I was waiting for a shipment of some Pokemon Cards today and it got me to thinking how a few minor changes to a multi-billion dollar project could make life easier for millions of customers yet they don't seem to care enough to do so.
For instance, I purchased some packs a few months ago from a streamer since they're kind of hard to come by and close to impossible to find locally. Since they kind of make content out of it, they open the packs for you and then ship out the cards or just the valuable hits your way. Now while I do trust this streamer, I think for us here it's become normal to not need to rely on trust in this technology we've come to know.
The way this could be exploited is that the streamer could replace your cards with other identical cards. Since these cards can be graded, this means that he could take a closer look at what you have and if yours look better, replace his own cards with yours and then send them in for grading. Naturally yours would then on average come back in worse grade, because he has control over them.
This isn't the only place where there's leeway however, the grading company could also do something like this because the cards aren't serialized. The card you see being opened up on stream may not be the card you end up getting in the end.
Such a small issue, placing serial numbers at the bottom of the card, yet they refrain from doing so.
Other factors that plague the physical trading card world are things like re-sealing. Where people carefully open up packs, check if there's something valueable and rare in them, take it out and place something less valueable and then re-seal the packs to re-sell. A simple qr code card inside the packs verifying the contents of it where what they should've been could easily fix this as well but they don't bother with that. They do have a qr code card but it's mainly there to scan for some digital cards that may not be the same as the contents in another game/app.
Naturally things like these are already fixed in the nft world, for instance, our alpha vial sale that's ongoing currently at holozing.com, once that is over people will know that x amount of vials were sold which means only x amount of starter creatures will exist from the alpha vials. Moreso they'll also be serialized so you could tell who the account is to hold the first ever sold vial, who the account is to open the first vial and receive the first Wrackoo for instance and so on. There's immutable history on the cards as well, you'll be able to tell that this Wrackoo that acidyo opened up now belongs to another account, etc.
Either way, it's something I've been thinking of lately and plan to offer to physical cards as well when the time comes that we delve into that, and naturally when the funding allows for it.
It's just baffling to me that giant corporations like this wouldn't go the extra mile to make the trading and collecting scene less scammy. Many collectors/traders don't even think about it or demand more, they've just gotten used to things just being the way they are and accepting it for the way it is. Makes me think about the fiat world and many still not caring to learn or find out what's awaiting them and already ready to be used and taken advantage of.
