The Pokémon Company released Prismatic Evolution, the newest English language card set Friday January 17, 2025. Unfortunately, retailers didn’t receive as much Prismatic Evolution product as they originally wanted. Distributors evidently weren’t able to completely fulfill orders placed by retailers.
The Pokémon Company addressed this shortage of Prismatic Evolution product. They posted this on X:
It’s funny that the Pokémon Company thanked the community for their patience. That’s not a word I normally associate with the overall Pokémon community, If more people in the Pokémon community had patience, there wouldn’t be scalpers.
Who are scalpers?
A Scalper is someone who buys a product at retail for the sole purpose of reselling it at a much higher price. The Pokémon community is especially susceptible to scalping compared to other trading card games. You don’t see people reselling new Yu-Gi-Oh or Magic: The Gathering card sets soon after release day. The reason scalpers focus on Pokémon over other collectible trading card games is the severe FOMO that runs throughout much of the hobby. FOMO, the Fear of Missing Out, is an emotion that’s common with many Pokémon collectors. It not at all as persuasive in other trading card games.
Too many Pokémon collectors feel like they must own the latest product as soon as it’s available. Many of them seem incapable of denying themselves the pleasure they receive when opening new Pokémon product. This makes them willing to pay too much for what they want. Many of them act as though they don’t have a choice but to buy from scalpers.
Scalpers outside the community know this and take advantage of impatient collectors.
In conclusion
As long as there are collectors in the Pokémon hobby willing to pay an artificial premium to open the newest product on release day, scalpers will exist. If more collectors had the patience and maturity to simply wait for the supply to catch up to normal demand, people outside the hobby wouldn’t buy Pokémon product just to resell it. Scalpers wouldn’t exist. Pokémon would be like Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, and other products immune to scalpers.
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