Games

One thing Pokemon does pretty well though is keeping the collector side and the player side largely separate. If you just want to buy singles of the cards you need to play, that's cheap. You can get a top tier competitive deck for like $50-100 last time I checked, which is dirt cheap in the TCG space.

The high value Pokemon chase cards are like alt arts and stuff, the normal versions of good cards are usually plentiful. Unlike a game like Magic where all the highest power cards are also the most expensive.

You could show your niece how cool proxying is

Yeah it sucks because the actual card game was pretty fun for a while.

People forget that Pokemon started out as a bunch of dorks making an homage to bug catching. Pokemon's own success kind of fucked it over.

I'd say the bigger something gets, the more likely it is the investor ghouls come out and strip it for parts.

Boil all Finance Bros

Ohhh, now I get why all the shops I used to buy TTRPG books at are just Pokemon and MTG now, and all the TTRPG books I find (not counting D&D and Pathfinder etc) are expansions with no core books

I think it's a good idea to generally steer clear of anything that's basically gambling, particularly gambling targeted at kids. Collectible-focused card games, gacha games, games focused on loot boxes.

Cecilily is has some cool vids on her channel, she does a good job at presenting some Pokemon-hobby related issue as a way to bait and hook in casual viewers and before you know it, boom critiques of capitalism, I would recommend her to slightly woke normies who like Pokemon ig

Started with MagicTCG. Hasbro just has them spitting out tons of slop, it's sad.

I've been playing Riftbound, the game itself is great but overall it's completely ruined by the scalpers and investment bros.

And proxying is hardly an option because you can only really play with mutliple people on tournaments and proxies aren't allowed, also people tend to get defensive about this I think, because they have spent money on the game and want it to still be meaningful.

Take the kid to local events, check the pokemon website and go to event locator. They are usually well labeled so avoid a "challenge" or a "cup" but i can almost guarantee* if someone's opening packs at the store your kid will get some bulk for free.

*i give my bulk to kids and i see it happen, hopefully your area is similar

For casual play and deckbuilding the prerelase kits are usually for sale from older sets. Some are overpriced but if you find a reasonable couple boxes they contain one of a few different 40 card premade decks and 4 booster packs. For prerelease you get to swap any cards from the packs into the deck and play a tournament so they're meant to be playable and simple since they're intended to be the first look at a new set.

If you lived near me I'd just drop a box of cards on your head and thank you for taking them off my hands tbh