A new video circulating on social media displays the frantic and sometimes violent reality of the Pokémon Trading Card Game scalping scene. What many long-time Pokémon TCG fans will remember as an innocent collector's hobby from their youth has become a seller's market driven by scarcity and high demand.
Though the market for Pokémon cards was already on the rise because of the increasing value of older cards, the Pokémon TCG has garnered substantial popularity in the last year or so, partially as a result of the pandemic. Printers couldn't produce enough new cards to meet the growing demand of consumers, many of whom were looking to spend their extra cash in ways that didn't involve going out. Twitch streamers further popularized the game in pop culture by opening card packs on stream. Today, these streams draw substantial numbers of viewers who eagerly anticipate high-value pulls. The Pokémon TCG frenzy has reached an all-time high in recent months as scalpers often rush into retail stores to bulk-buy packs that they can then resell for a profit on sites like eBay.
Interactions between scalpers vying to purchase the greatest number of Pokémon TCG packs sometimes results in unruly or even violent incidences. As relayed by Nintendo Life, a video posted on TrainerINTEL's Twitter page shows how purchasing packs for a children's card game has become a hectic money-grab for adult men. Just as the doors open at a Walmart shopping center, a group of what appears to be mostly men charge into the store, pushing past one another at a near-running pace to be the first to get to the treasured Pokémon card aisle. The group of roughly ten individuals who reach the aisle begin shoveling handfuls of packs and boxes into their carts in order to prevent their competitors from buying any more. The video resembles the frantic shopping craze usually relegated to Black Friday coverage.
Less than two weeks ago, retailer Target suspended the sale of Pokémon cards in their stores, along with MLB, NFL, and NBA cards, citing safety concerns. As of now, Walmart stores have only suspended or limited the purchase of Pokémon cards on a store-by-store basis. Whether Walmart will transition to an online-only purchase model for trading cards remains to be seen, but it wouldn't be a surprising decision if incidents like the one in the aforementioned video continue to occur.
It's a shame that the beloved Pokémon Trading Card Game market has been so severely corrupted. Adults being able to make a profit on their cherished Pokémon card collections from the 1990s and early aughts seems innocuous, or even positive. Indeed, watching one's favorite Twitch streamer open hundreds of dollars' worth of cards that the viewer can't afford and celebrating with everyone when a good pull happens can be a wonderful experience. The extreme demand for the contemporary run of Pokémon TCG packs, however, is negatively impacting the experiences of all fans, children and adults alike.
Source: TrainerINTEL/Twitter, Nintendo Life