Granted. However you're a collector, while they are a business. It is their responsibility to ensure accurate stock levels. Not for the customers, but for themselves. There's no point ordering 5000 decks of cards, only to misplace 120 of them. That is an indication of poor organisation and inventory/stock level checking. I would expect this of a supermarket where stock is usually stored by department and/or aisle which results in a combination of various boxes of stock, but not a company who has such a niche market.
For example, at the time of writing this post, Ellusionist had 45 different decks of cards, including the limited edition ones numbering 6. I honestly can't believe that they could get hold of 1-2 thousand decks and 'misplace' several bricks of them. The only real explanation for finding them again is at a time when supply is low, while demand is high. This resulting in an elevated market price. A situation commonly referred to in the business sector as 'cashing in'.
To be convinced otherwise, it would be necessary to see the organisation which takes place from receipt of new stock, through to the completion of orders. This would answer may questions, but may also highlight areas of concern/error in the process.
Actually, E has a lot more than that to track. They don't order "1-2 thousand decks", they order twenty or thirty thousand of everything but the rare ones - and they re-order the non-rare decks when stocks run low. At any given time, they could be tracking maybe two million decks - if they misplaced just 0.25% of their inventory, that's five thousand - an entire print run of Gold Arcane or Black Ghost 1st Edition right there. Inventories are rarely that accurate.
The term 'use' does not have a linear meaning. I think what Don was trying to get at is that a deck purely for a personal collection is still considered to be of 'use'...
Froggo, don’t try to find a black cat in a dark room. I am sure Don expressed his thought in a wrong way. Unfortunately he is always very emotional defending TBC. And I think that this sometimes affects even his reasonable arguments in bad way.
PLAYING cards are intended for a play. Magic, caristry are a side way to "use" them. But when you collect them - you collect them. Don't invent rhetorical nonsense here. Esspecially those who are native English speakers. In accordance with such logic you "use" them just because you have them.
Actually, you misunderstood what I was referring to. For some of the people trying to get the white deck, especially the speculators, those other twelve decks they bought are little more than filler, something to be gotten rid of as quickly as possible. They didn't buy the decks because they wanted them, they bought them because they had to in order to get the "prize". Those are the unused and unwanted decks I refer to. Even if they do manage to resell them, they usually do so at a loss.
I'm not an employee of TBC - my best friend there, Kevin, no longer lives within a thousand miles of me. I would easily say the same thing if people were complaining about E or T11 for the same reasons. But they aren't - they're complaining about TBC. The company continually does what it can to make its customers happy, and a vocal minority continue to complain about it like these guys were evil incarnate.
On the other hand there is one really unfair moment in this situation. Some of TBC’s customers are too young to have enough knowledge of life for proper understanding of such marketing tricks. Life is unfair But TBC isn’t the company which invented all this.
...this is a kid who doesn't care if he burns the rest of the decks, as long as he got the one special deck. It's a kid who's either a little unbalanced or has far more money than common sense.
Don, I hope you are still speaking about mature people who act as children in this part of your message. Otherwise I don’t understand you.
Children, consult your parents before spending more than $10.
I was literally referring to children in that instance. The majority of the people in this hobby are under the age of 25 - in some cases, much younger. People who act like children would also fit the bill...
And you're absolutely right about kinds consulting their parents before buying, but I'm thinking most of them won't. Kids that age tend to be secretive about their lives, especially if they're buying something their parents might consider foolish.