Alternate Universes Holmes — Attraction in Ridley Township

I typically don’t write long reviews, but I had to for this store. TLDR: They sell resealed/tampered packs.

My brother told me about the store nearby and I was excited because I just got back into collecting Pokémon cards after SV 151 released. I love to support local businesses instead of big brand stores, so this was great news. He wanted to surprise me for my birthday so he went by himself and got me a GENEROUS gift of 38 fusion strike packs and 36 lost origin packs. I bought a twilight booster box which came in as well, so it was going to be a glorious day of ripping (hopefully).

Fast forward, we get to ripping the lost origin and everything is great. Packs feel legitimate, cards feel good; great, so far so good. Now comes the fusion strike which we are all excited for. My wife really wants the alt art Espeon and this was our first chance of potentially getting it. We all take a pack, and rip it. Top and bottom tabs don’t rip off the seams on any of our packs. Weird. All 3 packs, cards are warped to oblivion almost as if they bathed in the sun and air. Weird, okay; no big deal. We open another one each. All cards warped again. Odd. We don’t let it get to us and we continue ripping. Then we hit 3 Appleton V’s back to back, regular holos with white code cards, upside down code cards. I immediately stop and inspect the booster packs and YES without a doubt every single fusion strike booster was resealed or tampered with. I didn’t even second guess this as they are a local reputable shop. The crimping is completely off, there’s guidelines on the boosters for where to cut. The packaging is uneven and there’s extra plastic on the top and bottom tips. I attached a picture of the twilight I opened and the fusion strike bought from here, you be the judge.

Fast forward, we go to the shop with our unopened packs and evidence. We politely explain to the representative that we believe the packs may be resealed. Almost immediately with an NPC like response; he says he opened the product in store himself. Smells fishy… okay. We try to show him the evidence, but he doesn’t even try to look at the pack to give us the benefit of the doubt. He explains it all away with poor manufacturing. I proceed to tell him that all the cards were warped, then he says “Oh, they may have came from the blue bell location.” Wait-a minute, first he opened them himself in store; and now they’re from the bluebell location? In the end, he allows us to trade the rest of our unopened packs (16) for lost origin and he throws in a few extra(4) which was nice. He then proceeds to take the fusion strike that was CLEARLY tampered with and puts it back on the shelf for resale and in my head I’m like ????????????? Please do not buy fusion strike from this store.

For anyone who read this through, I thank you and hope you have a wonderful day. I love Pokémon, I love the community and I HATE scammers. Although I do not doubt the legitimacy of this store for all of their products, this experience left me with an extremely SOUR taste in my mouth. I will never come back. Please be vigilant and examine the packaging of all the product you buy....

They have an overall pretty decent selection of cards for any and all nerd types. I found their single cards in particular pokemon to be around market value or close enough to be pleased. However their ETBs, Collection Boxes and Booster Boxes are above retail. ETBs $10 over retail, Booster boxes are $40 to $60 over market value and Collection boxes up to $20 above retail. Example Chilling Reign, Battle Styles and Fusion Strike booster boxes are regularly available through multiple different card shop distributor websites such as Safari zone etc for $85. The newer sets are highly over printed, don't listen to less. For chilling reign and battle styles they are asking $120 which is a little ridiculous. Fusion Strike they are asking $150 even more horrendous. Evolving Skies you can find BB for around $90-$100 and they want $150. As others have said trade in value is %40 of worth which is below average. I also didn't see any graded slabs. Overall, if you are looking to just buy some single packs or single cards then this place isn't a bad option. If you don't like waiting for product to be shipped and don't mind paying over retail or market price for bulk then this place is an option. If you are a sealed product collector or just looking for the most packs at better rate there are much better choices. As far as customer service for me it was hard to gage. I was greeted right away but his tone was very uninviting...

The merchant was nowhere to be found. He was actually playing a game with others on the table which isn't anything wrong as he told me to call him when I was ready. The issue was that he seemed to be a little annoyed with any questions I asked. During payment of purchases close to $200, the merchant couldn't hear me say I wanted use credit when he asked for the method of payment so he seemed annoyed that he couldn't hear me since I had the mask on. When using my credit card for contact less, I thought he said "hold it" because he... of course he also had a mask on, but he got upset and said "I said hold on!" So in a sense, the merchant was annoyed that he couldn't hear me and he was again annoyed since I couldn't hear him with us both having masks on. Maybe it was a bad day or he wanted to get back to the game. Just saying that I am not asking for much to not feel bad when I am in there for maybe a couple of minutes and spending a good...