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Addiction Markets

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383 points toomuchtodo | 2 comments | 31 Oct 25 17:42 UTC | HN request time: 0.557s | source
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nekusar ◴[31 Oct 25 19:58 UTC] No.45776057[source]▶
People are also leaving out stuff like Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, and Magic The Gathering.

All of them also introduce rarities (arbitrary exclusiveness), hidden cards in a pack, and extreme gambling gamification.

The only non-gambling MtG packs are the preconstructed commander decks. All 100 cards are published. But the packs and boxes? Pure gambling, especially for the chase rare cards.

And before anyone asks, yes, my username is based after this $2 card. https://edhrec.com/commanders/nekusar-the-mindrazer

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asdff ◴[31 Oct 25 23:02 UTC] No.45777679[source]▶
I feel like it only became rampant in recent years. As a 90s kid no one cared about the card packs. We all assumed they'd be junk cards and a waste of $7 or whatever. No, the move for card people back then was to wait for the card show and just buy the cards you actually want from a card dealer.

The thing is now people are marketing the pack opening. You have social media accounts of them pulling cards from packs and getting all hyped up about it. Again no one thought that was fun in the 90s, everyone hated that aspect of cards in the 90s but thats because the unboxing as an experience wasn't marketed by anyone at all. People just wanted cards they thought were personally cool in some way.

And likewise expansion of markets in the internet era means people start to have shared values of what is a valuable card based on market price vs just being interested in some certain cards out of your own interest.

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1. FarmerPotato ◴[01 Nov 25 06:52 UTC] No.45779718[source]▶
Consider who your peers were then. Were they likely to get addicted? I know my circle was elite--doing the probability calculations, circulating card lists on Usenet, and joking that gambling was taxes on stupid people.

Now as an adult, I see tweens with addictions to multiple things. Watch them beg to buy a Pokemon pack, open it, and lose interest. It's completely the dopamine expectation. And it takes years in recovery. But I think I was ignorant and unaware in the 90s of what other people were addicted to.

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2. vanderZwan ◴[01 Nov 25 09:14 UTC] No.45780290[source]▶
Even if you aren't prone to gambling there are other factors that can apply. I never was into gambling, but I grew up in the Dutch countryside in the 90s, so trading with local players was my only option. I spent a ton of money on boosters as a teen without realizing it's all manufactured scarcity.