Pre-selling
 

Is it common for card publishers to pre-sell boxes in large quantities prior to the official release date?

I'm not sure what you mean.

If you mean do they take orders and money now and start shipping a product on its release date then yes.

If you mean that someone's offering a bunch of something before release and actually has it in hand that's another whole thing and shouldn't be the case unless it's a product they want available on the release date.
Then the easy way is to ship early with instructions not to sell before a certain date. And some people will ignore that condition. The manufacturer may or may not get mad at them for that.

Steve B

Yes. However, there are a great deal of people that do this as a scam and never deliver the product. If I were going to do something like this I would probably only do it through one or two large retailers, like Blowout.

Thanks. Yeah, it's taking orders and payment with shipping on the release date.

I'd be wary of ordering through a non-manufacturer or small operation offering advance sales.

Pre-selling/pre-ordering the product before its officially out has been a longtime practice with licensed dealers and card shops. Nothing wrong with the practice as long as the dealers can fulfill the orders. The dealers themselves order with the card companies so know what they will be getting.