Pokémon Queues Are Pricing Out the Children They Were Made For

A 25-year-old Pokémon collector named Kai arrived outside a London shop at three a.m. for a card release that went on sale at 10, and he estimated that about half of the 120-plus people in the queue were resellers ^[1].

I think he has put his finger on something larger than one pavement. A hobby that exists for collecting and playing loses its point when its most visible products are treated chiefly as assets. The loss falls first on newcomers and children, but it reaches the profiteers too, because they are mining a thing they are also wearing out.

A caution first, and I will make it only once. This rests on reporting from particular shops and particular collectors, in London and in Gloucester. Nobody has measured how common reseller-heavy queues are across the whole market, and not every Pokémon product is equally scarce.

What the queue looked like

The release was Delta Reign, and the product people wanted was the elite trainer box, a boxed set of card packs and accessories, priced at £49.99. Forbidden Planet, the shop in central London, limited it to one per customer ^[1].

It also did something I find quietly wonderful. At the request of its supplier, the shop opens products at the point of sale, which the Guardian reports deters resellers who want to flog sealed stock as new ^[1]. Think about that. A shop's best defence of a toy is to tear the wrapper off it, so that it can only be used for what it is.

The workarounds are reported too. Some buyers hop between shops on e-bikes, and people reportedly change clothes to buy again, or pay cash for other customers' purchases ^[1]. Those are described as practices, not verified for every shop or buyer. They are also exactly what you would expect once a queue becomes a job.

Kai said cards had become more expensive, and he put the buying hype down to people from the crypto world ^[1]. That is his view, not a measured account of what drives demand. But he is a collector who has loved the cards since childhood, and the comparison he reached for tells you how the hobby feels from inside the line.

The pattern is not confined to London. The BBC reported overnight queues in Gloucester for a release tied to the franchise's 30th anniversary. A collector there, Dan Spragg, said he and friends arrived at seven p.m. for a nine a.m. opening, which is 14 hours of standing on a pavement for cardboard ^[4]. The manager of Firestorm Games, George Read, said the shop used a first-come, first-served policy ^[4].

The best case for the market

Let me give the other side its due, because it is a good case. Collecting has always involved buying, selling and swapping.

Anthony, a 26-year-old collector quoted by the Guardian, buys, sells and trades, and uses sale proceeds to subsidise his own collection ^[1]. That is not a villain. That is a fan who has worked out how to keep a costly passion going, and plenty of people in this hobby do the same.

The Pokémon Company has also not ignored the problem. On May 26 it said it knew fans were struggling to buy some products because demand was so high. It said it was printing affected products as quickly as possible and at maximum capacity, planned to maximise production for future expansions, and would keep reprinting ^[2]. It also said its own Pokémon Center store uses a virtual queue for certain products when site traffic is high ^[2].

The BBC reports that more than 85 billion Pokémon cards have been produced in all ^[4]. No one is starving the market on purpose.

So why not shrug and say supply will catch up?

Because supply is not the whole of it, and the company's May statement says nothing about whether its measures have worked by now. Fandom strategist Calvin Innes told the Guardian that demand had outrun production, and that single packs and blister packs were easier to find than elite trainer boxes, booster boxes and Pokémon Center exclusives ^[1]. The scarcity is concentrated in the things people want most, and those are precisely the things most easily treated as stores of value.

Why the chase is the problem

Look at what the secondary market advertises. IGN's November 6 guide, drawing on TCGplayer market prices, lists Delta Reign's sought-after singles, with Mega Rayquaza ex cards at $378.53 and $349.35 ^[5].

Those are listed market values, not proceeds anyone is guaranteed, and prices move. But set them beside a £49.99 box (a different product in a different currency, so the comparison is of scale and not arithmetic) and you can see the arithmetic of the dream. Every pack is a lottery ticket, and a shop queue is the line at the kiosk.

That is the casino. Not that anyone is cheating, but that the thing on sale has shifted from the game to the gamble. When a box is valued for what it might contain on resale, it is no longer valued for what it is, a pile of cards that someone might hold up across a table and say, I have this one, shall we play.

The odd thing is that the game's own rules assume the opposite. Pokémon's official 2026 Standard format rotates older cards out of competitive play, with the stated aim of keeping the format healthy and letting new players join using recent releases ^[3]. A hobby designed around cards that come and go from the table is one whose designers expect cards to be used. Speculation requires the reverse, that the card stays pristine and keeps its worth.

I have no card collection. I do have a box in my house of things worth nothing to anyone but us, and I would not part with it for any sum.

That is not nostalgia being sentimental, it is a plain description of what a collection is. The value is in the keeping and the showing, and in who you keep it with.

Who pays

The people paying are the ones the hobby is for. Parents now turn to online groups for advice on how to buy their children cards at all ^[1]. Innes offered sensible workarounds. Consider individual cards from card shops or reputable online sellers, he said, or take children to prerelease or league events, which typically cost £25 to £30 and offer cards and a chance to play ^[1].

I would take that advice, and I would also notice what it admits. When an expert has to tell parents to avoid the headline product in order to find the fun, the headline product has stopped being the fun.

Daniel Garnett, who owns Hull Pops Gaming Centre, runs a free children's club, keeps some stock back for regular players and teaches children to play ^[1]. About a month before the Guardian's visit, he said, some parents brought children in to buy products with no intention of staying for the club ^[1]. Read that twice. A shop that gives away its time to teach a game finds customers who want the product and none of the game.

That is my whole argument in one small shop. The hobby has a place where a child learns to play, and a market that wants only what the child might have bought.

What to do about it

I do not want a ban on resale. It would not work and it would not be fair to Anthony. I want the people who run this hobby to do more of what Forbidden Planet and Garnett do, which is to make the game, and not the speculation, the easy way in. Limits per customer, opening at the till, stock held for regulars, free clubs. None of it is glamorous. All of it favours the person who will use what they buy.

The Pokémon Company can do its part too. It has said it will keep reprinting and exploring ways to improve the buying experience ^[2]. The test is simple and public. If queues for a major release are still forming at three a.m. by the next one, the reprints have not been enough.

And you can do your part. Next time you want to feel what this hobby was before it became a market, skip the queue. Find a league night, pay your £25, and sit across a table from someone who has no idea what your cards are worth.