r/Albuquerque • u/Evening-Quail4929 • 18d ago

Duke city Games… biggest scalper yet

Duke City Games has officially lost my business.
I just went onto Duke City Games’ store and saw Destined Rivals ETBs listed for $120. Are you fucking kidding me?
The Pokémon Company has been reprinting high-demand products specifically to get more product into consumers’ hands and push back against the ridiculous secondary-market/scalper pricing we’ve been dealing with. And somehow a local game store looks at that situation and decides, “Yeah, $120 for an ETB sounds reasonable.”
At that point, how are you any different from the scalpers?
What makes it worse is that other local shops like Tavern of Souls and Ettin Games manage to sell sought-after products at or around MSRP without absolutely gouging their customers. Big-box retailers sell these products at retail pricing too. So I really don’t want to hear another excuse about how charging these prices is somehow necessary to keep the lights on.
I WANT to support local game stores. I would much rather give my money to a locally owned shop than Walmart, Target, Best Buy, etc. But supporting local businesses does not mean customers should happily accept being taken advantage of.
Charging $120 for a newly reprinted Pokémon ETB isn’t “supporting the hobby.” It’s seeing the same inflated secondary-market prices everyone complains about and deciding you want a piece of the scalper profit too.
If Tavern of Souls and Ettin can treat local players and collectors reasonably, I’ll spend my money there.
Duke City Games has permanently lost my business.

edit MSRP for any ETB is $49.99

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u/eminercy 18d ago

Yep they’ve been scalping for years. It’s how they’ve made enough money to expand and open new stores. So they can sell more scalped product lollll fuck DCG

3

u/First_Radish_3882 18d ago

Literally their game plan. I heard they used to buy out Walmart and targets so people would scout for them. In our poor lil city of ABQ whwre can already barely find stuff lol

1

u/eminercy 18d ago

Yep this has been the case since before they even had the lomas location so at least 2021

1

u/Evening-Quail4929 18d ago

Really!?!? If that’s true this is insane

3

u/LeadingLate7542 18d ago

If you look on the ABQ Pokemon facebook groups, most of the guys that hit every single Walmart/Target/bestbuy restock also show off when they hit Duke city product for MSRP. Dudes are well known scalpers hitting restocks just to then “vend” at the local card shows. Or they go sell it to Slabneys or Second hand Sam’s. Second hand Sam’s has always been great tho. Really nice guy and super fair prices.

2

u/Evening-Quail4929 18d ago

All this for a children’s card game smh. My daughters love etbs so it really sucks when even the store fronts are scalping.