Pokémon trading card kiosks were supposed to be a nice alternative to retail stores, where reselling vultures camp overnight to nab stock the moment it goes on sale. Instead, the vending machines just became another place for people to fight about who gets to buy the elusive new Pikachu card. And now, it appears that The Pokémon Company has begun to scale back its vending machines footprint.
Trading card game aficionados have started receiving notices from Pokémon’s support team, which say that kiosks are “gradually being removed from select retail locations” in an effort to “improve stock consistency, reduce regional shortages, and provide a more reliable experience for all players.”
The notices do not say kiosks are going away altogether, but many Pokémon fans feel the writing is on the wall. Kiosks were meant to answer the problem of an unstable resale market. Some Pokémon machines implemented strict purchase limits, discouraged loitering, and were programmed to dole out new stock periodically rather than making it available all at once. In theory, these rules could help give average people a real shot at buying Pokémon products in high demand.
A system like this is predicated on people following social norms, though. When some new cards are worth over $1,000 and boxes can be resold for three to five times the price, however, all niceties are thrown out the window. Even with those rules in place, resellers still camped at the machines. If security at nearby stores enforced the rules, resellers merely hovered near the machines at an acceptable distance (or got creative about hiding). Pokémon fans would constantly post videos of their interactions around TCG kiosks, where tensions could run high as one or two people bought all the stock. Reports proliferated of grown adults stealing from children at the machines. Fights would break out, especially as resellers started relying on a glitch that allowed them to override kiosk limits.
The notices informing customers that vending machines are being retired do not mention anything about resellers, and The Pokémon Company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Ultimately, most of the discussions involving Pokémon vending machines online are extremely negative — which is not great PR for a family-friendly company. In the weeks leading up to the announcement, a number of stores that maintained the trading card kiosks claimed they were pulling the machines due to safety concerns.
Sadly, despite all the commotion surrounding them, some people do rely on vending machines to get Pokémon cards. Given that some resellers treat Pokémon cards like a full-time job, average Pokémon fans will have even fewer options for obtaining cards.
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