Pokemon's Prismatic Evolution scalpers have me debating counterfeits. Hear me out.

Here's the thing, I have been known to collect Pokemon cards, but I also don't really play. I, occasionally, play with my kids but their interests sort of waned. We used to participate in the Pokemon club at their school but it quickly became a thing for people to show off the stupid amount of money their parents were willing to spend on them.

And now, there's the Prismatic Evolutions set. I love some of the art from these cards and, honestly, I want to just look at them. In particular, Leafeon. I love the little guy, and is one of my favorites, especially as one of the few Eeveelutions that you could actually pet without dying. He's not the most popular though so let me just see if I can snag it's newest card from the Prismatic Evolution set. Oops, at the time of this writing I can get a "used" one for $380 dollars.

It's absolutely a pretty card. I'm not going to deny it. I mean, look at this fella.

But I can't spent several hundred dollars on a piece of cardboard that looks pretty. I'm not about that life.

It reminds me of something that happened to me when my kids did Pokemon club at their school. There was this kid who was doing pretty good with his deck but then he lost against some wealthy kid. The wealthy kid then demanded the other kid's deck get inspected and it turns out that the kid had a fake Chameleon. He didn't even know about it. It wasn't a special card, it was just a mid evolution card that his parents got off Amazon.

The kid was immediately disqualified from the win and from using that deck again in the club. It devastated the kid because it was his only deck. Eventually I found that particular card online for like $.50 and just bought it for the kid. But that's because the card was 50 cents.

But scalpers have been allowed to just run rampant with no repercussion. It's almost impossible to get new sets ever since the pandemic turned everyone into stupid TCG stock brokers. I, for example, know that I'm probably never going to get my hands on a Prismatic Evolution box because of these people and, honestly, that's fine because I know deep down I don't need it.

I also know something that I realized long ago. Much like that image above of Leafeon, I can just print it out. Sure, it would take some metallic card stock if I wanted to turn it into a card, but that's cheaper than buying the card. And, I get the benefit of printing it bigger if I just wanna put it on the wall or something or actually see the art better.

But also, for a lot of games these kids play, they're not in some official tournament and they just want to hang out and play. They can't afford to spend hundreds to finish a collection or get a deck they want built. And it's not like every deck doesn't have its weaknesses.

Maybe we need to start being lax with these rules if it's just casual playing.

When someone wins the big Pokemon Tournament, a special set is released that is a replica of their deck with the winner's signature on them. And they're pretty damn affordable. For $15 you can get a prebuilt deck someone beat everyone in a tournament with. That's pretty awesome. Until the kid buys it and finds out that most places won't let them use cards with the signatures on them. They're also banned from official tournaments. So if you want to play this deck in an official capacity you have to go and get those cards second hand. And guess what scalpers do when those decks come out.

YankeeKicks can Van Gogh fuck themselves

So, I think maybe it's time we start recognizing these low level tournaments as something people just do for fun and get that massive Sudowoodo out of our asses when it comes to these rules. If we can just let scalpers get away with charging stupid amounts for these cards, maybe we can take the power back by them and not taking it so seriously. If a card was that hard to beat anyways, then that's just a sign of the broken balance of the game, you know?

Let the kid who got that weird set of "gold" Pokemon cards for Christmas use some of them instead of telling them they're not real. Let that kid with the light blue borders around the card just use them. We need to take back the power from the scalpers and give it back to the kids who just want to play.