The Target-exclusive six-pack of Animal Crossing: New Horizons Sanrio Amiibo cards went on sale this morning at 9am and sold out almost immediately. Moments later the six-dollar packs started showing up on eBay for upwards of $100. Is anyone surprised?
Despite Target restricting online orders to store pick-up and limiting sales to two per customer, the usual nonsense happened. Customers put packs in their online carts only to be told they were no longer in stock when they went to check out. Some Twitter users reported successful purchases made after many minutes of refreshing. Many successful buyers turned around and immediately put their purchased packs up for sale at a huge markup. The whole affair made many people very sad.
There is good news, however. The cards, each of which unlock new Hello Kitty-themed villagers and items in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, are actually reprints of cards released in 2016. That means the bootleg Amiibo cards market on websites like Etsy are filled with, we’ll call them DIYers, who will sell working tokens that unlock the same content for low, low prices. Anticipating this morning’s clusterfudge, I put in an order a few weeks back and got a nice little set that works just fine and even came with bonus stickers.
So there’s that. Gamestop is also currently selling the Action Replay Powersaves, a device capable of writing Amiibo data to NFC tags (which are pretty cheap themselves) for only $15. I ordered one of those this morning as well, just to try it out. I mean, it can’t be bad if they sell the thing at Gamestop, right?
On top of all that, I’ve heard from friends that while online orders were limited, many Target stores in their areas are also selling the card packs on store shelves today, so you could still get lucky. And if you don’t get lucky, get tricksy. Just don’t give bot-using scalpers any of your money. They shouldn’t get paid for being assholes.