There's no shortage of jerks in the Pokémon community
The Pokémon community has more than enough jerks within its ranks. There's no need to blame any and all bad behavior on outsiders
Every time someone posts a video showing someone 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 the fool while trying to buy Pokémon cards is more likely than not a Pokémon collector. There's no reason to think they are an outsider.
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 don't see any reason to think that. 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 these Target displays 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 ironic thing about the guy scarfing up all the ETBs technically, did nothing wrong. Nothing they did was illegal. They didn't take ETBs from other people's carts or push anyone out of way. They just picked up the display and walked away with it.
Target didn't place a on how many ETBs a customers could purchase. That's something each individual Target chooses to do. My local Target not only places a restriction on how many boxes of sealed product a customer can buy, they keep cards behind 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. 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 stood out to me:
This comment stood out to me 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 jerks 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 the ETBs.