Built by a Pokemon dad, for other Pokemon parents
The full story of why bujusjujus exists, what we won't do, and what every subscriber is paying for.
The 90s kid who became a dad
I grew up opening Pokemon packs in the 90s. I still remember exactly how it felt to crack a pack hoping for a holo and pulling something cool. Twenty-something years later, I have my own kid, and Pokemon found him the same way it found me — through a friend at school, a borrowed binder, an obsession that took over the household within a week.
Watching my son pull a card he's genuinely excited about — that quick gasp, the running to show it off — reminds me exactly what it felt like to be 10 years old. That feeling is the entire product. Everything bujusjujus does is just plumbing in service of preserving that moment for as many kids as possible.
The problem we hit, in person
Getting Pokemon TCG at retail price right now is, for practical purposes, impossible. The shelves at Target, Walmart, Best Buy, GameStop, and Pokemon Center stay empty. Product lands, and within minutes it's gone.
I tried doing it the old-fashioned way for a few weeks. Drove to stores in the morning. Checked websites compulsively. The one time I actually caught a Walmart restock in person, I watched a scalper and his partner physically block off the trading card aisle with a shopping cart, sweep the entire allocation off the shelf, and walk out. There was nothing left for any of the kids in the store. I went home empty-handed.
The Pokemon vending machines you see at the front of some retailers? Always sold out. And the few times I've seen one being refilled, there's been some guy standing nearby, clearly waiting to be the first one in. Loitering near a vending machine has become a paid activity.
A working parent can't reasonably show up at every restock window. So you end up on the secondary market paying 2x to 3x MSRP for a booster pack that should have cost four dollars at retail. That's not what the hobby is supposed to be.
What I built and how I use it
bujusjujus started as a tool I built for myself. It watches in-stock signals across every major Pokemon TCG retailer — Target, Walmart, Best Buy, Pokemon Center, Amazon, Sam's Club, Hot Topic, plus a drop watcher for GameStop, Costco, and Macy's — and when something goes in stock at retail price, my phone buzzes with a direct buy link.
The first few weeks were just for me. Then friends with kids asked to be added. Then friends of friends. At some point it was clear other parents had the same problem and needed the same thing, so I cleaned it up, added subscriber accounts, and started charging enough to cover the infrastructure and keep improving it.
Today I use the same alerts every other subscriber uses. When my phone buzzes, I race to checkout same as you. No insider lane, no preferential access, no "internal" alerts that fire first. Everyone gets the same notification at the same time.
What we won't do
A surprising amount of the value here comes from what we don't do:
No Discord, no group chat
Most Pokemon "restock alert" services dump every alert into a Discord channel with thousands of other people racing for the same product. You scroll past dozens of alerts you don't care about, and when one you do want fires, you're in line behind 4,000 people who saw it at the same instant. Your alert goes to your phone. Not a group chat. Not a server. Just you and a tap-to-buy link.
No reseller noise, no gouged listings
We actively filter against marketplace sellers, third-party listings, and prices that exceed the retail MSRP we track per product. If a "restock" is just a reseller flipping into the buy box at 200% above retail, you don't hear about it. Our gouge guard catches those listings — and suppresses them so they never become an alert on your phone.
Clear disclosures, no hidden incentives
We're an Amazon Associate. Amazon links in our alerts may contain an affiliate tag — disclosed in our privacy policy and on the Amazon buy-box scams guide. Our gouge guard still suppresses listings priced more than 50% above MSRP, and our seller-validation logic still filters Amazon buy-box flips to third-party resellers. Those filters keep junk alerts off your phone whether or not the underlying link earns a commission.
Constantly updating
Scalper tactics evolve. Retailer bot protection evolves. Pokemon's release cadence accelerates. We push improvements every week — new retailers, new product types, smarter filters, better drop signals. The service today is meaningfully better than the service a month ago, and the service a month from now will be better than today.
Cancel anytime, no contract
One subscription. No tiers. No upsells. No "premium" alerts behind a higher price. If we ever stop being useful to you, leave — there's no contract, no hoops, no retention email guilt-trip.
What we send subscribers
- Direct retailer alerts. The moment a product hits in-stock at retail price at any of the major retailers, your phone gets a push notification with a direct buy link.
- Drop signals. When a product drops at a retailer we don't directly track (GameStop, Costco, Macy's, regional retailers), our drop watcher catches social-media and feed-based signals and alerts you within seconds.
- Amazon Pre-Order Price Guarantee alerts, where you lock in today's price and Amazon auto-applies any drop they make before release day.
- Filtered, ranked, deduplicated. One alert per real restock event, not five from one event. Your phone doesn't get spammed.
What this isn't
We're not a bot, a checkout automator, or a scalper tool. We don't auto-add to cart. We don't auto-checkout. We don't claim to "guarantee" you'll get a product — we tell you the moment one's in stock at retail price and give you a direct link, but the rest is you racing to checkout same as anyone else. The retailer ultimately decides who completes the order.
We are also not an investment service. We don't tell you which Pokemon TCG products will hold or appreciate in value. The service is built for parents and collectors who want to open packs and have sealed product, at retail.
If we ever stop honoring this
The promises above are the deal. If we ever break them — start a Discord, sell tiered "fast" alerts, drop the gouge guard, miss a week of updates — call it out. [email protected] reaches me directly. The intention here is to do this honestly and keep doing it, and it only works if subscribers hold us to the standard.
Built for parents trying to keep their kids' Pokemon hobby affordable. Subscribe to bujusjujus — one push notification, one tap-to-buy link, retail price.