The Pokémon Trading Card Game Is In A Bad Situation

The Pokémon trading card game (PTCG) is in a really big mess. And once again, it’s because it has become too popular for its own good. If you were hoping to pick up some product from the forthcoming Prismatic Evolutions special sets, well, good luck to you. And March’s just-announced Journey Together set? Pre-orders sold out in literal seconds. Whether it’s because of scalpers, a sudden new tidal wave of interest via Pokémon TCG Pocket, or evil space spiders, The Pokémon Company International desperately needs to react, and fast.

I first noticed something was wrong the day that Prismatic Evolutions went up for pre-order on the Pokémon Center website. The official Pokémon online store, both in the UK and the U.S., was acting strangely: the new special set (so-called because it will be released in boxed and tinned products throughout 2025, but not be sold as individual booster packs) was marked as “UNAVAILABLE” the moment it was put in the store. After a while, “UNAVAILABLE” switched to “SOLD OUT,” and that was that. Somehow, despite never being possible to buy, it was gone.

The very same thing happened at the end of last week with the announcement of March’s next full set, Journey Together. At this point, it has become very apparent something is going horribly wrong.

It’s impossible to buy new Pokémon TCG cards

For reasons too dull to get into, about a year-and-a-half ago, I got into the habit of refreshing the Pokémon Center websites for the UK and the U.S. a pretty troubling number of times a day. This reflex stuck and has proven useful in the long time since, helping me get the scoop on new products, and indeed ensuring I could buy myself the special Pokémon Center version of each set’s Elite Trainer Box (ETB), which invariably sold very quickly.

So it is that I tend to notice new product on the site long before press releases go out, and being in the UK, often get the jump on what will be added to the North American site later the same day. And so it was that I discovered Prismatic Evolutions was on sale far before any official announcements, and indeed that it was not possible to buy.

I contacted TPCi at the time—November 6—via their UK PR department (TPCi is notoriously difficult to get in touch with), with an incredibly innocuous question about how the products appeared to be sold out before ever actually being available. Was it a glitch? Was it unprecedented demand? Either way, you’d imagine the company would like to make it clear to customers. But instead, I received a response that read, “Pokémon does not have any additional information to share on the below.”

Perplexed, I left it, because—as I say—I’m aware how hard it is to get any information from TPCi, and even a “no comment” was a rare treat. Then, come January 9, the same thing happened again. Journey Together had yet to be officially acknowledged as a set by TPCi, but there it was on the Pokémon Center. Four products—the 36-pack booster box, the ETB, a six-pack booster bundle, and individual packs—all listed as available to buy on the “New Releases” page of the store, but all marked as “UNAVAILABLE” when you clicked through. Weirder, I noticed this time, was that it didn’t say it was unavailable immediately, but rather after the tiniest fraction of a second. For that split-second before, the usual, yellow “ADD TO BASKET” button would flicker.

I tried a bunch of times to see if I could click on it before it changed, eventually succeeded, but received only a strange error message. And then, after about an hour, the New Releases page updated the products to be “SOLD OUT,” and even more tellingly, a front page giant banner for the new product that was latterly added to the site was entirely removed.

So, obviously, I got in touch with Pokémon’s UK PR to ask what was happening, but despite repeated attempts over the last five days, haven’t heard anything back.

Collecting Scalps

So what’s going on? Well, without a response from TPCi, it’s hard to be certain. But it makes sense to assume it’s directly the fault of bots and scalpers, looking to resell unopened products at vastly inflated prices. Right now, a $60 ETB of Prismatic Evolutions has a resale market price of $400, while others are selling their pre-orders of Journey Together ETBs on eBay for $150+. To be clear, these are the sorts of items that would usually be stood in huge piles in your local card store, and easily available in Target and Walmart.

What’s brought this about is likely more complicated. Prismatic Evolutions is one of those sets, like 2023’s 151, that will bring lots of people to the hobby. It’s an Eevee-based set, and it’s had a lot of buzz. That’s one factor. Then there’s Pokémon TCG Pocket, which has been a phenomenon, drawing in tens of millions of players, inevitably a gateway for vast numbers to want to collect the physical cards too. And, of course, there’s momentum. Once prices start going up, more people try to take advantage of those increases, buying up stock to increase scarcity, driving prices up further, and so on. We’re definitely in that vicious loop right now.

You might say we’ve been here before, first in 2016 when Pokémon GO caused a vast amount of new interest in the TCG, and then to the most outlandish degree in 2020 and 2021, when Logan Paul sparked a wild surge in prices after paying $150,000 for a Base Set Charizard, leading to a lockdown-driven crazy spike in interest in classic cards. However, what marks this situation as different is the cards it involves.

Both previous spikes were about classic cards, seeing the prices of old collections increasing exponentially, and in many cases, still maintaining that value today. But in both situations, while newer sets certainly proved a lot more popular, they were still widely available. The only exception to this would be Japan’s Clay Burst set that in 2023 astonishingly caused Japan to sell out of all Pokémon cards, but the Iono card responsible didn’t cause anything similar in the rest of the world when it was later released in English.

The reason it’s so different this time is that it’s affecting the brand-new sets, and that’s an issue for two important reasons. Firstly, it breaks the entire hobby for regular people. If you’re someone (like me) who tries to pick up an ETB and then buys a bunch of loose packs here and there, you’re now just shit out of luck. Casual collectors can’t try to get a few nice cards for their binders. Kids looking to spend their allowance on a $5 pack will go home disappointed. That really sucks, and it’s going to badly affect the reputation of the game.

And secondly, the game. These cards, while often bought in the gambling-lite hope of pulling a rare card, actually exist to be the playing cards for a massively popular game. And if you can’t buy the new sets at sensible prices, you can’t keep up with the meta, can’t redesign your decks, and just can’t join in anymore. There are millions of people, kids and adults, who meet up every week for clubs, who will be negatively affected by this sudden inability to buy anything new. (Browsing my usual online store right now, there’s not a single item from the last three full sets I can buy right now.)

Bring in the YouTubers

As I was preparing this article, I noticed that the astonishingly popular Pokémon YouTuber, “PokeRev,” uploaded a video last night, commenting on very similar problems.

With almost 3 million followers, the streamer who most know as “Rev,” real name Nick, has a lot of reach. He sources his cards as a retailer, rather than a customer, invariably receiving crates of stock of each product, which is opened daily on his channel, and almost always given away to viewers. As such, he tends to get new sets before they’re available to buy, and presumably to the frustration of TPCi, opens hundreds of packs long before their shelf date. (Pokémon PR in the U.S. very generously sends me advance sample packs of each new set, so I can write about them on Kotaku, and Nick almost always gets his product before even these arrive.)

But in his most recent video, PokeRev is unusually candid, almost emotional, as he discusses the lack of availability of recent sets. Stating it began with November’s set, Surging Sparks, he explains how the resale prices of brand new cards have gone through the roof, as availability in stores has become minimal. And that things have become so extreme at this point, that as he tore into Prismatic Evolutions in the last few days, he’s been feeling a sense of guilt, that he knows his viewers aren’t going to be able to buy it for themselves. (Rev plans to give all his bulk to local card stores, on top of giving product away to viewers.)

I’m certain PokeRev’s speaking out is likely to cause more consternation within TPCi than my coverage, and I imagine others will jump on board too, so hopefully we might finally see the company pushed into addressing this issue. Because, for them, selling out is selling out, whether it’s bots or kids buying the cards. The only way to make them care is reputationally. (And please, please don’t pay the scalp prices—that motivates the situation and ensures it can’t improve.)

In the meantime, if you were hoping to enjoy a pack from the newer sets, or to update your deck for competitive play, then…damn. You might want to make a loud stink about it, in the hope that something will get done.

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