get accurate results? If not, then cases will be the only thing investors will buy. Either way - sad for and card hobby - Pokémon, sports, etc. 🤙🏼

Do future "hits" ditch foil and texture to avoid being found as easily. Does market prices of high end and vintage sealed dip as known "no hitters" just become shelf queens. Would this create a black market for content creators or wealthy people willing to pay more for a box with a guaranteed hit, so that they get the feeling of opening it?

This is the best thing that's ever happened to the sports card industry as a whole. Now if these CT scanners could see through Lotto scratchers.

Seems overwhelmingly negative for the hobby. We already had to worry about packs being weighed, now there's an additional layer of potential scamming. This essentially makes it impossible to buy vintage packs and trust you might actually open something of value. Its really a shame. To your point about posting pics of the greyscale images along with a box on ebay, there's also nothing stopping someone from just lying and putting up fake images to move a box Ata higher price. Hopefully tcg companies find a reasonable way to combat this new wave of nonsense for future products. Anything that exists now is probably doomed

If there is a cost effective way to disrupt the CT scan, pokemon company could implement the technology inside the ETBs. But I dont see the Pokemon Company doing that lol.

13:37 intentional!? And I'm definitely on the negative side, just because it has an influence which is unpredictable. I don't like it whatsoever.

Your right this has ruined Pokemon that's why I hate technology I still get exited opening Pokemon like today I pulled a gold card from scarlet and violet base and a gold card from astral radiance and a special art rare any way my friend great video 😀

Could not agree more. This whole thing bums me out.

Thoughts on having tins as investments as you can’t put metal in a CT scan????

This is completely horrible and wrong. And as someone who writes software for work, I know this will get optimized and automated making it cheaper and cheaper until it affects booster boxes that are only a few years old. I’m so frustrated people can be so greedy about every single thing.

Its more than likely been going on for years. Only to a select few. I'd even bet most high end packs has been scanned and resold. Defo outside of Pokemon. Can't wait for the phone app..... lol!

No it's not

I don’t agree with it but I do believe people with a strong collection of WOTC/ Rare and expensive packs will certainly scan them rather than ripping a $300+ pack for $5 return. If they’re not great contents they will hold/ sell, if they’re good pulls they will rip and grade. I guess it’s a whole new business opportunity for some

Literally just got over 400 in elite trainer boxes and many others. I pulled like 9 cards worth less than 5 dollars a piece 🤦🏽😂

AI can interpret electrical frequencies to recreate hdmi signals to video. Wirelessly .

It justs recks the investors, not the game nor the collectors that do it just for the sake of liking the hobby/arts/cards. If this means having less people buying to hold and more people opening and enjoying so be it. This ct movement will only grow and every booster produced till '24 will be compromissed. Make no mistakes

Pulling a machamp from a base set pack I see what you did there 😏 that guy never made it into packs.

This is the last thing on my mind, but it's just another way for people to get money from other people.

Who's to say they haven't been doing this for year?

funny how the fossil pack grew in value as we got richer... life is not fair

The kind of guy who scans the horizon looking for clarity.

ETBs bout to be the way. It’s about the art now anyways.

The only one benefiting about this will be the company that scan. Because for example: One guy scan a evolving skies booster box, finds out that there is nothing inside, and sells it! And the guy who will buy from this guy will scan it again and this one finds exact the same thing with the same booster box, and sell it and the other guy who buys it do the same… and so on And in 10 years the same booster box will end up being scanned 100 times and being sold 100 times, because who will open a booster box that has nothing inside! It’s clearly like throwing money in the bin And the company will make from one booster box 6500 dollars just for a booster box! That’s infinite money for them! Gold mine! I am totally against! We need to sign a petition or something to be declared Illegal scanning TCG!

I enjoyed hiding my rock - now I feel unsafe

I just hate when things like this come out because it ruins the hobby. I know this affects mostly vintage but eventually I feel they will make it cheap enough for modern packs. I think you should try getting sponsorships. You have a large channel and I see smaller channels get deals with Arizona tcg, low popping, and others. No disrespect to you at all.

The thing I like about the hobby is the thrill of the chase. We can push back, disagree, boycott all we like but the reality is within a few years anything valuable will be deemed scanned. It will be like trying to sell “unweighted” vintage packs now, they will be assumed to be light. All packs/boxes will be assumed hitless unless you can provide a scan of the box/pack ☹️☹️

Unfortunately, the ONLY good thing to come out of this technology is If you bought a Poncho box and you 1/ needa confirm you'ree not given Juice boxes from Japan and 2/ you retain the sealed value of an item as historically, the only way to check if your poncho pikachu is in the box is by cracking it. But a cracked box's value is significantly decreased upon opening. Don't be influenced by opposum bud. cringe lord.

Can they just change the packaging to disrupt the ct-scanner?

Personally I don't think it's that big of a deal. If scanning cards is possible, it's been possible for 20+ years and I doubt this is the first time it's been attempted, so I think it's good that the public is now aware. As for your argument that it "ruins the fun" and is "supposed to be for kids," the same thing could be said about pokemon investing in general. If there's profit to be made, or if a system can be gamed, someone is going to attempt it, no way around that. Also, it really only seems to affect individual booster packs which were already susceptible to weighing. Lastly, if your only concern is that this is something that "ruins the hobby" I'm sure The Pokemon Company will implement a prevention method. TLDR: 🤷‍♂️

Greedy people - The reason why we can't have nice things

don't need to explain to us the joy of opening packs. we are ALL well aware of it. Unethically I don't care tbh, but 100% agree this is absolutely TERRIBLE for the hobbie. What I can say is...the cost effectiveness is TOO much (Which I heard is) then it shouldn't be an issue. From what i read or watch, scanning a whole booster box can sometimes only yield 50% of results. Single packs might be ruin though.

I feel like everytime a poke content creator makes a video about this, and throws ideas of how companies could do it, an angel looses its wings lol. God if there wasn't anyone that DIDN'T know sbout it left they do now!! I understand coming from the wanting to warn your guys subs about it, and giving your opinions, and also make a great hitting piece of content for RU-vid, but it feels like some ppl are just flaming the fire. (Not directed towards just you, this is my opinion on EVERY poke RU-vidr that has made these videos. I wish card companies could take legal action, but shit, its not gonna be there problem w whats being done w the product AFTER they sell it, legally, right? But I mean if it started affecting the business of Pokemon cards, do you think theres legal action rhey could take. I heard if that guys patent goes thru, then maybe no one will be able to do it. Someone needs to buy the patent, and just sit on it so no one else can do fuck all without legal repercussions

# Money Is The Root Of All Evil !!

If you think it's unethical, let me guess you probably collect with the intent to gain monetarily.

Us normies looking at the state of Pokemon and thinking ill never ever invest in Pokemon

What about boxes and case?

this is bad

Make some new content!! So tired of hearing the same video over and over your just beating the dead dog with a stick at this point. Brutal.

It’s too expensive to do the scan now for the current sets. The profit just isn’t there but vintage shit yes it’s problematic. Until the ct scan prices comes down I don’t see it a problem until then. Could you guys do a class action lawsuit against the company.