Looking to buy Pokemon cards? Good luck.
“It’s rough right now,” said Jake Wagman, a 23-year-old Pokemon card collector in Toronto. “I blinked and product is impossible to find. It’s unavailable.”
Wagman used to be able to walk into a big box store or hobby shop and buy a handful of packs of his favourite cards with ease.
But over the past few months, thanks to a boom in interest, the Pokemon Trading Card Game hobby has been plagued by scalpers emptying store shelves, then asking for double and triple the price on the resale market like on eBay.
“All of a sudden people are just like seeing Pokemon, like the Pokemon brand, and they’re buying a product and they don’t even know what they’re buying because they think it’ll be valuable,” said Wagman.
“It’s to make like, you know, 50 bucks here or 20 bucks there. And it’s frankly ruining it for the people that actually want to collect and want to play.”
Collectors and fans worry that if it goes on for much longer, this could damage the hobby, especially for the children that make up the next generation of fans.
Pokemon cards, again?
The Pokemon Trading Card Game (or Pokemon TCG) first released in North America in 1998, as part of the megapopular Japanese franchise that also includes video games, television shows and action figures.
In it, players take on the role of trainers who catch, trade and train animal-like monsters called Pokemon to duel with other trainers’ Pokemon.
The original release’s most coveted card is easily the now-iconic Charizard, which now sells for thousands of dollars on the resale market.
Back in ’98, getting pack of 11 cards was as easy as paying $4 for one. And they were readily available on store shelves.
Since then, Pokemon has completely taken off. The Pokemon Company boasts retail sales in the billions through its media and merchandise. Its total retail sales for the 2023 fiscal year reached $10.8 billion US, or more than $15 billion Cdn.
“The Pokemon Company constantly comes out with so many different things that are a lot of fun,” said Charlene Sutherland, an investment associate in Toronto.
“I think Pokemon is just a classic. I think there’s a lot of us who either grew up with the shows or are collectors, or have played the video games … and just love the way it’s been done.”
So what’s happening now?
The recent shortage of Pokemon TCG cards kicked off with a new set called Surging Sparks which launched in November. A particular card featuring fan-favourite creature Pikachu sells for over $1,000 Cdn on places such as eBay, which had people buying up as many packs as they could from hobby shops and big box stores.
The hype was cranked up even further with the following set, Prismatic Evolutions in January. Some of the cards from this set have sold for over $5,000 Cdn on eBay.
“It was pretty wild, something I’ve never seen before really,” said Sebastian Bilodeau, assistant store manager at Exor Games in Charlottetown.
He says when Prismatic Evolutions first went on sale, they had a lineup of 50 to 60 people around the building.
“Keep in mind, this is like January. Like, people are waiting outside for two, three hours in the freezing cold,” said Bilodeau.
In the last few months, it’s become near-impossible to find any sets of Pokemon cards, and not just from the newest sets.
Some Canadian stores have even reported break-ins, with the thieves going straight for the Pokemon card aisle.
The trading cards have been around since the 1990s but have seen a boost in popularity in recent years. Their value can range from a few cents to hundreds of dollars and, in some rare cases, a lot more.
It’s not the first time Pokemon cards have seen a big boom. During the COVID-19 pandemic, people who collected cards as a kid got back into the hobby, and The Pokemon Company struggled to keep up with supply.
But the recent surge of scalping has made this time around different.
Damaging the hobby
Then there were the Costco fights.
Viral videos from the U.S. showed people pushing and shoving to get their hands on the product when the big-box store chain had an early release and a discounted price on a box of packs.
Scalping is far from new, of course, when it comes to coveted items like concert tickets or limited edition sneakers.
But it’s new to Pokemon. And Sutherland says it’s a bad look for the community.
“Seeing videos of people who are literally getting into fist fights at Costco over Pokemon cards also has just brought a completely negative connotation to the community,” she said.
“When you see videos of grown adults going and fighting over Pokemon cards, knowing that it’s also ruining this experience for parents and kids who are trying to get into, it just puts a bad taste.”
Some stores are making efforts to prevent brawls from breaking out. Bilodeau says Exor Games is reserving a large percentage of its product for in-store purchases, and capping how much an individual can buy.
But Jordan Hennessy says that’s not the case everywhere. He collects the cards, and runs a trading card stall at a flea market in Kelowna, B.C..
He says some stores have started charging over the retail standard for packs, with the reasoning that a scalper is just going to buy it and sell it for that higher price anyway.
There’s hope that the Pokemon Company will pick up on the demand and print more of these popular sets. But until then, the best chance people have at getting their favourite cards is finding out when their local store gets new stock in or paying a scalper’s asking price.
Hennessy is concerned that if children can’t get the cards, it could hurt the Pokemon community long-term.
“It’s the seven, eight-year-old to 15-, 16-year-old that will always keep it relevant and keep Pokemon printing stuff, keep Pokemon making TV shows and video games,” said Hennessy.
“Without that demographic, it makes it impossible to sustain the hobby.”
