Nintendo Officially Addresses Pokemon Card Scalping Problem

If you’ve ever shown up to a store on Pokemon TCG release day and walked away empty-handed, Nintendo has finally acknowledged your pain publicly. At the company’s recent annual shareholders meeting, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa addressed Pokemon card scalping head-on, confirming that both Nintendo and The Pokemon Company are actively working to get cards into the hands of actual fans rather than resellers flipping them for triple the price online.

Who addressed it: Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa, at Nintendo’s 2026 annual shareholders meeting
What he confirmed: Nintendo is coordinating with The Pokemon Company on anti-scalping measures
Key measures announced: Made-to-order sales, tighter marketplace cooperation, and government ID verification for lottery purchases in Japan
Japan rollout: My Number Card verification begins August 2026 for priority lottery draws and select Pokemon Centre Online sales
The bigger picture: Over 85 billion cards were printed between March 2025 and March 2026, yet shelves are still emptying within minutes of restocks

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What Nintendo’s President Actually Said

The question put to Furukawa at the shareholders meeting was direct: how does Nintendo plan to ensure consumers can buy Pokemon cards with peace of mind given how rampant bulk purchasing and high-priced reselling have become? Furukawa didn’t dodge it. He acknowledged that Nintendo is fully aware of the situation, specifically calling out instances where limited-quantity cards are bought in large volumes and then resold at heavily inflated prices.

In his own words: “Nintendo also communicates with The Pokémon Company as needed to discuss appropriate ways to deliver products to consumers. We believe that The Pokémon Company will continue to take measures to respond to this issue.”

That quote is measured and corporate as expected, but it’s still one of the clearest public acknowledgments to date from the top of Nintendo’s leadership that scalping has become a serious enough problem to warrant a coordinated response between the two companies.

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What Anti-Scalping Measures Are Actually Being Implemented

The statement wasn’t just words. Several concrete measures were discussed as part of The Pokemon Company’s ongoing and planned anti-scalping push:

Made-to-order sales: Shifting certain products toward print-on-demand or pre-order fulfillment structures to eliminate artificial scarcity and cut out the window scalpers exploit at retail launch
Marketplace cooperation: Tighter agreements with major e-commerce and resale platforms to curb or flag predatory bulk listings
Government ID verification in Japan: Starting August 2026, My Number Card verification via smartphone scanning is being rolled out for priority lottery purchases and select Pokemon Centre Online sales in Japan, making it significantly harder for one person to enter multiple lottery slots or bulk purchase under fake accounts
Purchase limits: Expanded enforcement of per-customer buying limits across official and partner retail channels

The Japan ID System Is the Most Aggressive Move Yet

The My Number Card verification system is the biggest step The Pokemon Company has taken to date in terms of enforcement. Each eligible purchase will require the buyer to scan their government-issued ID through an external service provider, and critically, the ID number itself won’t be stored by The Pokemon Company or Pokemon Centre, keeping privacy intact while still blocking multi-account abuse.

The catch is that this is a Japan-only rollout for now. North American, European, and other international buyers won’t see equivalent ID-based purchase verification in 2026, partly because implementing government ID systems in those regions raises more complex privacy law and data handling questions than in Japan. So while this is a meaningful step, it’s not a global fix yet.

Why Printing More Cards Hasn’t Solved the Problem

The Pokemon Company has dramatically scaled up production over the past few years, but the numbers tell a humbling story. Over 85 billion cards were printed between March 2025 and March 2026 alone, up from roughly 75 billion the year before, yet new sets are still selling out within minutes of going live, and secondary market prices on hot products remain sky-high. For context, around half of all Pokemon cards ever printed have been produced in just the last four years, and The Pokemon Company is already running at maximum manufacturing capacity with existing partners.

A new facility from their main printing partner is expected to come online by late 2028, which would roughly double production capacity, but that’s still years away. In the meantime, scalpers are running automated bots and bulk purchasing operations that no amount of additional print runs can fully outpace on their own. That’s exactly why Furukawa’s statement is significant: it signals that Nintendo and The Pokemon Company understand that printing more cards is not the complete answer, and that distribution and enforcement have to be part of the solution too.

GameStop’s Recent Listings Made Things Worse

The timing of Nintendo’s statement comes alongside a separate controversy that’s been fueling community frustration. GameStop recently listed several upcoming Pokemon TCG: 30th Celebration products at prices dramatically above their official retail values. An Ultra-Premium Collection reportedly appeared at $600 against its $180 MSRP, while Elite Trainer Boxes were listed at $130 and various premium collection boxes were marked up well beyond standard retail pricing. GameStop has not publicly commented on the reported prices, but the backlash has been swift and loud, and it’s only sharpened the community’s focus on how broken the current retail situation is for everyday collectors.

Will Any of This Actually Work?

Honestly, it depends on how aggressively these measures get enforced and whether they eventually expand globally. Made-to-order sales and ID verification for lottery products are smart in theory, but scalpers are adaptive, and the international market remains wide open without equivalent protections outside Japan. The real test will come with the Pokemon TCG: 30th Celebration launch and whatever major sets follow it through the rest of 2026.

What’s changed here is the acknowledgment from the very top of Nintendo’s leadership that scalping is a structural problem requiring a coordinated fix, not just a side effect of too little supply. For fans who have been frustrated for years, that’s at least a step in the right direction, even if retail shelves aren’t magically restocked overnight.