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These packs are from the original Pokemon set and Jungle expansion. Most shops wouldn't have their Pokemon cards sitting out like this, but especially not these sets! Packs sometimes sell for more than $200! I considered using some newer packs, but the designs are a lot more complicated! 

I worked at a Wizards of the Coast owned store waaaaay back when the Pokemon game first came out. Magic the Gathering had been around for years so the idea of a card game with packs of random cards wasn't new, but a lot of kids and their parents didn't understand it. Kids would often want to give back their packs because they didn't get the cards they wanted, and sometimes parents would get really made about it. There were a number of times where angry parents came into the store demanding that we had to give their kids the exact card they wanted, or refund their money because they didn't get the card they expected. We had to start explaining how the whole thing worked every time we sold anyone a pack. One time an angry parent waited for one of my coworkers after they got off work and tried to force her to give them free packs. Another time I was visiting a local comic shop and one of the customers recognized me and actually punched me because they had spent so much money on cards but never got a Charizard. I worked for Wizards of the Coast for 3 years and ended up sustaining a number of Pokemon related injuries.

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Shawn Eaton

Oh no, someone stop Modest before she destroys Jake's wallet! Um, wow, those were some awful people you had to deal with at that job. It saddens and angers me that people will harass, yell, or even assault people just trying to do their job who have no control over the product.

Leak

"Pokemon-related injuries"? Yikes! :/

Wendell Hong

That explains the ally way in my neighborhood that was full of those collectable card games cards all over the ground. Some guy probably bought a whole bunch of those cards got the one he wanted them tossed the rest.

Jake Richmond

Yeah, any community that revolves around a commodity with some value is going to have its share of awful people. We saw it al. Adults trying to scam kids out of their cards, other retailers trying to sneak into our backroom to steal whole flats of cards, older kids bullying younger kids out of cards, players trying to rig tournaments, parents forcing kids who had lost interest in the game to keep playing, counterfeit cards...

Jake Richmond

Punched in the head, tripped by a kid who lost a tournament, strained back (from lifting too heavy boxes of cards). broken fingers (crushed under boxes), kicked in the shin by a mother who was mad that we wouldn't take back the cards she had bought. Oh, pushed down by the angry ex-husband of a coworker who saw her on TV when a local news program did a story on the "Pokemon craze" and came to the store looking for past child support. Also chipped a tooth transporting Pokemon stuff from a local event back to our store, which eventually led to losing the tooth.

Jake Richmond

Probably! The garbage can outside our store in the mall was always littered with both wrappers and cards. Sometimes when I'm in another city I'll find a bunch of cards on teh ground and that's how know there's a game store nearby.

Leak

Wow - I bet Nintendo didn't list those risks and side effects on the boxes the cards came in... :(

Jake Richmond

Honestly, the whole thing felt like the wild west. I was pretty young. This was the first job I ever stayed at for more than a few months, and the first I ever actually liked. because I didn't have a lot of work experience I didn't understand how crazy it was. I was on tv 5 or 6 times interviewed about Pokemon, enough that people recognized me for years. e were sometimes depositing $20K a night, which I don't think I have to tell you is insane for a game store. On any non-school day we'd have 30-100 kids in the store playing Pokemon, and we were not a big store. I used to spend up to $100 a week buying kids lunches because their parents would drop them off at 10am when we opened and wouldn't pick them up till 7 or 8pm. Once one of the kids was kidnapped (not from our store, but at the time we didn't know that) and we spent days working with the police. We would drive around Oregon and Washington running pop-up tournaments and handing out prizes at Burger Kings and Toys R Us and game shops and malls. We'd judge costume contests and rule on tournaments and chase off sketchy adults. It was only years later that I looked back on it and realized how nuts it all was. I've worked at 2 cemeteries and a mortuary, a bar, a few different LAN cafes, a few political campaigns, a dozen schools, a few gaming and comic companies a strip club and a day care and this was by far the weirdest job I ever had.

Leak

Wow (again)... Now, I've only ever worked in IT, but even my few years of keeping a lab full of PCs for public student use up and running don't seem to come close to that - though I guess my mom, who worked in a magazine/book store, probably has her fair share of crazy stories that might compare...

Anonymous

You know, its funny. I'll tell people work stories and they'll say that they've never experience anything so crazy. And then later I'll find out they were a mercenary driving caravans in Iraq or they once had to move in with their boss after their house burned down and then their temporary residence was destroyed by a tornado. Or they delivered food to Jack Black and as a tip he gave them a Nintendo. It turns out we all have crazy work stories. We just don't always have teh context to see how crazy they are.