What the hell is up with the Pokémon TCG market?

02/23/2026

I ran an informal ask on my beloved Bluesky for interest in this topic. I feel I can offer some insight as to why scalping and flipping in the Pokémon TCG world is the way it is. And it's a lot more than "Logan Paul." I mean, he doesn't help, but I'm gonna try to get into some other specifics. I've collected retro games, comic books, and played the Pokémon TCG for years. There are things about Pokémon TCG that really stand out to me compared to other collecting and trading hobbies.

I'm also going to temporarily withhold the fact that the gamblification of everything is a symptom of economic failure, where it is too difficult or impossible to build a stable income and safety net for yourself. That's why everything has gone completely crazy. I'm not entirely sure I can even comprehend all the awfulness about late stage capitalism, so forgive me if I overlook or neglect a deeper point. This is about Pokémon.

Lastly, if you're a hobbyist collector, or a kind retailer, I have nothing against you. Pokémon is very popular, so much so that it's kind of difficult to paint my target here. I take no issue with anyone trying to complete their binder sets, get every Eiscue card (or something), or anyone who visits their local game store every week for some tournament action. I do take issue with anyone buying sealed product in mass to drive up the price. I do take issue with those stupid kids who threw away their bulk pulls in the driveway of the gas station I worked at. Yeah, that actually happened. I take issue with scammers on Whatnot and eBay.

I mentioned last time that the comic book hobby has different shades that one person might dip in and out of. I think that's true for TCGs as well. You might be a collector, but not a player or much of a seller. You might just open packs for fun every now and then (anyone got a Godzilla pack for me?). You may have visited your local game store once or twice to learn how to play, and then dipped out. All that is fine.

So why on Earth does it seem like the Pokémon TCG conversation has been dominated by "scalpers, scalpers, scalpers" for so many years now? Why is the Trading Card Games category about sixteen times more popular than comics and the general top dog on Whatnot? Why does the official Pokémon Center page always have errors and instability out the ass? Allow me...

1. You don't have to really know anything to sit on sealed product.

This one is simple enough. Booster boxes and Elite Trainer Boxes are very popular products. They're not always the most bang for your buck per-pack (that's usually booster bundles), but they also require no particular thought or interest to buy or care for. You may simply wait (or not), especially if you were able to get your hands on a box at something even close to MSRP. Congratulations, you now have an "asset." Do you need any special protective equipment or storage? For example: The comic community endlessly debates which brands of bags, boards, and boxes are best for different kinds of collections. But ETBs and (to a lesser extent) booster boxes already come nicely sealed and protected, more or less. ETBs are in hard cases. You can sit them on any shelf and pretty much nothing is going to happen. I've heard of storing these things away from moisture, but that's all.

This is, of course, a pretty attractive proposition for the business-minded. Now, admittedly, not every set appreciates at the same rate. It can depend a lot on what cards are in the set. But for the most part, yeah, you can just buy these and give it a Pokémon generation or two. Even a random Scarlet/Violet era set, only three years old, like Paldea Evolved seems to do well for itself on eBay. If you're price checking for yourself, the Pokémon Center editions of Elite Trainer Boxes go for much more because they can be much rarer. They usually include an exclusive promo card of some kind.

If you look at sealed Pokémon product before 2020...like, say, almost any Sun and Moon set, you can see where some would see dollar signs in their eyes. And this is hard one to avoid. TPCI can't print every set ever made into the ground. Eventually, card production and distribution have to move on. This approach also takes time. Sets and product often get opened eventually, meaning that as time goes on, never-opened product can become scarcer.

But let's say you don't want to wait. You're looking for a hit card now. And what's the difference between some of these sets that seem hotter than others? I have great news for you!

2. You also don't need to know anything about Pokémon!

Mew, Mewtwo, Charizard, Eveelutions. Sometimes Dragonite and Pikachu. Females. There, I just did 90% of your research for you about which cards to scout. Congratulations, you're in!

Unlike literally everything else, it's the same handful of Pokémon that really light up collectors of all walks. TPCI gets bored and does a Charizard themed set once a generation. You could practically set a clock by it. Burning Shadows, Darkness Ablaze, Obsidian Flames, Phantasmal Flames. Eeveelutions, particularly Umbreon for some reason, are also frequent features of their own set every generation.

I cannot stress enough here how enviable this is for other collecting hobbies. It's not like every comic book with Captain America, Spider-Man, or Supes is worth more than a dollar or two. What about stuff like Funko Pops? They're all different. Now, there are common and lower rarity cards for the Pokémon I just mentioned. But if that cardboard is shiny, expect a price bump. I'm sure there are folks out there trying to collect, say, all the One Piece cards for Nami or Boa Hancock. I'm not knowledgeable about the sports card market, but I'm gonna take a swing and say that some players are more popular than others. I wonder what Shohei Ohtani goes for?

One of the big sets for the market in recent years was Evolving Skies. I remember how frequently someone would visit our local game store and say "You have any Evolving Skies?" When they'd get a no, they'd say "dang" and leave. The biggest chase card from the set was the Full Art Umbreon VMAX, very very frequently nicknamed Moonbreon. Umbreon being associated with the moon is not new or novel per se, but the Prismatic Evolutions Umbreon ex really, really feels like Moonbreon 2: Electric Bogaloo.

Basically, what I'm getting at there is that TPCI makes it easy for everyone to know what the big cards are in a set, and a lot of times it can be the same handful of Pokémon over and over again. I do want to say something good about TPCI though. They made Prismatic almost entirely a reprint set made up of competitive staples and cards of deckbuilding interest. Cards like Iron Hands ex, Prime Catcher, and Crispin made it in, ensuring that when Prismatic would be opened in mass, players would get rewarded with even lower prices for a lot of different cards and decks.

To recap thus far, it's easy to just sit on sealed product. It's also easy to know and find what cards to chase after, and where they are. Not a lot of research is required. The people doing #1 are keeping supply away from #2, but Pokémon cards still get opened in unthinkable quantities. If it's so easy to both cherry pick cards and sit on them, why are everyday packs at your local Target or Walmart so hard to find?

Well...what if you got a hit? What if you just got a five dollar pack and opened a thirty dollar card? What if?

3. The gambling element that was built in from the start.

I'm not breaking new ground here, but it's still an important part of the evil recipe that we're stewing in. Pokémon packs do say "10 Additional Game Cards" on them, which is true, but come on now. Chase cards and shiny rare cards make the world go 'round. Yes, you could buy a new Dragonite ex for fifty dollars or so to invest and hold...but what if you got one out of a five dollar pack? That would feel pretty good, yeah? My fellow card gamers, how many times have you heard the phrase "Wouldn't it be crazy if I got it on my first pack?" from your buddies or from YouTube videos? It crosses the mind of almost everyone with a booster pack at least once.

Nothing will ever really change about this, unless Pokémon randomly pivots to the far less profitable model of a living card game. But it's yet another driving force behind demand and product availability. If you don't have a lot of money for a sealed booster box, or to just buy already opened cards, you could try to take your five dollars and have a go at it.

Weirdly, it's sort of like the old joke about the restaurant that nobody goes to anymore because it's too crowded. Pokémon, somehow, seemingly serves the collecting interest of everyone. If you have a lot of money and bots and are playing the long(ish) game, you have options. If you have a lot of money and maybe no bots(?), you can buy cards directly and sit on those. If you don't have a lot of money but have an investing mindset, well, maybe you'll just get lucky on that booster bundle.

EVERYONE IS FIGHTING EACH OTHER OVER THE SUPPLY. We all know that Pokémon is super popular, and the TCG right now, and for years now, is in high demand. What I've outlined above hopefully offers a little insight. Pokémon, unfortunately, is an incredibly attractive value proposition right now. It's probably a lot more stable than the latest crypto shitcoin or stock market movement.

Again, I don't want to demean everyone who wants cards for whatever reason. Even with my outline here, I cannot super meaningfully sift through everyone who wants Pokémon cards for some noble or personal reason, for a profit/flipping reason, or both. Again, gray area, shades exist here. I don't necessarily want you to come away from this thinking you're an asshole.

Question now is, what do we do? What does anyone do?

What do we do??

Well, let's see. We could try to lower demand, but I'm not sure how you'd make Pokémon less popular at this stage in the game.

The most common question/solution that I think gets proposed is: "Why don't they print more?" This would accomplish a lot, but there are some obstacles in the way.

First off, what you're seeing today pretty much is "printing more." In a calendar year, Pokémon printed 10 billion cards. That's a lot, and it makes you wonder if just one or two billion more cards would make an impact if the demand is this high. Announced last December, they are literally building new million square foot infrastructure just to print cards. They're trying. But between new sets, reprints, and the realities of manufacturing everything, this is pretty much it for now.

What about the bots that snatch up every listing on seemingly every retailer site, including Pokémon Center? Well, pretty much nobody, in any industry, has totally solved botting. It is really hard to limit traffic and authenticate who is a human user and who is a cookie clicker script. There is a virtual queue system in place for the Pokémon Center site now, but I can at least vouch for having serious instability just trying to browse it.

I wish I had something good here, but the hype and news surrounding Pokémon cards for the last 5~6 years is a self serving spiral. It invites people to try and "get in" for themselves, and at this point, we're showing people that it's not a passing fad. In my opinion, this isn't gonna get any better any time soon.

If you're a player (or want to be one), it's actually still not hard to get in on the action. Because Pokémon is so widely, massively opened and collected, getting playable cards that the scalpers don't know or care about is far, FAR cheaper than almost every other TCG. Sure, sometimes you'll have to bite the bullet when there's a decent rarity card that everybody needs four copies of, but for the most part this aspect has remained accessible! I can personally attest to delightfully buying "bulk" ex cards for my rogue decks or personal binder. It's not all bad here. Products like the yearly Trainer's Toolkits help ease new players in too from the financial side. Many cards are cheap. Sometimes, a local game store can help you get sealed product, much more than the big box retail stores can. But broadly speaking, if you want that sealed pack experience, to casually pick up a pack while you're at the grocery store, it's tough luck right now.

One last review. Pokémon cards are in extremely high demand. Investors and speculators have multiple, low barrier of entry points. You don't need a lot of money or a lot of knoweldge in a lot of cases, depending on what you're trying to do. And keeping sealed product supply out of people's hands helps drive the prices up for the cards within for those that do open them. We can't really fix botting right now, and ramping up production is incredibly complex and time consuming. Overall, it's a really great time to be a rich jerk, and maybe not such a good time for everyone else.

I'd like to share one more thing as a bonus, if I may. I recently came across this video where a gentleman goes to a comic show, then a card show. Don't worry about the comic show. Look how many younger teens and even kids have the fucking Seto Kaiba briefcase. I thought that was crazy. But here's a notably younger crowd, wheeling, dealing, collecting, and having fun. Sometimes with their parents, or a friend.

I just can't pass harsh judgement on this. People are having fun here. Did some of these youths jump in from all the recent hype? Maybe. Do some of the parents probably not know the difference between Blastoise and Turtonator? I dunno. Pokémon is turning 30 this year, so, I would like to imagine they're enjoying it together. Is some of this the result of scarcity and hysteria? For sure. But I don't want to get rid of all of this completely by crashing Pokémon into the ground with overprinting, if that's even possible. Pokémon cards are fun collectibles, and it is a trading hobby. That includes buying and selling. Yours truly has done some small deals at the local game store, and even good old childlike 'one for one' trades. It's a great game to play too, at any level, even though I hate Dragapult ex.

There's got to be some kind of balance here. I want to see supply improve, and I would love to see full scalpers get burned and make an exit. But I don't wanna take away what I saw in that video.

- Jane "Darkstalker" Parker~!