Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa fielded questions on Pokémon Trading Card Game scalping at the company's latest shareholder AGM, acknowledging the crisis while placing responsibility for fixes on The Pokémon Company.
Furukawa said Nintendo is "aware of instances where limited-quantity cards are purchased in large volume, leading to high-priced reselling in the market." The response, as reported by Polygon, came during the annual meeting where investors pressed the company on "bulk purchasing and high-priced reselling."
The Pokémon Company has already rolled out countermeasures, including made-to-order sales and agreements with marketplace operators. In Japan, it plans to deploy an account verification system using My Number Cards, the country's official government-issued ID, for online priority drawings on certain products.
"Nintendo also communicates with The Pokémon Company as needed to discuss appropriate ways to deliver products to consumers," Furukawa said. "We believe that The Pokémon Company will continue to take measures to respond to this issue."
The scale of the problem is staggering. IGN reports that 85 billion Pokémon cards have been produced to date, with 10 billion manufactured in 2025 alone, more cards than the number of people on Earth.
Production has ramped up dramatically: 43 billion cards were printed in the 25 years between October 1996 and March 2022, but nearly the same volume has been released in just the last four years.
It still hasn't been enough. New launches sell out instantly, with scalpers flipping product on eBay at massive markups.
Retailers like GameStop have begun pricing above MSRP on high-demand items. The frenzy has spilled into theft, a Florida man was arrested in May for stealing $12,000 worth of Pokémon cards while wielding a battery-powered chainsaw, and a card shop in New York was recently robbed by armed thieves in broad daylight. The 30th anniversary set, due in September, will test whether any of these measures can keep pace with demand.
