Pre-orders for the Japanese release of Eevee Heroes, including booster boxes, the VMAX Special Set, and the Eeveelution Special Box featuring the beautiful Espeon VMAX Promo, were recently released on the Japanese Pokemon Center website. However, the release was plagued with issues that will seem familiar to Western Pokemon collectors. While the site was largely non-functional for anyone attempting to purchase items themselves, Western-based reseller groups used purchasing bots to secure massive amounts of allocations.
The Eeveelution Special Box sold out the quickest, in mere minutes, despite a limit of one per customer. However, the resellers were able to circumvent this requirement to place extensive orders. The same was true for the regular booster boxes, which had a purchase limit of two per person. The booster boxes and VMAX Special Set (limited to one per person) lasted slightly longer, about 30 minutes, but still sold out while those attempting to manually order were largely unable to access the site.
Purchasing bots allow those who use them to circumvent buggy sites, per-person limits, and human click speed limitations to secure a significantly higher number of orders (or just orders to begin with) than would be possible with a human. After securing and receiving these orders, those who use purchasing bots will often resell their items for significantly above retail price. As such, many collectors significantly dislike those who use these purchasing bots. While purchasing bots have been common for recent US-based Pokemon card releases, including Shining Fates, Pokemon 25th Anniversary products, and Battle Styles, the use of purchasing bots for Japanese releases has yet to be seen until now.
The continued usage of bots and difficulty of obtaining new Pokemon product continues to illustrate the massive demand for Pokemon trading cards, which has clearly not abated one bit! Hopefully Pokemon Japan will continue to print Eevee Heroes to demand.
Ethan Pohl – Ludkins Media
