As new shipment of Pokémon Trading Card Game expansion packs comes in, Bic Camera makes a new rule.

In a perfect world, the launch of a new Pokémon Trading Card Game expansion would be a time of unmitigated joy. New cards give veterans additional strategies and gameplay wrinkles to ponder and experiment with, and also give new players an occasion to jump into the game, which should lead to a healthy, robust fanbase.

And yet, the modern world being what it is, new Pokémon cards also attract scalpers, swooping in to bulk-buy and clear out retailers, then flip the cards for inflated prices through online sales, where they’re far beyond the price point that the average fan, especially kinds, can pay.

The struggle against scalpers isn’t limited to launch days, either, since the cycle repeats itself whenever new shipments of the latest expansions come in. So with Japanese retailer Bic Camera now getting restocks of the Pokémon Trading Card Game’s Ninja Spinner Mega Expansion Packs, which were first released in March, the store staff knows that some of the people looking to pick up packs aren’t fans of Pokémon so much as fans of the money they want to make scalping. So to weed out the resellers from the actual players, the Ikebukuro Nishiguchi branch of Bic Camera, in downtown Tokyo, has introduced a number of countermeasures, including a Pokémon test customers will have to pass before they’re allowed to buy the cards.

“Please be aware that sales will be limited to shoppers who can correctly answer the quiz questions,” reads a large poster-style sign that’s been placed in the store’s trading card section. Just what kind of questions are being asked? According to the below tweet, Bic Camera is asking would-be buyers to identify more than a dozen Pokémon species, selected at random from a pool of even more, and the sign says that sales will be refused to anyone attempting to photographing the questions ahead of time. Ostensibly, the names of the Pokémon are those that actual fans would be familiar with, but might not be known to scalpers whose primary way of interacting with the franchise is simply looking at online resale marketplace prices.

▼ The sign posted inside Bic Camera’s Ikebukuro Nishiguchi branch

▼ Bic Camera Ikebukuro Nishiguchi

Passing the quiz isn’t the only requirement for Ninja Spinner purchases, either. Buyers must have either a Bic Camera point card or the Bic Camera point app installed on their phone. Since Bic’s point system keeps a record of your purchases, this allows the staff to see if the same customer has been buying a suspiciously large quantity of cards in a short period of time. The sign also states that there is a limit of one box (containing 30 packs) per customer, and that “Purchase for the purpose of resale is strictly prohibited,” suggesting that in addition to the quiz and point account requirements, Bic Camera is reserving the right to refuse sales to anyone they have reason to believe is a scalper. As a final deterrent, the written conditions state that shrink wrap and perforated packaging sections will be removed from boxes at the time of sale, damaging their potential value on the resale market.

Manufactured scarcity in collectible trading card games is a complex issue. On the one hand, manufacturers could put a dent in the profitability of scalping by simply printing more of the most in-demand and effective cards. Making certain cards easier to find, though, in turn affects competitive gameplay balance, and also dampens the excitement from finding a rare card in a purchased pack. One could, perhaps cynically, argue that ultimately some retailers don’t care whether fans or scalpers are the ones buying their Pokémon cards, since the store makes money either way. The Ikebukuro Nishiguchi Bic Camera, though, appears to be of the opinion that protecting genuine fans’ access to the cards is worthwhile, so it’s nice to see them making efforts to do so.

Source: Hachima Kiko, Twitter/@kuma_kuma00000
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