Nerdmeat's Nerdblog

 Just a few short years ago, you could walk into a Target or a Walmart and find Magic: The Gathering  or Pokémon  cards on the shelves. In 2025, retailers are now having to put "per customer" rules on trading cards.  Trading card sales at Target are up nearly 70% year to date and are on track to deliver $1 billion in sales this year.  Why is that? What created this trend that is actively preventing your average 33-year-old from finding cards anywhere? Essentially, in 2020 when the world encouraged people to stay indoors, a flood of nostalgic millennials with disposable income started seeking out cards they missed out on as kids. Some of those nostalgic millennials happened to be social media influencers with massive followings who legitimized the hobby and acted as a marketing tool for the second-hand market of cards. Going as far as to treat Pokémon  cards as a legitimate investment as opposed to playing the stock market. A core mechanic to the trading car...

In the digital age, we've largely abandoned the need for printers in every day life. Once upon a time, we would have to print things all the time in order to send documents, turn in homework, or file things away if you didn't trust your hard drive. Now, with the exception of certain industries or government agencies, there is hardly ever a need to print anything. This printer remembers smoking cigarettes in the office. Recently, I've begun selling trading cards online which involves printing packing slips and shipping labels. Time to boot up the printer! At least, it should have been that simple. A few weeks ago, I had cancelled every subscription we weren't actively using. One of which was HP SmartInk, a service that I thought I had set up so they would mail us a new ink cartridge when ours was low. Perhaps this is how it was once set up. But apparently that isn't the case anymore, as we were told our documents will not print unless we are subscribed to this servic...

Yeah, I'm not the greatest decision maker. First, let's recap my history with the game, then we will break down what led me down the dark path I find myself on. I've made worse decisions, but I've also made better ones. My very first experience with the game was in 7th grade, when a friend gave me some cards so we could play. We didn't understand all the rules, and of course the cards we had were bad. We played for a few weeks, then we moved on to whatever other hobby we picked up for a short time. It wasn't until my junior year of college that I found myself at the gates of the hobby once more. My roommate and his coworkers would play huge 4-6 person multiplayer games at our kitchen table for hours late into the night and into the early mornings. My desire to be included had me at Walmart, buying a Core Set 2013 starter deck in order to play along. Eventually, I ended up working at the same Applebee's as these guys and it became a regular thing. Around thi...