I was a little kid when the Pokemon was first created.

It was a huge hit pretty much right away, and has demonstrated incredible staying power, growing to the most profitable media franchise in history – bigger than the MCU, bigger than Star Wars, bigger than the near-century old Mickey Mouse.

The main difference between then and now (aside from how many bajillion of these creatures there are canonically), is that when I was a kid, all that money was coming from, yanno, kids. I mean, more often their parents, but it was kids watching the cartoons, playing the video games, and trading the cards around. For fun.

Now, grown ups are in the game, and not all of them just for the nostalgia kick. The trading cards have become a massive speculative commodity, and we get videos like this one from TikTok user @leos.lucky.cards:

“Day 151 opening Pokemon packs until get the special edition Pikachu,” reads the caption.

But no matter how many kiosks he visits with his kid, they can’t find a single card. The scalpers have cleaned them out first.

They just keep striking out.

Eventually they do find something behind a counter, but it’s clearly not what they were looking for.

@leos.lucky.cards

Day 151: every kiosk in town is cleaned out 😭 kid’s mission is to beat the scalpers. #surgingsparks #mastercollection #pokemonpulls #openingpokemonpacks #pokemoncards #pikachu #pikapika #pikachufever #fyp #xyzbca #cute #dadsoftiktok #collection #scalpers #fypシ

♬ Soft Sunlight (Lofi) – Prodbyecho

Scalpers gonna scalp.

It’s not a solution, but maybe it’s PART of a solution?

Team Rocket’s blasting off again!

Times have changed, man.

And that’s the crux of the issue.

As magical as these things can be for kids, the point is to make money. The company themselves won’t put a stop to this while it’s profitable.

And as long as we keep rewarding scalper behavior by paying way too much for little pieces of cardboard, it’s gonna keep happening.

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