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Comment by IncreasePosts

2 months ago

If you're spending thousands of dollars on collectible pokemon cards, you probably aren't strapped for cash.

I worked for a gacha gaming startup early in my career. We were small so I did customer support besides engineering and got to know our whales quite well.

For every tech/finance worker who made hundreds of thousands a year and could afford to casually drop $5k a month on “collectibles”, there was easily 10 people who clearly were not making that much money but compulsively spending it for short lived dopamine hits.

It was kind of sad.

The one that really stuck with me was a social worker who worked with sick children making minimum wage, and spent all her spare cash on our product.

You say that, but I know at least a few collector types who definitely spend above their means to collect the stuff they're into... it's not great.

Hopefully that's not the case here, but it's definitely not just a "money to burn" thing..