Pokémon card rush puts 120 buyers behind scalpers in London

By Elena Vasquez

More than 120 people queued outside central London's pop-culture store Forbidden Planet before its 10am Friday opening, with each customer allowed one £49.99 Delta Reign “elite trainer” box from the latest release.

What is driving the rush?

Kai, 25, arrived at 3am. The line snaked past five other shops. He estimated the crowd was probably “50/50” fans and resellers, despite Forbidden Planet’s strict sales policy.

Kai said he had loved Pokémon since childhood, but rising resale had priced out fans like him. “The cards used to be cheap but they have ballooned in price,” he said. Kai said the cards were being hyped “like crypto”.

Kai blamed “people in the crypto space have got into Pokémon” for intensifying demand. He said buyers now chase profit and gambling, while livestreams target fans to bid on cards. Kai said other collectors had described fights and overwhelmed security staff. “It’s calmer here,” Kai said. “The people and workers are nice here.”

The result is a queue that mixes childhood attachment, speculative trading and gambling, while ordinary collectors absorb the higher prices created by the same demand.

Takeaway: Kai’s account places crypto speculation beside childhood collecting in the same queue.

How are shops limiting resale?

Forbidden Planet posted purchase rules on its door. It limits high-demand products, including the £49.99 box, to one per customer. The store also operates a “supplier-requested unsealing policy”. Opening a product prevents a reseller from selling it as brand new, so the rule deters some resellers.

The Delta Reign set was due to carry big eBay markups by the end of the day. Argos sells Pokémon trading cards only online. Amazon uses an “invite-only” process for high-demand lines to combat scalper bots.

Buyers reportedly work around purchase limits by changing clothes or paying cash for other people’s hauls. Some race between stores by e-bike. Kai identified traders by their multiple shopping bags. “As a collector there is no reason to have that many,” he said.

Retail controls slow some resale, but shoppers can still pool purchases, move between outlets and separate collectors from the buyers arriving outside with multiple bags.

Takeaway: One-box limits reduce convenience, not the reach of scalpers.

Why do collectors arrive before dawn?

Anthony, 26, secured third place at 1am after finishing a waiting shift. He began collecting at five. Tattoos of his favourites, Gengar and Dragonite, feature on his leg and arm. Anthony said he did “everything”: buying, selling and exchanging cards. He used sale proceeds to subsidise his collection.

Hiep took first place at 11pm. Luke, 30, ranked second. All three wanted expensive elite trainer sets. Luke called nostalgia around Pokémon’s 30th anniversary this year the “straw that broke me”. His binder had placeholders for missing cards.

Luke described collecting as an “expensive” hobby. Scalpers, he said, were the reason “people like us turn up so early”.

Their different routes—late-night arrival, post-shift queueing and nostalgia tied to a 30th anniversary—show how personal rituals now shape the resale economy outside stores.

Takeaway: For Luke, anniversary nostalgia turned an old collection into an overnight queue.

Is the supply problem real?

Pokémon produces about 10 billion cards a year, roughly 27 million a day. Calvin Innes, a fandom and pop culture strategist, said demand had “outrun the machines, so everything else – bots, scalpers, queues etc – sits on the fact that there is a hard supply limit”.

Innes, author of Fandom Power: Marketing in the Age of Nerd Culture, called elite trainer sets, booster boxes and Pokémon Center exclusives the hardest products to obtain. Single packs and blisters remained more accessible, though smaller high-street shops often sold out quickly.

“It’s not impossible for kids to get cards but the buying experience has gotten really ugly,” Innes said. “As a father of three kids who are all into Pokémon, it sucks.”

Production volume does not guarantee availability at the exact product, shop and hour a child needs, particularly when elite boxes attract the most immediate competition.

Takeaway: The bottleneck is not annual production; it is timed supply and demand for elite products.

What can parents do?

Frustrated parents increasingly seek advice in Reddit threads and Facebook groups about buying cards for their children. Innes recommended three routes for buying singles, plus a separate option for children who want to play.

• Buy singles from a UK card shop.
• Use a singles marketplace such as Cardmarket.
• Choose top-rated sellers on eBay UK.
• Attend a prerelease or league event at a game shop. These typically cost £25-£30 and usually provide guaranteed cards and an opportunity to play.

For families, singles reduce competition with box buyers, while prerelease and league visits add guaranteed cards and a chance to play with the child afterward.

Takeaway: Top-rated sellers and prerelease events offer more practical routes than overnight queues for scarce boxes.

Can local clubs keep children playing?

Daniel Garnett owns the Hull Pops Gaming Centre in Hessle, East Yorkshire. He runs a free kids’ club and reserves product for regular players. “We teach kids all about the Pokémon game, about the cards and how to play. We also have a qualified Pokémon judge that helps out,” he said.

“Sadly, however, about a month ago, we had lots of parents bring their kids in purely to buy product, and had no intention of playing or staying for the session,” Garnett said.

The club’s free teaching and regular-player stock serve as a counterweight, but that purpose is weakened when adults enter solely to secure products and leave.

Takeaway: The next test is whether shops and clubs can keep scarce cards with children who use them to play, rather than with adults focused only on buying products.