The fight to get exclusive Pokemon Cards rages on between collectors and those wanting to make a profit. So just what is the latest target? Cereal boxes, of all things. In March, General Mills announced a collaboration with Pokemon's 25th anniversary. Specially marked boxes of Lucky Charms, Trix, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Cocoa Puffs would contain one three-card booster pack.
There would be a total of 14 cards to collect, the rarest one is Galarian Ponyta. This caused scalpers to now snap up entire pallets of the still-sealed sugary cereal to resell at crazy amounts. On Twitter, one shopper shared a picture of a local card shop owner who did in fact buy quite a few of them.
Even a real estate investor named Trevor Joe got into the Pokemon Card reselling market, according to Nintendo Life. On his Instagram, a trunk full of cereal boxes is shown off. It seems he has temporarily gone from selling houses to scooping up cards that normally should be free.
Those who don't want to deal with eBay and scalpers are opening the boxes directly in the store and removing the cards. Not only is that not ok, but it's also food tampering, which means the open box will be thrown out. Target is also allegedly instructing employees to contact local police if they witness individuals doing that.
Sadly, this is the latest in stories involving Pokemon TCG and the darker side of it. From boxes of McDonald's Happy Meal cards ending up online, to forging winning popsicle sticks.
Will the neverending TCG craze ever end? It doesn't seem likely, luckily The Pokemon Company did state it would reprint the higher demand sets. Some stores are even limiting how many a single person can buy, so at least something is being done to discourage scalping.
Even the recent Sanrio Animal Crossing Cards were quickly snapped up by scalpers as well and the Build-a-Bear plush. Nothing is safe anymore, and it's only a matter of time before we see history repeat itself. Hopefully, when the new Nintendo Switch console is announced it will be handled better than the Playstation 5 launch fiasco.
Source: Polygon