Scalpers continue to ruin everything, from the Playstation 5 to Pokemon cards. The latest releases for the Pokemon TCG, Chilling Reign, and Eevee Heroes have been marred by scalpers running into places like Target and scooping up boxes before fans of the game can get them. This means the prices get hiked to unreasonable levels, leaving people forced to pay, or just go without for their games. It’s gotten so bad for Pokemon that some stores have stopped carrying the cards until further notice. They sold out online within seconds, thanks to bots grabbing all the pre-orders. At least one company is fighting back against scalpers: The Pokemon Company want fans to have the cards.

Hopefully, this doesn’t lead to desperation tactics like people imitating Team Rocket and stealing Pokemon cards.

The Pokemon Company is still making money off of these scalpers purchasing the Pokemon card boxes en masse, that’s true. But it’s causing a lot of hurt feelings and backlash. It could lead to damaged sales in the future. If fewer people want to spend money on Pokemon, the scalpers who buy them all up lose money and will have products just sitting around. That’s of course, a hypothetical situation. 

Let’s be clear though: If The Pokemon Company, Target, and any other storefront that has Pokemon cards could charge the same prices scalpers do and get sales, we’re willing to bet they would. Thankfully, it sounds like The Pokemon Company is serious about the goodwill and happiness of their fans. They recently put out a post that discussed their plans to combat the card scalpers of Pokemon.

The Pokemon Company is overwhelmed by the love their card game has, and are sincerely apologetic for the lack of product. The Pokemon Company is working on strengthening their production system, and has therefore decided to prioritize delivering the product to customers, and promote the reproduction and shipment of missing products. 

One solution The Pokemon Company came up with to combat card scalpers is a Lottery System. The card boxes/packs will not be sold at Target, the Pokemon Center / Pokemon Store. Instead, Pokemon card game products will be sold via lottery at the Pokemon Center Online. They aren’t the only company that has had to find new ways to sell products, but this is an extreme solution. Some people will be upset still, but hopefully, it stops (or slows down) scalpers. 

The Pokemon Card Game is fun, that’s not up for debate. But making people pay exorbitant rates just to buy the cards from third parties, and have a chance at the cards they’re after is just disgusting. Hopefully, this winds up as a solution for The Pokemon Company. Perhaps there is a system that could be implemented to track IPs and limit the number of boxes someone could purchase per IP. While that may not be a suitable solution, it’s an idea.