As A Result Of Recent Shortage Issues The Pokémon Company Takes Action By Producing 9 Billion Cards

Because of a recent shortage issue that has hit Pokemon cards over the recent years, their parent company, The Pokémon Company, has taken action by going into mass production so to drive costs down and provide sufficient supply

Created by the legend known as Satoshi Tajiri, the Pokemon franchise was created way back in 1996 with the infamous release of Pokemon: Red and Green (later released outside of Japan as Pokémon Red and Blue). From then on, just like a wildfire in California, Pokemon spread like crazy and developed into many different types of media. From TV Series to Toys, to Movies, Books, Comics, Music, a freaking Theme Park, and yes, of course, Trading Cards. The highest-selling Trading Card Game to be exact. With over 43.2 Billion cards sold according to google as of the time of writing, and yes that is Billion with a capital B. The Pokemon franchise has become a staple of modern culture.

For a company to reach that kind of number, they would need to be producing a staggering amount themselves to keep up with such obvious high demand. And per Polygon, The Pokemon Company has released data to the public which revealed the number of cards they have produced over the past year, 9 billion new cards to be exact. Now then, any rational person would see that number and think, "yowza, that is a lot of cards." I would agree with that statement, but then you look at the numbers produced before and you will be even more perplexed. Because the year before that they produced 3.7 billion cards, and you go another year backward than that, the average is always 1-2 billion.

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Now one might look at those numbers and see the staggering difference between the bunch and wonder, something has to be not normal in those calculations. But while you are doing that equation you have to keep in mind that nothing has been normal in the world for the past 2 years. And in the past 2 years, Pokemon TCG has taken the world by storm and went back into mainstream media in a way that no one expected. The demand for Pokemon cards was at a fever pitch and they were flying off the markets at a rate that no one expected. The Pokémon Company couldn't keep up, and you had some stores it has gotten so much for that they just washed their hands of them and said enough. Stores, like Target, had to pull Pokémon TCG from shelves following criminal actions like armed robbery.

"It's definitely a big deal and shows a reaction to the situation that happened back towards the end of 2020, in terms of the general consumer getting cards," Pokémon expert and Serebii webmaster Joe Merrick said. "Pokémon [trading cards] hit the mainstream again and people were buying up all the stock, not necessarily for the right reasons, and it was near impossible for people to get any of the new products. It was a nightmare for the general consumer."

As we already mentioned in the title tag, with The Pokemon Company mass-producing such a staggering amount of cards and in a way flooding the market, they did this to hopefully reduce the cost which in the past couple of years have risen to a staggering amount. A Japanese Promo "Illustrator" Holographic Pikachu sold for just under $1 million earlier this year. Charlie Hurlocker, a Pokémon expert and senior consultant for grading company CGC, said most online retailers were selling booster packs for more than 20% of the MSRP over the past few years. Increasing its manufacturing has already lowered the costs considerably. "There's an entire secondary market that's based around what any Pokémon card is worth," Hurlocker explained. "Pokémon cards peaked in 2021 at six cents a card — any card was worth six cents, just because there was so much demand. Now that price has catered. It's like one cent, and the two biggest [bulk] buyers aren't even purchasing." While the industry is still above normal levels in pricing and demand, Hurlocker notes things seem to be getting much closer to normal.

Source: Polygon