GameStop is facing widespread backlash over its aggressive pricing of the upcoming Pokémon 30th Anniversary Celebration trading card set, with markups exceeding 300 percent on some products — a practice that even has Nintendo’s attention.
In a recent shareholder meeting, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa acknowledged that the Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) market has been plagued by “high-priced reselling,” promising that Nintendo and The Pokémon Company would “take measures to respond to this issue.” As it turns out, some of the worst offenders may not be individual scalpers, but a major national retailer.
Price Gouging by Design
Engadget’s Sam Rutherford investigated GameStop’s pricing firsthand after receiving an email alert about in-store pre-orders for the 30th Anniversary Celebration set, the most anticipated Pokémon TCG release of the year. What he found was stunning.
A Pokémon 30th Anniversary Booster Bundle — containing six packs — was listed at GameStop for $90. The same product costs just under $27 at the Pokémon Center, working out to roughly $4.50 per pack. At GameStop’s price, each pack comes to $15 — a markup of over 200 percent.
It gets worse. Elite Trainer Boxes (ETBs), typically the most sought-after product in any specialty set, were priced at $170. The standard retail price for a specialty set ETB is $55, meaning GameStop is charging more than three times the expected cost.
Most egregiously, the 30th Anniversary Ultra-Premium Collection was listed at a staggering $600. By comparison, last year’s Mega Charizard Ultra-Premium Collection from the Phantasmal Flames set retailed for $120 directly from the Pokémon Center — a difference of nearly 400 percent.
Hidden Pricing, Rising Costs
Rutherford noted that GameStop conspicuously avoids listing prices for these items online or in-store, which appears to be a deliberate strategy allowing the company to raise prices without scrutiny. Redditors discovered that ETBs were initially listed at $130 when pre-orders first opened, but prices had already climbed to $170 by the time Rutherford visited his local store. A clerk confirmed the increase and suggested placing a reservation before prices rise further.
To make matters worse, GameStop requires customers to pay 50 percent of the pre-order cost upfront. Rutherford paid $85 — only half of what his reserved ETB will ultimately cost.
A Broken Market
GameStop’s pricing is happening against a broader backdrop of Pokémon card scarcity. New sets sell out almost instantly on the Pokémon Center website, often within minutes. Retailers like Walmart and Target struggle with bots that scoop up online restocks before human buyers can act, while physical stores have seen fights break out over inventory, and scalpers have stalked Pokémon card vending machines so aggressively that some have been removed entirely.
Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have taken steps to address the chaos, including account verification, made-to-order sales, and a massive new 1.27 million square-foot printing facility in North Carolina — expected to come online sometime in 2027 — that should significantly increase supply.
But as Rutherford points out, the most powerful tool may be one Furukawa himself mentioned: making agreements with market operators. All major retailers source their products through a handful of licensed distributors, meaning Nintendo and The Pokémon Company could pull inventory or refuse to restock retailers that engage in egregious price gouging.
Bottom Line
While some markup on high-demand products is expected — especially from smaller independent shops offering reservation services — GameStop’s pricing has pushed far beyond reasonable limits. With 200 to 400 percent markups on the 30th Anniversary Celebration set, the company is effectively acting as a scalper itself, making an already difficult market even harder for genuine fans and collectors.