It’s almost impossible to get Pokemon cards over the years. Around the 25th anniversary of the Pokémon franchise, Pokémon cards saw a major resurgence in popularity; Whether fueled by pandemic boredom or dreams of getting rich with your Charizard cards, both new and old Pokémon cards were selling out as soon as they hit store shelves. People hoarded McDonald’s Happy Meals for special cards. Retail stores like Target took the cards off their shelves, opting to only sell goods online, reportedly because frenzied shoppers created safety concerns in stores. People filled card-grading services with so many cards from collectors hoping to attack the rich that they had to work through the backlog to fend off new submissions.
Last year, The Pokémon Company acknowledged a shortage of Pokémon cards and announced that it was ramping up production to meet high demand.
“We know that some fans are having difficulty buying certain Pokémon. [trading card game] product due to very high demand,” the company said in a tweet. “In response, we are reprinting affected products at maximum capacity to ensure as many fans as possible to enjoy Pokémon TCG.”
The Pokémon Company wasn’t kidding. According to data released by The Pokémon Company, it created more than 9 billion cards in the past year alone. That’s more than double last year, when The Pokémon Company produced 3.7 billion cards. (It typically makes 1 to 2 billion cards a year, Pokémon expert and Serebi webmaster Joe Merrick told Polygon.) To date, more than 43.2 billion cards have been produced. pokemon trading card game was launched.
More than a quarter of all Pokémon cards printed from 2020 to 2022 were produced. There was never really a lapse in the production of Pokémon cards – the Pokémon Company simply couldn’t meet such a huge demand.
“This is definitely a big deal and reflects the response to the situation at the end of 2020 in terms of the general consumer getting the card,” Merrick said. pokemon [trading cards] It went mainstream again and people were buying all the stock, not necessarily for the right reasons, and it was almost impossible for people to get any new products. It was a nightmare for the common consumer.”
Charlie Harlocker, a Pokémon expert and senior advisor at grading company CGC, explained that the Pokémon company is now producing more Pokémon cards, flooding the market with its collectibles to drive down prices and keep every shelf stocked. The strategy seems to be working: Most stores have products on the shelves, and prices are down in the first and secondary markets. Harlocker said that booster boxes, during the peak Pokémon craze of the past few years, were selling at online retailers for more than 20% of the MSRP — which seemed like a huge increase, because booster sets, they said, Used to sell very cheap. Now, with an influx of cards and sets into the market, prices are back to normal, Hurlocker said, with retailers actually putting the brakes on even card sales.
Another indicator of the Pokémon Company’s overproduction is the bulk card market, Harlocker said.
“There’s an entire secondary market that’s based around the value of any Pokémon card,” he explained. “Pokémon cards peaked in 2021 at six cents per card — any card costing six cents, simply because there was so much demand. Now that price is met. It’s like a cent, and the two biggest [bulk] Buyers are not even buying.”
“The overprinting is working,” Harlocker said.
Six cents per card may not sound like a big number, and it isn’t—especially when you’re comparing it to the hundreds of thousands of dollars that made Pokémon cards big news. But cards that are worth a ton, although prices have dropped, are still rare and worth a ton. But most Pokémon cards aren’t those rare cards. They are common or energy cards, and there are a lot of them. Harlocker said the demand is so high that wholesale cards going for six cents is a big deal.
The Pokémon card bubble hasn’t burst, but the franchise is now returning to its normal level of hype. New Packs Like Coming pokemon go Peel-off, expanding with Trolley Ditto cards, is likely to enter a cycle in high demand, but it’s not long before the pack returns. Target may not always have Pokémon cards on its shelves, but getting them is no longer impossible.
