Summary
- Singapore’s Pokemon Center has employed a tactic used in Japan to try and combat scalpers.
- The Center will now remove plastic from Pokemon TCG products at the point of purchase.
- It’s harder to resell unsealed TCG products since there’s no guarantee the cards inside haven’t been tampered with.
Newly released Pokemon TCG products are harder to buy than ever before, and while there are a lot of positive reasons for that, one of the biggest driving forces behind a lack of availability is an uptick in scalping. Pokemon Centers in Japan have been using a clever method to try and counter that, and now that method will be used in a country where English Pokemon cards are sold for the first time.
The method in question is removing the sealed protective plastic from a Pokemon product at the point of sale. Doing this means there’s less chance of someone being able to sell the product since potential buyers might assume the cards and items inside have been tampered with, or perhaps even removed and replaced. If a product is sealed in its original plastic, there’s no risk of that.
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Pokemon Centers in Japan have been removing the plastic from TCG products at the point of sale for some time in an attempt to combat scalpers. Now the Pokemon Center in Singapore’s largest airport has begun doing the same, informing customers that the plastic will be removed from its TCG products when bought “until further notice” (thanks, VGC).
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As for those who will now be leaving Singapore’s Pokemon Center with plastic-less TCG products, the majority of them, if buying the products for the right reasons, shouldn’t have a problem with it. Those customers will know the cards haven’t been tampered with since they’re buying them from an official Pokemon source, and they’d be removing the plastic themselves soon enough to reveal the cards inside anyway.
The only people who aren’t scalpers who this might upset are collectors who like to keep their TCG products sealed. Since most people buy Pokemon TCG products to see, collect, and battle with the cards inside, it feels like this anti-scalping practice is the lesser of two evils. If thwarting scalpers upsets a few niche sealed product collectors in the process, then so be it.
The practice has come into effect at the Singapore Pokemon Center just in time for the release of the next TCG set – Journey Together. Reintroducing Owner’s Pokemon – now Trainer’s Pokemon – to the TCG, products in the Journey Together set will be released on March 28, 2025. The Journey Together promo cards you can get with select Pokemon TCG purchases at GameStop and Best Buy have been revealed ahead of the set’s arrival.
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