Pokémon is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and the franchise is more popular than ever, which, depending on who you ask may or may not be a good thing.

Starting around the time of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Pokémon cards and collectibles started to become extremely sought after, more so than ever. Fueled by nostalgia, an influx in free time, and the opportunity to make extra cash, many people who had grown up with Pokémon and held onto their cards, began to sell them, sometimes for a handsome profit.

Celebrities like Logan Paul even got in on the craze and popularized live stream pack openings, where users go live on social media and simply open packs of Pokémon cards, hoping to find a rare card in front of a digital audience. Resellers latched onto the profit incentives associated with the hobby, leaving genuine fans left to pay exorbitant prices for sometimes brand new merchandise which was cleared off of store shelves.

This past weekend, the craze came to a head with Target’s Pokémon collaboration. In a press release from the Pokémon company, the collaboration featured "over 100 items" that ranged from "apparel, accessories, beauty, home, food, and more. Standout pieces include a first-of-its-kind Pokémon Starter jacket, binder-inspired Trapper Keepers, kickballs patterned after different varieties of Poké Balls, Butterfree hair clips, and life-size 151-piece puzzles inspired by the original Kanto region." 

With the exception of a few hairbrushes and fragrance mists, these are mostly sold out online.

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Visitors at physical Target locations over the weekend were met with lines outside at 8am only for shelves to be cleared out shortly after. The starter jacket, the hottest item from the collection, is being resold for $300 online, when it retailed for $130.

In fact, you could find most of the collection being offered online for a premium price while store shelves remain bare. People even went as far as stealing the cardboard displays, which weren’t for sale, and listing them for hundreds of dollars. Somehow along the way, people started associating anything Pokémon related with dollar signs, not just the cards, and it’s hurting genuine fans who engage with Pokémon in a meaningful way. 

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As a kid, I grew up around the first wave of Pokémon fever. I played the games, collected the cards, and watched the show. It played a pretty pivotal role in my childhood.

Nowadays, this obsessive behavior is being passed along to younger generations. In an article for Business Insider, Madeline Berg wrote, "Last year, Pokémon was the world's No. 1 toy product by sales, though perhaps it should be thought of more as a commodity and less as a plaything. Over the past year, Pokémon cards have outperformed both the Dow and the S&P 500, according to Card Ladder's Pokémon index, which tracks market performance on several resale platforms."

The article continued about the author attending a Pokémon meetup at a local card shop in New York City, "In a back corner, three teenagers were in the middle of a trade. One said he was happy to make a cash deal. Another said, with a bit of jealousy, that the other's grandma always buys him good cards. They were emphatic about the reason they collect: the money."

When you have a large amount of people collecting solely for the profit and not forming any emotional connections to the particular property, it does turn into it's own market, but how long can that last? Sneaker collecting, once a booming insulated economy like Pokémon, is seeing a dip. Funnily enough, some stores have shifted to Pokémon.

coolkicks announced that they’re going to start buying and selling pokemon cards

almost every sneakerhead has jumped into the hobby pic.twitter.com/ZWQLF6pPtO

— Angelo (@angelodotsui) May 2, 2026

Luckily, some stores are catching on to ulterior motives. A store in Japan called Bic Camera enacted a Pokémon quiz for anyone buying cards, a deterrent to the resellers only there for profit.

"Bic Camera is asking would-be buyers to identify more than a dozen Pokémon species, selected at random from a pool of even more, and the sign says that sales will be refused to anyone attempting to photographing the questions ahead of time. Ostensibly, the names of the Pokémon are those that actual fans would be familiar with, but might not be known to scalpers whose primary way of interacting with the franchise is simply looking at online resale marketplace prices."

It's a small step, but it's nice to know some people are looking out for the fans. 

Feature Photo Credit: u/ravens-folklore on Reddit