Pokémon card resellers have turned collecting into an online blood sport
Pokémon card resellers have turned collecting into an online blood sport
宝可梦卡牌转售商已将收藏变成了一场网络“血腥运动”
The franchise’s renewed popularity with resellers is being driven by a culture fixated on hustling. 该系列在转售商中重获人气，其背后是由一种痴迷于“搞钱”的文化所驱动的。
Earlier this month, Pokémon card content creator Natalie Roush posted a video to her YouTube and Instagram pages that enraged the larger collection community. In the now-deleted video, Roush shows off two premium boxes of cards that had not yet been officially released, and implores viewers not to be mad. But they were; other creators claimed that cards Roush had purchased were stolen from the manufacturer and mocked her for trying to sell them at exorbitant prices. The Roush situation was a high-profile example of the way Pokémon card collecting culture has been upended by the influencer economy and people trying to profit off the hobby. Though Roush has been relatively quiet in the days since the blowup, Pokémon collectors have been up in arms over a different — but very much related — problem. 本月初，宝可梦卡牌内容创作者 Natalie Roush 在其 YouTube 和 Instagram 页面上发布了一段视频，激怒了整个收藏界。在这段现已被删除的视频中，Roush 展示了两盒尚未正式发售的精品卡牌，并恳求观众不要生气。但观众们还是愤怒了；其他创作者声称 Roush 购买的卡牌是从制造商处窃取的，并嘲讽她试图以高价转售。Roush 事件是一个高调的例子，展示了宝可梦卡牌收藏文化是如何被网红经济以及试图从爱好中牟利的人们所颠覆的。尽管在风波发生后的几天里，Roush 一直保持相对沉默，但宝可梦收藏者们却因另一个——但与之密切相关——的问题而感到愤慨。
When the Pokémon Trading Card Game’s long-awaited 30th Celebration set finally released last week, collectors across the country lined up outside of stores in hopes of getting their hands on some shiny pieces of cardboard. The anniversary set has unusually strong pull rates — the rate at which you’re likely to find rare “chase” cards in a given set — giving more fans the cards they’ve always dreamed of, and potentially upsetting the aftermarket Poké-conomy. Some diehard Poké-fans even camped out overnight because a resurgence in popularity has made the cards much more difficult to find and buy in person. But another group of Pokémon card hunters was able to secure the highly sought-after set without having to travel to physical retailers or navigate the online Pokémon Center. 当宝可梦集换式卡牌游戏备受期待的 30 周年纪念系列于上周终于发布时，全国各地的收藏者在商店外排起长队，希望能买到这些闪亮的卡片。该周年纪念系列有着异常高的“出货率”（即在特定系列中抽到稀有“追逐”卡的概率），让更多粉丝得到了梦寐以求的卡牌，但也可能扰乱了二级市场的“宝可梦经济”。一些铁杆粉丝甚至彻夜露营，因为人气的回升使得这些卡牌在实体店变得极难寻找和购买。但另一群宝可梦卡牌猎人却无需前往实体零售店，也不必在宝可梦中心官网苦苦刷新，就成功拿下了这套备受追捧的系列。
Those people — resellers who often use automated bots to buy dozens of boxes of cards as soon as they’re available for preorder online — might not have had any intention of collecting the 30th Celebration set for themselves. But they have been trying to offload their spoils at marked-up prices to fans who haven’t had a chance to buy cards for themselves. Most retailers can’t keep cards on shelves, but there are plenty of videos online of resellers showing off piles of product they were able to obtain either by placing orders with bots or using inventory checking programs that alert them when brick-and-mortar stores receive stock. It’s also easy to find footage of resellers getting into altercations over cards, and in one recent instance, a 72-year-old man was arrested and charged with a first-degree misdemeanor for tracking a Pokémon delivery worker’s location with a device secretly planted in her car. 这些人——通常使用自动化机器人程序在网上预购一开启就抢购数十盒卡牌的转售商——可能根本没打算自己收藏 30 周年纪念系列。但他们一直在试图以高价将这些战利品转卖给那些没机会买到卡牌的粉丝。大多数零售商的货架上根本留不住卡牌，但网上有大量视频显示，转售商们炫耀着他们通过机器人下单，或使用库存监控程序（在实体店到货时发出提醒）所抢购的大量产品。此外，也很容易找到转售商因卡牌发生争执的视频。最近甚至发生了一起案件：一名 72 岁的老人因在一名宝可梦快递员的车上秘密安装追踪设备，被逮捕并被控一级轻罪。
Though flipping trading cards is nothing new, the Pokémon reselling economy has gotten much bigger in recent years as people have taken note of how durable the franchise’s popularity is. Many resellers like BotterBoyNova started off with other kinds of valuable merchandise before realizing that Pokémon products can be sold for far beyond the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, or MSRP. When I spoke with Nova recently, he told me that — like many millennials — he’s been a Pokémon fan since the mid-’90s. Nova was originally a content creator whose videos were mostly focused on reselling sneakers, but seeing how easy it was to profit from reselling Pokémon products convinced him that he needed to get in on the action. 虽然倒卖集换式卡牌并非新鲜事，但近年来，随着人们意识到该系列人气的持久性，宝可梦转售经济规模已大幅扩大。许多像 BotterBoyNova 这样的转售商最初是倒卖其他贵重商品，后来才意识到宝可梦产品的售价可以远超制造商建议零售价（MSRP）。最近我与 Nova 交谈时，他告诉我，像许多千禧一代一样，他从 90 年代中期起就是宝可梦粉丝。Nova 最初是一名内容创作者，视频主要关注球鞋转售，但看到倒卖宝可梦产品如此容易获利，他确信自己必须加入其中。
“Resellers in what’s described as the ‘Sneaker Twitter’ space are tapped in with practically every category of collectible that can resell for a profit,” Nova explained to me via Discord. “It’s not a situation where I’m singling out the Pokémon card market. It just so happens that it’s highly profitable and difficult to purchase for MSRP, and those are the conditions that our community specializes in.” “在所谓的‘球鞋推特’圈子里，转售商们几乎触及了所有可以转售获利的收藏品类别，”Nova 通过 Discord 向我解释道。“并不是我专门针对宝可梦卡牌市场。只是恰好它利润丰厚且很难以建议零售价买到，而这些正是我们这个群体所擅长的领域。”
Rather than operating independently, Nova works with Polar Chefs — a “cook group” community that sells monthly subscriptions to a variety of reseller tools and services. Subscriptions range from $660 per year to $75 per month, and they come with access to Polar Chefs’ private Discord server, restock alerts, and a selection of bots that can be used to buy cards. These bots make it easy for people to create multiple accounts on retailers’ websites that are attached to virtual credit cards, while the buyer’s IP address is spoofed with proxies. Technically, this kind of process isn’t illegal — at least not yet; Congress outlawed concert ticket-focused bots in 2016 and lawmakers have proposed doing the same for retail bots. But it does violate most retailers’ terms of service, which is why some resellers’ orders are canceled. Nova 并非独立运作，而是与 Polar Chefs 合作——这是一个“抢购群”社区，通过月费订阅提供各种转售工具和服务。订阅费用从每年 660 美元到每月 75 美元不等，会员可以访问 Polar Chefs 的私人 Discord 服务器、获取补货提醒，并使用一系列用于购买卡牌的机器人程序。这些机器人让用户可以轻松在零售商网站上创建多个绑定虚拟信用卡的账户，同时通过代理服务器伪造买家的 IP 地址。从技术上讲，这种流程并不违法——至少目前还不违法；国会在 2016 年取缔了针对演唱会门票的机器人程序，立法者也提议对零售机器人采取同样措施。但这确实违反了大多数零售商的服务条款，这也是为什么一些转售商的订单会被取消的原因。
Using Polar Chefs’ tools, Nova has been able to purchase massive amounts of Pokémon cards at MSRP from various retailers without being blocked by websites’ anti-bot security measures. Nova described his process of securing cards with bots as being “almost completely hands free,” and explained that the real work doesn’t begin until he has to sort and sell his inventory to a couple of bulk buyers. 利用 Polar Chefs 的工具，Nova 能够以建议零售价从各大零售商处购买海量宝可梦卡牌，且不会被网站的反机器人安全措施拦截。Nova 将他使用机器人抢购卡牌的过程描述为“几乎完全自动化”，并解释说，真正的工作要等到他需要整理库存并将其卖给几位大宗买家时才开始。
“During most weeks, I spend less than 3-5 hours a week on the reselling side of things (setting up bots, buying inventory, selling and fulfilling inventory),” Nova said, noting that he’s commonly asleep while pre-programmed bots make purchases for him. “I wait for notifications to come in from Polar Chefs which inform me of releases, bot adjustments I need to make, etc.” “大多数时候，我每周花在转售上的时间不到 3 到 5 小时（设置机器人、购买库存、销售和发货），”Nova 说，并指出当预设的机器人为他进行购买时，他通常正在睡觉。“我只需等待 Polar Chefs 发来的通知，告知我发布信息、需要进行的机器人调整等。”
Though it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when Pokémon reselling really exploded in the past few years, the rise of groups like Polar Chefs feels reflective of the way that the creator economy evolved during the… 虽然很难准确指出过去几年宝可梦转售热潮究竟是何时爆发的，但像 Polar Chefs 这类组织的兴起，似乎反映了创作者经济在……期间的演变方式。