GameStop’s Price Gouging of Pokémon Cards Exposed

The retail environment for Pokémon cards has become a hotbed of price gouging, with GameStop being one of the main culprits. In a recent shareholder meeting, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa acknowledged that the current retail environment has led to ‘high-priced reselling in the market.’ This is a clear indication that the Pokémon trading card game (TCG) has a problem with scalping.

Source: engadget.com

GameStop’s practice of marking up Pokémon cards is well-known among collectors. The company doesn’t do much to hide it, and it’s clear that they’re taking advantage of the high demand for these cards. For example, an Ascended Heroes Booster Bundle costs just under $27 at the Pokémon Center. With each booster bundle including six packs of cards, that averages out to around $4.50 per pack. Not an outrageous amount for colorful cardstock that can also be used to play a game.

However, if you go over to GameStop.com, you’ll see the exact same product listed for $90, or a bit over $85 if you pay for a GameStop Pro membership, which on its own costs another $25 a year. That right there is a markup of over 200 percent, resulting in packs that cost closer to $15 each. Suddenly, things aren’t so affordable, especially if you’re a kid trying to scrape together funds just to buy some cards.

But GameStop’s gouging isn’t limited to just the Ascended Heroes set. They’ve recently started taking in-store pre-orders for the Pokémon 30th Anniversary Celebration set, which is by far the most anticipated release of the year. And boy, was I not prepared. Similar to Ascended Heroes, 30th Anniversary Booster Bundles are going for $90. Meanwhile, the price for Elite Trainer Boxes, which is often the most sought-after product type, were going for $170. Considering the regular retail price of a specialty set ETB is $55, that’s once again more than a 3x markup.

But then things got extremely depressing when the very helpful clerk told me that the price of the 30th Anniversary Ultra-Premium Collection at GameStop was set at $600. Compare that to the Mega Charizard Ultra-Premium Collection from last year’s Phantasmal Flames set, which cost just $120 direct from the Pokémon Center. Granted, The Pokémon Company has yet to reveal official pricing for these products, but if upcoming pricing is in line with previous offerings, that means GameStop is marking up the product by a whopping 400 percent.

Furthermore, if you’ll notice, GameStop cleverly doesn’t list the price of these upcoming items online, or in-store either, at least at my location. That seems to be by design, because it allows the company to raise prices with little to no notice, which is exactly what it did. When pre-orders for the 30th Anniversary set first became available, disgruntled Redditors discovered that items like ETBs were actually listed for slightly cheaper at $130. This was also confirmed to me by my local clerk, who said that prices had already increased at least once and suggested that I should put down a reservation in case prices climb even higher.

Unfortunately, because I didn’t see the online chatter about GameStop’s predatory pricing before I got there, I’m ashamed to say I reserved one ETB so I could get concrete proof of the company’s despicable tactics. And to add insult to injury, GameStop requires customers to pay half the cost of a pre-order up front, which means the $85 I paid only accounts for half of the ETB I reserved.

It’s worth noting that trying to buy Pokémon cards in 2026 involves a lot of other pitfalls that have little to do with GameStop. New sets sell out almost instantly when they are listed on the Pokémon Center’s website, to the point where if you’re 10 or 20 minutes late, there’s a good chance everything will be gone by the time you get past the queue. Meanwhile, other retailers like Walmart and Target often suffer from online bots that scoop up restocks before actual humans can make purchases. Things are arguably even worse in person, as there are regular reports about people fighting in stores over cards or scalpers stalking Pokémon card vending machines, which has resulted in kiosks getting removed entirely.

However, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company are trying to address these issues by instituting things like account verification in some places and supporting made-to-order sales. More importantly, late last year, TPCi’s Millenium Print Group signed a lease on a 1.27 million square-foot facility in North Carolina, which should increase the supply of cards when construction is completed sometime in 2027.

But perhaps the biggest weapon in this battle is one President Furukawa already mentioned during the shareholder meeting: making agreements with market operators. All of the big box retailers get their products from a handful of licensed distributors, which means that Nintendo and The Pokémon Company could pull inventory or refuse to restock retailers that egregiously mark up their products.

To be clear, I’m not against stores (especially smaller independent businesses) increasing prices a bit on things that are in super high demand, especially if they provide a service to customers like the ability to reserve items or make pre-orders (though simply taking a deposit would be ideal). But there’s got to be a limit and it’s clear GameStop has already pushed way past what should be allowed.