"My Staff Have Had Customers Threatening To Rip Their Heads Off" - Retailers And Collectors Tell Of Pokémon TCG Woes

The fact that the Pokémon Trading Card Game has created its own mini-economy isn't new news – back when it launched in the late '90s, there were accusations that it was encouraging gambling amongst kids, with many schools banning the cards from their playgrounds.

In more recent years, however, the market for collectable cards has risen to hitherto unseen levels of insanity, driven by the fact that the children who grew up with Pokémon in the '90s and 2000s are now adults and can invest heavily in picking up the rarest examples – and the high prices have predictably encouraged in opportuniustic scalpers moving in, drawn by the promise of turning small purchases into hundreds of dollars.

The end result, rather sadly, is that younger Pokémon fans are being denied the chance to grab cards for themselves.

British news outlet The Guardian has been speaking to retailers and fans to get their take on the current state of the Pokémon Trading Card Game in the UK, and it's not particularly pleasant reading.

Ben Thyer, the owner of the independent store BathTCG, says:

"My staff have had customers threatening to come back and rip their heads off. It’s become quite unpleasant at times. I’ve heard of other stores where people have been attacked or there have been robberies. We’ve even seen people who buy our products and list them immediately on Facebook, while still in our carrier bags, or sell it right outside the shop. We’re even anxious to put stuff on the shelf for the public because we just don’t want to entice that sort of behaviour. We used to sell whole boxes of booster packs but now we’ve had to stop doing that, and even place limits on the individual packs."

Demand has consistently outstripped supply in the world of Pokémon TCG for a few years now, but Thyer thinks a correction is perhaps on the way – although it may not last for very long:

"There are signs of the market cracking – prices of singles are coming down, sealed products are coming down. People aren’t as ferocious as they once were. There’s also a lot of people now thinking, ‘Christmas is soon and I need some money because I’ve not made what I was hoping for [from reselling cards]’. So we’ll see it dip, but then early 2026 brings Pokémon’s 30th anniversary, so I think we’ll see another crazy period."