TCG Report] "Please give me all the Kanata Amane in this store" - Report on the Weiss Schwarz "Hololive Production" craze in Akihabara, where the store's stock disappeared.

On October 1, 2021, the booster pack "hololive production" of the TCG "Weiss Schwarz" was released.

Weiss Schwarz" (WS) is a trading card game released by Bushiroad, which has released packs based on various anime and video games. The appeal of this game is its high degree of freedom, which allows players to play with decks made up of cards from different works. The cards in this booster pack feature VTubers from the virtual YouTuber (VTuber) agency "hololive Productions".

A few days after the release date of such WS "hololive Productions" passed with Typhoon No. 16, which happened to graze the Japanese archipelago, we heard voices in the Akihabara area saying, "Vice's hololive is in trouble. A few days later, I made the rounds of Akihabara and found that WS "hololive production" was handled at zero in stores. Of course, it is not that there is no stock in stock ......, but all of them are already sold out. What was heating up instead was the purchase and sale of cards autographed by each VTuber, which are included at a low rate, and at one point, as far as we could observe, there was even a purchase price of 140,000-150,000 yen. This is only the purchase price, and the price will be even higher when the cards are sold in stores.

Image: Trading Card Game Shop 193 in Akihabara

What was happening in Akihabara on that day when the typhoon hit the archipelago? We visited a card game store and talked to the staff on the spot.

Trading Card Game Shop 193 Akihabara

What was going on on the day of the release of "hololive production"?

193 staff: We started selling the product early in the morning at 7:00 a.m., and we had about 50 customers lined up first thing in the morning. The first person in line bought all the single-sale autograph cards. With the typhoon approaching, many people bought many packs in bulk.

At the store, "Coco Kiryu (HOL/W91-004SSP)" was sold for about 150,000 yen. How about the purchase and sale of high-value cards?

193Staff: We announced the purchase at an early stage, so the number of retweets on Twitter increased considerably. However, compared to the response, there were not so many requests for the purchase of autograph cards. Actually, what moved quite a bit were the practical parts needed to build decks. Since it is impossible to buy booster packs, cards with strong card text are growing.

▲Part of the purchase price list posted on Twitter on the morning of the release date. The highest price was 140,000 yen (!) for Koko Kiryu and Marin Takaragane. The highest price was 140,000 yen (!) for Coco Kiryu and Marin Takarazane. (* These are the prices on the day of release, and are not the current purchase prices.)

Trekka specialty store DRAGONSTAR Akihabara

─ How were the initial sales of the WS "hololive production" booster packs?

DRAGONSTAR Akihabara store staff: The packs sold extremely well. All reservation slots, including those at stores in the Kansai region, were filled by the time of the release date. I think we ordered twice or three times as many packs as we usually do for Weiss Schwarz titles, but they were sold out on the same day. At the Akihabara store, they were sold out by noon.

─ How was the movement of single cards?

DRAGONSTAR Akihabara Store Staff In the case of the Akihabara store, sales in the first week of October were about the same as all single card sales in September. There were a lot of autograph card purchases, but also a lot of sales. Today, there was a customer who bought two copies of Fubuki Shirakami's SSP (reference price 85,000 yen).

─ Are there any cards that are popular?

DRAGONSTAR Akihabara Store Staff hololive has a big demand for building decks with guesses, so all cards are moving well. What impressed us was a customer who wanted to buy as many Amane Kanata cards as he could in this store, and he really bought them all.

*Image shows inside Trading Card Game Shop 193 Akihabara.

We made another round of Akihabara the weekend after the release of the product one week later, but could not find any in-store stock of the WS "hololive production" booster packs. Only a small stock of the "Trial Deck + hololive Production" released the previous week could be confirmed. The maximum purchase price for autograph cards seems to have settled at around 100,000 yen (high enough, but it is numbing to the senses).

The system that can compete with Weiss Schwarz, a popular title, and the ability to create value with autograph cards, which are rare in terms of inclusion rate, may have meshed well with hololive's explosive popularity.

The Pokémon card game ("Pokéka") comes to mind when talking about high-priced single cards. In Akihabara, the Pokéka single-card sales floor has expanded significantly in recent years, and the extreme price increases of old cards and female character cards have also attracted attention. In "Magic the Gathering," it is well known that old cards, which are now difficult to obtain, continue to soar in price.

In the TCG industry, sales of "Duel Masters," "Pokémon Card Game," and "Yugi Card Game" are the biggest sellers. Pokemon Card Game" and "Yu-Gi-Oh OCG Duel Monsters," but it will be interesting to see how far "Weiss Schwarz," now that it has a strong partner in "hololive," will be able to keep up with them in terms of sales.

Image: Trading Card Game Shop 193 Akihabara

(Kiri Nakazato)