Pokémon card collecting has continued to rise in popularity, but as the demand increases for these collectable cards, so too has increased a problematic element to this childhood past time: Pokémon scalpers. Scalpers have taken over the marketplace making collecting these cards increasingly hard and expensive.

Have you ever wanted to get into collecting Pokémon cards or you are already in the hobby? Well then, you have definitely gone to the store and seen all the shelves empty. Ok then – the store is out of stock, nothing out of the norm. You check a nearby Pokémon vending machine: same result. This is because of Pokémon card scalpers.

Pokémon scalpers are a group of people who buy a huge amount of Pokémon cards and then sell the cards online or in stores for double or triple the amount. The prices sky rocket online and in store, just like Team Rocket.

Team Rocket is a group of people in the Pokémon series who steal Pokémon and sell them. 

Ryan Park, a student here at Highline who happens to also collect cards, said, “I think it’s just sad because scalpers are just people who buy the whole stock and resell it for a bigger price.” 

You can look up ‘Pokémon scalpers’ on TikTok or any other social media platform and the first thing you see is people taking huge amounts of Pokémon cards off the shelves. Most of the time you will find grown adults running inside Costco fighting for every box they can get their hands on. 

You can ask anyone you know who’s into Pokémon cards what they think of Pokémon scalpers, 95% percent of the time they’ll share a negative opinion on them. People disliked the idea of people buying a whole stock and not letting anyone else get something just to resell.

Victor Taing, a Pokémon fan, said, “These cards are already kinda expensive right? And scalpers buy it all out, and that’s the cheapest you can get them just by them being expensive, and the scalpers resell them for like a 50% markup.” 

A lot of folks mention how it’s not just hard for them to get cards but also the kids who are into the community. 

Calvin Pham, a lifelong Pokémon fan, said “It’s fine if I don’t get Pokémon cards, I’m a college student, but I am thinking about the kids who want to get cards but can’t because scalpers make them more expensive and harder to find.”

Almost everyone interviewed mentioned that the scalpers don’t care about the game or cards themselves. James Carey, a collector, said, “They’re greedy, they don’t care about the game and they just want the money from reselling all the cards they got at more expensive prices.”  

Brayan Mejia Magan, another lifelong Pokémon fan, called them, “Bums that should get actual jobs like the rest of us.”

When asked if they could think of a way to maybe fix this Scalper problem, a few ideas thrown out were: “Print more cards so they lose value and hopefully the scalpers stop trying to sell for triple the price,” and, “Just stop feeding the scalpers so they stop making money from reselling these cards.”

As much as the scalpers are a huge problem, the buyers can be just as bad. The people that buy from scalpers are literally enabling them and that’s what keeps scalpers going. They keep making money from this. Some of the people who were interviewed had different opinions on the people who buy from scalpers.

Pham said the people who buy from scalpers are “irresponsible with their money” while Taing and Park said they don’t think ill of them because it’s a last resort.

The problem here is that Pokémon scalpers are buying the whole stock and reselling for double or triple the amount, making them harder to find and buy. Two possible solutions to this dilemma could be that Pokémon prints more cards so the cards lose value, making them cheaper, or we just stop buying from scalpers so they stop making money and they hopefully stop scalping the cards. Unfortunately, neither options seems to be near on the horizon.

As Taing said, “Please don’t participate in scalping because you’re hurting others more than you’re helping yourself.”