There's no shortage of asshats in the Pokémon community
The Pokémon community has more than enough asshats within its ranks. There's no need to blame any and all bad behavior on outsiders
Every time someone posts a video showing somebody acting like a jerk while in pursuit of Pokémon cards, people are quick to say the individual isn't someone from within the community. They’re not a Pokémon collector. They’re a scalper. They're buying Pokémon cards to resell at a huge markup.
I don't necessarily buy that. Chances are, anyone acting like a raging jerk while buying Pokémon cards is more likely just a Pokémon collector. There's no reason to think they're some kind of interloper to a hobby.
For instance, take a look at this video captured by Instagram user jc.theripper.
The person in the video who grabbed the entire Black Friday $19.99 Elite Trainer Boxes (ETBs) display might be a scalper. I just don't see any reason to think that that they are. He's probably just a typical Pokémon collector with $500 of available credit on one of his many credit cards. Who really knows?
One of the Target displays shown in the above photo and in the Instagram video has four shelves. Each shelf holds six ETBs. In total, that's 24 ETBs. At $19.99 each, excluding sales tax, that works out to be a total of $479.76. That's assuming the display was completely full of ETBs. I don't think it was.
That's not a massive amount of money. Not really.
The interesting thing about the guy gobbling up all the ETBs in one big scoop technically, did nothing wrong. Nothing he did was illegal. He didn't take ETBs from his fellow shoppers or push anyone out of way. The guy just picked up the display and walked away with it.
Target didn't place a restriction on how many ETBs a customers could purchase. That's something each individual Target can do if they want to. My local Target not only places a restriction on how many boxes of sealed product a customer can buy, they keep Pokémon and sports card products behind the customer service desk. They don't mess around. Oddly enough, they don't keep Magic: The Gathering product behind the customer service desk.
I guess nobody steals Magic cards.
The guy bear hugging the display evidently chose to buy every ETB they had left. If Target didn't have a problem with it, then the guy did nothing wrong.
Speaking of potential wrongdoing, you should check out the comments section of the above video. Here's one that especially stood out to me:
This comment stood out not because of what 0ccult_birdy said, but because 809 people liked his comment. The commenter called for people to follow the customer home and commit physical violence against him. Hundreds of people in the Pokémon community liked it?
There's obviously no shortage of lowlifes in the Pokémon collecting community. If you agree physical violence should be perpetrated against a person because they bought all the ETBs Target had, guess what?
You're the villain in the story, not the guy who bought all those ETBs.