Why are Amiibo cards so hard to fine?!

[Hsn97]

I got fed up of trying to cycle villagers in and out of my town manually and finally made the jump to get myself an NFC card reader. So I picked up a secondhand one today from CEX. My brilliant plan was then to pop over to Game and pick myself up a few packets of the Amiibo cards to give me a nice range of villagers to choose from. But low and behold, Game had shut down. So I tried Argos. Nothing. Asda? Nope. Tesco? Nadda. Smyths Toy Stores? You gotta be dreaming.

So I?ve resigned myself to purchases them off Amazon. So now I?ve got to wait another week for them to be delivered. Seriously, why are these cards like golddust?? Or is it just me and my rubbish local stores?

 

[That Marshal Fangirl]

Nintendo has stopped production of amiibo cards. That’s why they’re so hard to find. These days you have to buy them for way more than they’re worth if you want to own them at all. I’m not proud to say that I’ve spent up to $20 for a single card because I couldn’t find it anywhere else.

 

[kemdi]

short answer: Nintendo stopped making them

long answer: they were made in super large quantities when they were first released with Happy Home Designer, but since that game was somewhat not-popular(even though its good), the cards didn't sell that well, and a lot of stores made them super cheap to get rid of the supply they had so they could be rid of them, and eventually stop selling/carrying them. When the WA update was released for New Leaf, the cards suddenly became super popular, but by then it was too late. This was bad news for series 5 because after series 1-4 did so poorly with the Home Designer game, Nintendo released series 5 in very limited supply.

You can still find series 1-4 on the Nintendo store for retail price. Personally, I wouldn't buy a single pack by itself, but I'd buy multiple packs at the same time to save shipping costs instead of paying for shipping each and every time I wanna order:
https://store.nintendo.com/ng3/us/po/browse/subcategory.jsp?categoryId=cat870674

Unfortunately, if you're looking for series 5, you're outta luck unless you're willing to pay through the roof for a single card. Nintendo doesn't carry those.

 

[Shellzilla_515]

I feel you. The toys r us store I go to from time to time used to sell amiibo cards. Now, they don't even sell them anymore...

 

[Flare]

Unless you aren't looking for WA or Sanrio Amiibo Cards, AC amiibo cards are sold on the Nintendo Online Store, however they are only sold online in the US and UK.

Here's the link for the US: [x]

Here's the link for the UK: [x]

Unfortunately WA Cards and Sanrio Cards aren't made but you can buy fanmade cards over at Etsy. So unless you don't mind not having the real authentic cards you can get these.

WA Etsy: [x]

Sanrio Etsy:[x]

 

[-Blue-]

Nintendo is super notorious for discontinuing prints way before something becomes obsolete or loses its popularity. Fire Emblem Awakening and Pikmin 3 both suffered from this. Scalpers caught wind and then bought all the games (and in this case cards) Now people are making fake cards with built in amiibo functionality to replicate the villager cards and amiibo figurines to.

I don't know if this is frowned upon, so I won't share links to those places. But it serves scalpers right that they have to eat all that dough they coughed up on pieces of paper now.

 

[stiney]

Nintendo hates money.

 

[Hsn97]

Why do I always seem to get stuff just as Nintendo is winding down on it XD I did the same with Wild World. Got it just as they were turning off the WiFi for it. Good lord haha

 

[stitchmaker]

When they first came out for Happy Home Designer it was very easy to collect the full set.
With buying and than trading on this board you could complete a set. When set 2 got released some were still trying to finish Set 1.
More sets got released and collectors got behind. Collecting all is expensive. North America Nintendo should have sold the complete set like Japan did with Series 1. North America Nintendo finally did that with the Welcome Amiibo set. Buy a box and you were done with 10 repeats.

Store got tired with customers stealing them and cards/amiibo taking up space. In Canada they started to move to online only for Series 4. Nintendo should have released the Update for Welcome Amiibo during the Spring while cards were still selling. Waiting till November was a big mistake for new players wanting the cards.

When I bought a box of Series 3, Series 4 and than Welcome Amiibo EbGames said I was the only customer buying the cards.

Before the update a single card was a fair price on Ebay and Amazon. Things have change.

 

[Underneath The Stars]

Nintendo has stopped production of amiibo cards. That’s why they’re so hard to find. These days you have to buy them for way more than they’re worth if you want to own them at all. I’m not proud to say that I’ve spent up to $20 for a single card because I couldn’t find it anywhere else.

$20 for a single card? Oh lord.

I honestly don't know why it's not accessible WW and why they stopped making them. They didn't want money? I understand why they'd stopped selling now, but even a year ago it was hard to acquire. Because people will just sell them online. Double the prices and even more.

 

[Dorian]

I purchase all my cards on ebay. You can find anyone there pretty much. Just specify 'least expensive' first and that way you won't be getting ripped off by anyone.

 

[tali-zorah-vas-nerd]

I usually go for etsy. The fanmade cards are generally around five bucks a pop.

 

[-Apples-]

$20 for a single card? Oh lord.

I wouldn’t mind paying that much for a card if it were a restaurant gift card. But I would rather pay $100 for that since I like eating more. But for a playing card like amiibo cards, 50? would be the better price for a single one.

I haven’t collected amiibo cards for a very long time. I’m glad that I collected all 400 amiibo cards for Happy Home Designer, but I only have 18 of the other kind, which I will never complete since they are impossible to find (heck, even harder to get than unused Nintendo 64s), and that I am done playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Nintendo is very bad for keeping stuff limited supply. This is way worse than Disney’s lack of Frozen merchandise back in 2014 when they failed to meet up the consumer’s demands for Frozen merchandise.

I usually go for etsy. The fanmade cards are generally around five bucks a pop.

I wouldn’t recommend doing this, especially after what Nintendo did to EmuParadise.

 

[Underneath The Stars]

I wouldn’t mind paying that much for a card if it were a restaurant gift card. But I would rather pay $100 for that since I like eating more. But for a playing card like amiibo cards, 50? would be the better price for a single one.

I haven’t collected amiibo cards for a very long time. I’m glad that I collected all 400 amiibo cards for Happy Home Designer, but I only have 18 of the other kind, which I will never complete since they are impossible to find (heck, even harder to get than unused Nintendo 64s), and that I am done playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Nintendo is very bad for keeping stuff limited supply. This is way worse than Disney’s lack of Frozen merchandise back in 2014 when they failed to meet up the consumer’s demands for Frozen merchandise.


I wouldn’t recommend doing this, especially after what Nintendo did to EmuParadise.

Nintendo promotes and encourages Scalpers. Confirmed.

Btw what they did to EmuParadise?

 

[-Apples-]

Nintendo promotes and encourages Scalpers. Confirmed.

Btw what they did to EmuParadise?

They sued EmuParadise for a price so high that only our taxpayer dollars can pay for it, which forced them to pull all Nintendo games from their database. They have been very critical of others copying or using their content, even if it?s something you can?t get anymore.

 

[Underneath The Stars]

They sued EmuParadise for a price so high that only our taxpayer dollars can pay for it, which forced them to pull all Nintendo games from their database. They have been very critical of others copying or using their content, even if it’s something you can’t get anymore.

They have the energy for all of that but not to make the damn cards huh. Their logic.

 

[Paperboy012305]

It?s sad they got discontinued. Hopefully when AC Switch comes out, and amiibo support for the cards can be used, they?ll probably bring them back. They are loyal to their fans, and they know they?d get lots of money by doing this method.

 

[kemdi]

I wouldn’t mind paying that much for a card if it were a restaurant gift card. But I would rather pay $100 for that since I like eating more. But for a playing card like amiibo cards, 50? would be the better price for a single one.

I haven’t collected amiibo cards for a very long time. I’m glad that I collected all 400 amiibo cards for Happy Home Designer, but I only have 18 of the other kind, which I will never complete since they are impossible to find (heck, even harder to get than unused Nintendo 64s), and that I am done playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Nintendo is very bad for keeping stuff limited supply. This is way worse than Disney’s lack of Frozen merchandise back in 2014 when they failed to meet up the consumer’s demands for Frozen merchandise.


I wouldn’t recommend doing this, especially after what Nintendo did to EmuParadise.

If you really just want all official cards, you can always import the JP versions. I got a whole complete set of 50 +10 extra cards for like $75. That price is like $1 per card, + $15 for international shipping which isn't too bad. I ended up selling the extras, so I got some cash back. You prob. won't be able to read them(unless you read Japanese), but people import the Sanrio cards from JP region too, so it's no big deal to deal to me.

 

[stiney]

Since the amiibo cards are such limited use, $20 is way too much. When I was playing Magic I could understand why people would shell out that much or more for a single card, because they were so much more versatile. (I didn’t pay that much but I could understand at least.) I really only want the RV and Sanrio cards I think so either I will go to Etsy or spend TBT to get the items.

 

[-Blue-]

They have the energy for all of that but not to make the damn cards huh. Their logic.

No one said they were smart. If they were, they would had already released Mother 3 overseas and made bank on that alone.