Pokémon TCG In 2025: Scalping, Hyperinflation, & Greed
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DescriptionAn article about the Pokémon trading card game.
MessageGotta catch 'em all!
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The Pokémon CompanySince around November/December of 2024, Pokémon trading cards have become incredibly hard to find for many players and collectors in retail stores across the country. And, if you manage to come across some, they’re likely going for around 1.5x-2x the retail price.
There’s no doubt that scalping is the issue at hand here. Pokémon card scalping has been on the rise since quarantine, as people couldn’t go out and buy cards in person, so some took advantage of the situation and scalped cards.
One factor in how expensive a given Pokémon card can be is its condition. There are many companies out there where you can send in cards in the mail, and they’ll grade cards for you out of 10 based on near-mint condition. They’ll then seal the card in a tough polystyrene casing with a label with the card’s grading and ship it back to you. Cards graded as a 10/10 have an incredible price surge online from their ungraded condition
On top of that, Pokémon cards have become very sought after in the last 10-15 years, especially older, vintage ones. Most notably, holographic Charizard cards from the very first set, released in America in 1998. Out of several thousand submitted to be PSA graded, only 123 have been graded as a perfect 10/10, surging the price of those Charizard cards into the tens of thousands of dollars. Booster boxes of the original base set and boxes of 36 packs of cards are even more expensive. Boxes that are confirmed to be real and not re-sealed can sell for tens of thousands of USD on the low end, to over $300,000.
So it’s no secret that Pokémon card collectors will go to incredible lengths to attain their favorite sets, so scalping Pokémon cards is an easy choice. In the modern day, Pokémon card scalping has grown exponentially since early November 2024 and certainly hasn’t stopped since. This boost came from a few different factors.
For one, a popular Pokémon mobile game called Pokémon Pocket was released on October 30th of that year and immediately boomed in popularity. It centers around collecting and battling with pocket-exclusive cards and is made for short, 3-minute battles, as opposed to the much longer ones with the real card game. As of December 12, the game had a whopping 60 million downloads, deeming it a massive success.
It’s not the game’s fault, but it brought a large surge of new players and collectors to the Pokémon card scene. This was an even larger incentive for scalpers to capitalize on inexperienced, new fans that they could take advantage of.
Another contributing factor to the surge in scalping was the release of the Surging Sparks set on November 8th. This set is beloved by fans and includes many beautiful, yet expensive, cards to be on the lookout for. The crown jewel of this set, by far, is the Pikachu ex Special Illustration Rare (SIR). It’s still insanely expensive as of April 2025, with ungraded cards selling for over $300-$350. However, it peaked at $1,865.99 in November and has decreased to $951.64 as of April 2025.
Many would consider this to be another major player in the scalping spike last year, as collectors and scalpers can expect any new set to have cards like Pikachu ex that go for thousands. Plus, it hasn’t slowed down much since.
Mid-January saw the release of the highly anticipated set Prismatic Evolutions, including many cards featuring the insanely beloved Pokémon Eevee and its eight evolutions. Not only does this set include 3X the SIR rank cards than most other sets, but around 1 in 2,000 packs are ‘god packs’, where most or all 10 cards in the pack are the rare and sought-after SIR rank. Popular cards such as the Umbreon ex SIR and the Sylveon ex SIR peaked at $8,415.56 and $2,986.86 in PSA 10, respectively, and many casual fans and collectors outright haven’t seen this set in stores because they’re so sold out.
Rolling back to the original topic, research has shown that Prismatic Evolutions is easily the most popular set to be scalped as of late. Popular reselling sites like eBay have scalpers selling said set for up to 2.5X the retail price, and are making plenty of sales. On top of that, the top results for “Prismatic Evolutions Pokémon” on eBay include accounts spiking the price that don’t have a history of selling Pokémon or even anything trading-card related in general. Some notable sellers include an account dedicated to selling rare coins that suddenly has a listing for Prismatic Evolutions, as well as an account that sells tons and tons of sports trading cards with a single Pokémon card listing.
The Pokémon Company is starting to try countermeasures as well. Recently, the company announced that they’ll begin selling Pokémon card products at their “Pokémon Center” stores in Japan and Singapore. This would, in theory, reduce the cost of products on the resale market as unsealed products are a key sign of tampering with contents and resealing packs. Although many are holding the Pokémon Company accountable, as they’re the ones making a profit from the sales, and they think they aren’t doing enough to stop the surging prices and scalping.
The Pokémon Company also has official Pokémon card vending machines all across the country, which are stocked regularly with loads of cards from several beloved sets, and they’ve become a breeding ground for scalpers. There are hundreds of videos on sites like TikTok and Instagram of people waiting in their cars until the retail workers restock these machines, and jumping first in line before actual fans. They sit there, continuously tapping the “+” button on the items, until they clean out most of the machines in one go. The Pokémon Company has tried regulations in the past. However, they have pretty easy workarounds.
Membership-only warehouse stores like Costco have recently begun selling Pokémon cards as well, and at prices below retail. This makes those kinds of stores another breeding ground for scalping. Again, countless videos online have surfaced of dozens of grown adults tripping, tackling, and stealing from each other as they dive for entire pallets of Pokémon cards. In particular, the “Blooming Waters” boxes have been popular as they feature many packs and promo cards from the notoriously hard-to-find set 151. Costco is also limiting the number of cards you’re able to purchase to two items per party. Some clips online include people being given a card with a number upon entering the aisle with Pokémon cards, and waiting until an associate hands them their desired items
“I haven’t been able to find any cards in English that aren’t like double the price,” says collector Sage Barnes from Washington D.C.- “so whenever I have an itch I have to buy the Japanese ones online, that go for way cheaper.”
She says she collected them as a child, but has gotten back into the hobby around November 2024, the scalping spike.
Barnes says she has never seen active scalpers doing what they do best, but she lives near the popular Pokémon vending machines and has literally never seen them in stock. Even once.
“I think it’s a great start,” says Barnes, in reference to the unsealed products policy previously mentioned. “I don’t think it would really affect collectors much, I mean what use would it have to keep stuff and not open them?”
While there is a subset of collectors who collect sealed products for display, it’s not nearly as big as those who want to get their hands on rare sets and the actual cards inside of packs.
She is also somebody who thinks that the Pokémon Company isn’t quite doing enough to combat the issues at hand, as, again, they’re making immense profits from nearly all of their stock being sold out everywhere immediately.
Also, Barnes considers what stores like Costco are doing to streamline Pokémon card purchasing as one of the best ways for large retail stores to combat it currently. However, she understandably feels “bad for the workers who have to wait there and hand people cards all day.” That and spreading the word to those not connected to Pokémon communities online and who may fall victim to price-gauging are the only ways to fight back against the issue at hand. Her bottom line? “Optimistic, but frustrated.”
It’s hard to think of solutions to issues like these, especially something that would work both short-term and long-term. If you overprint hits (rare cards) and make card ranks go from 1/100 to 1/10, for example, you run the risk of some collectors losing interest because it doesn’t feel as rare. On top of that, if said hits are returned to 1/100, then scalping may simply start over again as cards would skyrocket.
To conclude, the Pokémon Community has been riddled with scalping, unnecessary card prices, and genuinely horrible people for months now. Casual fans have been forced to either not add to their collections or pay 2X or even 2.5X the retail price for their momentary bliss. As a community, the only way to combat the issues at hand is to stay vigilant and reasonable.
Don’t pay upcharges for cardboard. Don’t play into rage bait online. Don’t even leave a mean comment on a snarky Instagram post. They make their money on the attention of others. If you derive them from the attention they so desperately desire, they’ll be forced to move on- and maybe even get a real job too.
There’s no doubt that scalping is the issue at hand here. Pokémon card scalping has been on the rise since quarantine, as people couldn’t go out and buy cards in person, so some took advantage of the situation and scalped cards.
One factor in how expensive a given Pokémon card can be is its condition. There are many companies out there where you can send in cards in the mail, and they’ll grade cards for you out of 10 based on near-mint condition. They’ll then seal the card in a tough polystyrene casing with a label with the card’s grading and ship it back to you. Cards graded as a 10/10 have an incredible price surge online from their ungraded condition
On top of that, Pokémon cards have become very sought after in the last 10-15 years, especially older, vintage ones. Most notably, holographic Charizard cards from the very first set, released in America in 1998. Out of several thousand submitted to be PSA graded, only 123 have been graded as a perfect 10/10, surging the price of those Charizard cards into the tens of thousands of dollars. Booster boxes of the original base set and boxes of 36 packs of cards are even more expensive. Boxes that are confirmed to be real and not re-sealed can sell for tens of thousands of USD on the low end, to over $300,000.
So it’s no secret that Pokémon card collectors will go to incredible lengths to attain their favorite sets, so scalping Pokémon cards is an easy choice. In the modern day, Pokémon card scalping has grown exponentially since early November 2024 and certainly hasn’t stopped since. This boost came from a few different factors.
For one, a popular Pokémon mobile game called Pokémon Pocket was released on October 30th of that year and immediately boomed in popularity. It centers around collecting and battling with pocket-exclusive cards and is made for short, 3-minute battles, as opposed to the much longer ones with the real card game. As of December 12, the game had a whopping 60 million downloads, deeming it a massive success.
It’s not the game’s fault, but it brought a large surge of new players and collectors to the Pokémon card scene. This was an even larger incentive for scalpers to capitalize on inexperienced, new fans that they could take advantage of.
Another contributing factor to the surge in scalping was the release of the Surging Sparks set on November 8th. This set is beloved by fans and includes many beautiful, yet expensive, cards to be on the lookout for. The crown jewel of this set, by far, is the Pikachu ex Special Illustration Rare (SIR). It’s still insanely expensive as of April 2025, with ungraded cards selling for over $300-$350. However, it peaked at $1,865.99 in November and has decreased to $951.64 as of April 2025.
Many would consider this to be another major player in the scalping spike last year, as collectors and scalpers can expect any new set to have cards like Pikachu ex that go for thousands. Plus, it hasn’t slowed down much since.
Mid-January saw the release of the highly anticipated set Prismatic Evolutions, including many cards featuring the insanely beloved Pokémon Eevee and its eight evolutions. Not only does this set include 3X the SIR rank cards than most other sets, but around 1 in 2,000 packs are ‘god packs’, where most or all 10 cards in the pack are the rare and sought-after SIR rank. Popular cards such as the Umbreon ex SIR and the Sylveon ex SIR peaked at $8,415.56 and $2,986.86 in PSA 10, respectively, and many casual fans and collectors outright haven’t seen this set in stores because they’re so sold out.
Rolling back to the original topic, research has shown that Prismatic Evolutions is easily the most popular set to be scalped as of late. Popular reselling sites like eBay have scalpers selling said set for up to 2.5X the retail price, and are making plenty of sales. On top of that, the top results for “Prismatic Evolutions Pokémon” on eBay include accounts spiking the price that don’t have a history of selling Pokémon or even anything trading-card related in general. Some notable sellers include an account dedicated to selling rare coins that suddenly has a listing for Prismatic Evolutions, as well as an account that sells tons and tons of sports trading cards with a single Pokémon card listing.
The Pokémon Company is starting to try countermeasures as well. Recently, the company announced that they’ll begin selling Pokémon card products at their “Pokémon Center” stores in Japan and Singapore. This would, in theory, reduce the cost of products on the resale market as unsealed products are a key sign of tampering with contents and resealing packs. Although many are holding the Pokémon Company accountable, as they’re the ones making a profit from the sales, and they think they aren’t doing enough to stop the surging prices and scalping.
The Pokémon Company also has official Pokémon card vending machines all across the country, which are stocked regularly with loads of cards from several beloved sets, and they’ve become a breeding ground for scalpers. There are hundreds of videos on sites like TikTok and Instagram of people waiting in their cars until the retail workers restock these machines, and jumping first in line before actual fans. They sit there, continuously tapping the “+” button on the items, until they clean out most of the machines in one go. The Pokémon Company has tried regulations in the past. However, they have pretty easy workarounds.
Membership-only warehouse stores like Costco have recently begun selling Pokémon cards as well, and at prices below retail. This makes those kinds of stores another breeding ground for scalping. Again, countless videos online have surfaced of dozens of grown adults tripping, tackling, and stealing from each other as they dive for entire pallets of Pokémon cards. In particular, the “Blooming Waters” boxes have been popular as they feature many packs and promo cards from the notoriously hard-to-find set 151. Costco is also limiting the number of cards you’re able to purchase to two items per party. Some clips online include people being given a card with a number upon entering the aisle with Pokémon cards, and waiting until an associate hands them their desired items
“I haven’t been able to find any cards in English that aren’t like double the price,” says collector Sage Barnes from Washington D.C.- “so whenever I have an itch I have to buy the Japanese ones online, that go for way cheaper.”
She says she collected them as a child, but has gotten back into the hobby around November 2024, the scalping spike.
Barnes says she has never seen active scalpers doing what they do best, but she lives near the popular Pokémon vending machines and has literally never seen them in stock. Even once.
“I think it’s a great start,” says Barnes, in reference to the unsealed products policy previously mentioned. “I don’t think it would really affect collectors much, I mean what use would it have to keep stuff and not open them?”
While there is a subset of collectors who collect sealed products for display, it’s not nearly as big as those who want to get their hands on rare sets and the actual cards inside of packs.
She is also somebody who thinks that the Pokémon Company isn’t quite doing enough to combat the issues at hand, as, again, they’re making immense profits from nearly all of their stock being sold out everywhere immediately.
Also, Barnes considers what stores like Costco are doing to streamline Pokémon card purchasing as one of the best ways for large retail stores to combat it currently. However, she understandably feels “bad for the workers who have to wait there and hand people cards all day.” That and spreading the word to those not connected to Pokémon communities online and who may fall victim to price-gauging are the only ways to fight back against the issue at hand. Her bottom line? “Optimistic, but frustrated.”
It’s hard to think of solutions to issues like these, especially something that would work both short-term and long-term. If you overprint hits (rare cards) and make card ranks go from 1/100 to 1/10, for example, you run the risk of some collectors losing interest because it doesn’t feel as rare. On top of that, if said hits are returned to 1/100, then scalping may simply start over again as cards would skyrocket.
To conclude, the Pokémon Community has been riddled with scalping, unnecessary card prices, and genuinely horrible people for months now. Casual fans have been forced to either not add to their collections or pay 2X or even 2.5X the retail price for their momentary bliss. As a community, the only way to combat the issues at hand is to stay vigilant and reasonable.
Don’t pay upcharges for cardboard. Don’t play into rage bait online. Don’t even leave a mean comment on a snarky Instagram post. They make their money on the attention of others. If you derive them from the attention they so desperately desire, they’ll be forced to move on- and maybe even get a real job too.
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