Crossing The Grand Line
Anyone who knows me personally knows I have a deep love and appreciation for trading card games.
To me, good or bad, a trading card game encapsulates everything I enjoy from my hobbies. There is the art of building your deck, trying to think of every possible solution to relegate any chances of luck over skill. Trading card games are social games, allowing me to interact with my friends in ways that other games just might not let us. Plus, being a child of the 90’s, I just love collecting things (comics, toys, games, etc).
Honestly, if I had the opportunity, I would collect every new trading card game that hit the market. Sadly, this is not a possibility for anyone really. The sheer volume of games that have come out lately, either directly or via KickStarter, and the way some companies churn out new releases (WotC), no sane person could do it. With only so much time to invest, I carefully curate my trading card game collection to be specific titles. Sadly, Bandai’s One Piece: Card Game. After feeling burnt out on the Dragon Ball Super Card Game, I just didn’t feel the need to go down that path again.
At least that was the plan, and plans are ever changing.
My brother and his girlfriend (both of which are the fantastic hosts of the Horror Movie Whores podcast) recently decided to jump into the One Piece: Card Game. As they prefer to shop local game store only for their hobby, they could only find two of the four starter decks out in the wild. They had planned to correct this hopefully by visiting other shops when they go on trips. The important point is that they only had two of the four, and I, being a good brother, was on the look out for them when I go shopping.
Fast forward to this passed week. I happened to be out shopping at a big box retail store and figured I’d check out what kind of stuff they had on the shelves of their collectible card aisle. Normally, in my experience, these sections are usually picked clean and all that is left is the horrible “mystery box” products. I only usually check them because I got lucky once and found a sealed box of CardFight!! Vanguard in the clearance section for $5. This particular one was set up with sports cards first, followed by Pokemon, then Magic the Gathering, Dragon Ball Super/My Hero Academia, and finally comics and other collectibles.
Anyways, as I enter the aisle, I immediately notice there is another customer. The only reason I noticed them or even bring it up is that they were crouched down at the end of the aisle looking back and forth from their phone to the comics and back again. They were checking out the prices of the books online. Whatever.
As I’m looking everything over, I noticed a display box for the One Piece starter decks. It had exactly one of each deck remaining in it. It is at this point I remember my brother wanting to have all four starters, but I couldn’t remember what ones they both needed. So I shoot him a text and go back to shopping.
A few minutes go by and I start thinking I specifically remember them mention the Straw Hat Crew deck as the main one they still needed. He hasn’t responded yet (he’s at work at this point), so I decide to go back and grab it just in case he gets back to me and wanted it.
When I make my way back to the aisle, the person is still there except now they are comparing prices of the sports cards to stuff on eBay (I think). I go back to where the display box was, only to find out it is gone. I think that that was super fast for all four to be gone in the span of a few minutes. After looking some more, however, I notice the display box had been pushed all the way to the back of the shelf and turned sideways to hide it behind some Magic the Gathering Commander decks. Furthermore, all the decks were laying face down in the display to appear as though the box was empty.
Yeah, not the smoothest hiding job I’ve seen. And do not get me wrong, I get it. Like I said, I’m a child of the 90’s and someone who loves to collect things. I was there for the comic book bubble burst that nearly ruined Marvel Comics. I was a massive fan of the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, and fought through those beautifully stuffed toy aisles at Toys-R-Us and KayBee Toys with my dad. I still have fond memories of the hunt for Tickle-Me-Elmo and Furbies with my mom for my little brother. The point I’m trying to make is that I understand and game recognizes game. Still I was trying to help my brother out, so I grabbed all four of the decks to be safe and went on with my shopping.
And this is where I go from understanding to spiteful extremely fast.
You see, the same person that was scoping out the cards’ online prices decided it would be a smart idea to follow me around the store. There is a fine line between collectible hunting and harassment, a line this person decided to cross. I was in this big box store for a good 30 or 40 minutes after that. At one point, I considered turning around and confronting them, but I’m honestly not one for making a scene unless the person is threatening or disrespecting a loved one. They always kept their distance so if I got an employee they would have just seemed like they were just shopping too. They had to be hoping that I was either going to put them down or they would be smooth enough to snatch it from my cart when I wasn’t looking.
Ultimately, I never heard back from my brother before checking out (understandable), so out of pure spite I bought all four of the decks. I bought them for a couple of reasons. The first was because I would end up seeing my brother the next night and if he wanted them he could have them. The second reason was because after all of that, I wasn’t going to give some moron the satisfaction of feeling like they got one over on me by following me around a store for an hour.
The kicker of it all though? For shits and giggles, when I got to my car, I looked up the four decks on TCGPlayer. Each of the decks are going for about $23-$25 (at the time of this writing), which is only a difference of $10-$12 dollars. The idiot followed me around for nearly an hour for $48 profit. Hell, it wouldn’t even be that after shipping and service fees (depending on where they sold them).
So at the end of the day, I got to piss off a scalper and waste their time all while (albeit reluctantly) picking up a new card game in the process. Meanwhile, you all got a fun little story out of the experience as well.
Hope you all enjoyed it!
Until next time, keep your dice warm and happy gaming…