Years into the resurgence of popularity for Pokémon cards, the collectibles aren’t just difficult to source — the situation is getting worse, judging by the rollout of a recent boxed set. In mid-May, The Pokémon Company released a hotly-anticipated collection called Prismatic Evolutions Super-Premium Collection, themed entirely around Eevee, a beloved monster known for its many cutesy incarnations. Good luck finding it, though.
Determined scalpers were lined up, wallets in tow, days before the pack went on sale. At some GameStop locations, workers snapped pictures showing people camping with tents, portable seats, or simply congregating en masse at their local shops. The situation caused enough of a nuisance that workers shared screenshots of posts advertising free lawn chairs in the hopes that passersby might take the furniture while the occupants left for necessities like food and water.
“The GameStop here is in a high end shopping center with its own security, if you leave a chair like this they will take it,” one commenter wrote in a thread discussing card campers. “The GameStop has a sign on the window they aren’t responsible for unattended chairs that go missing lol.”
In that same thread, a few GameStop employees commiserated over the fact that they all saw over a dozen people camping outside their store even though most locations only scored a handful of boxes. At least one person claimed that the furor around the cards was so intense, they met people who had been standing in line amid an active tornado warning.
“I went to GameStop at 2am also during thunderstorms warning,” another commenter replied. “There was already a line of 9 people in tents. A local scalper told me I was number 10.”
For the record, tornados have been devastating central states like Kentucky over the last week, leveling homes and claiming the lives of over two dozen people so far. Tornado warnings typically tell people to go inside and take cover in basements to avoid debris like broken windows.
In 2022, The Pokémon Company ramped up production to meet the incredible demand. At some retailers, measures were put in place to prevent bots from gobbling up stock the moment it goes on sale. Prior releases of Prismatic Evolutions were flying off the shelves so fast, The Pokémon Company also promised it was doing everything it could to produce more cards.
Yet we are midway into 2025 now, and premium releases like Prismatic Evolutions — which costs $90 — still have people bickering over the right to buy multiple copies at once. And when scalpers routinely boast about making six figures purely off resale, it seems unlikely that things will change anytime soon. Meanwhile, companies like GameStop not only encourage but commend customers who are willing to camp out at stores, much to the chagrin of the employees who have to deal with them.
While some scalpers try to turn around a quick buck, others play the long game by holding on to sealed copies of desirable sets that they will only start selling once The Pokémon Company stops printing them regularly. And they encourage each other to do the same. While this would suggest the issue will persist no matter what cards are released, Prismatic Evolutions may be hit harder than most: pull rates for desirable cards are reportedly worse than usual for the set, which means that even if The Pokémon Company keeps printing it, people will still have a hard time getting exactly what they want. Though many of the cards in the set are gorgeous, eagle-eyed collectors are particularly keen on acquiring a rare Umbreon EX card, which sells for anywhere between $1,500 and $4,200, depending on the grade of the card. For a scalper, scarcity is the ideal scenario.
On paper, much of this might sound familiar to anyone who saw Logan Paul show off his expensive Charizard collection way back when. But according to people who like collecting cards, what’s happening with scarcity now is magnitudes worse than anything they’ve seen before — including when people were getting shot over Pokémon cards.
“I honestly believe this set destroyed the fun of the Pokémon TCG for a lot of people, myself included,” laments a card game Redditor in a highly upvoted thread.
