Been deep in the TCG restock game for a while now, and the pattern is always the same: the people who "get lucky" with Pokemon/MTG restocks aren't lucky — they just know where to look before everyone else refreshes the page.

A few things I've learned building tools around this:

• Online restocks get scraped by bots within seconds. If you're manually refreshing Target.com or Walmart.com, you're already too late. The window is often under 60 seconds for hyped product.

• In-store restocks are actually easier to win if you have eyes on the ground — most big-box stores restock overnight or early morning, and shelf scans catch it before it's even at the register.

• Resellers and collectors need different signals. A flipper wants raw speed on anything in stock. A collector wants alerts filtered to specific sets/products they actually care about.

That gap (speed + specificity) is exactly why I built PackAlert — real-time pings the second cards restock online or in-store, filterable by set/product so you're not getting spammed for stuff you don't want.

If you've been burned by restocks before, curious what stores/products give you the most trouble — might help me prioritize what to track next.