Every market has a point where the rules start to change slowly but surely. They don’t change all at once or in a big way, but they change in ways that make some people in the room sit up and take notice. The Pokémon Trading Card Game may have just reached that point. It happened last month at Nintendo’s 86th Annual General Shareholders Meeting in Tokyo, not at some trade show.
President of Nintendo Shuntaro Furukawa took questions about card shortages and scalping, issues that have been bothering collectors and parents for a long time. I didn’t hear a thunderclap when he spoke. It was clear enough to matter, though. The Pokémon Company wants to use Japan’s government-issued ID cards to verify accounts, try made-to-order sales, and make deals with stores that let people buy in bulk and resell them for a profit more strict. All together, it’s a clearer statement of policy than anything the company has said in public before.
Stop and think about the ID verification part for a moment; it’s the most interesting of the three. The idea behind it is simple: scalping won’t work if the company knows who is buying cards, how often, and how many. Still, it’s not clear if that can work on a global scale. Japan already has the My Number Card system in place to make this work there. Other countries don’t have the same systems in place. Still, it makes me wonder: if it works in Japan, how long before it’s used as a model in other places?
There are several interesting things about the idea of “made to order.” This makes me think that the company might be open to changing the supply side of things instead of just putting pressure on demand. It would be very different if the cards were made based on what buyers actually want, instead of a set print run that scalpers can predict and corner. For now, we don’t know much about the specifics, and the rollout might be smaller than it sounds. But the fact that it’s being talked about at all shows something.
At the same time, the market that these rules are meant to control has become even more extreme. PSA 10 Charizard from the 1999 Base Set was auctioned off by Fanatics Premier in May of this year and brought $504,000. In the same month, a 2026 Mega Dragonite ex graded BGS 10 and one of only four known examples sold for over $51,000 on Gold. These are no longer hobbyist numbers. This is a secondary market where a lot of money is at stake, and it has been feeding the culture of scalping that the company now seems determined to stop.
The timing isn’t a mistake. The Pokémon Trading Card Game is getting close to its 30th anniversary. To mark the occasion, a special set will be released all over the world on September 16, 2026. People usually want a lot of things when a big cultural event happens, which is perfect for scalpers. It seems like the company wants to avoid problems this time instead of responding to them after the fact.
It might be natural for American collectors to look at all of this from a safe distance and think it doesn’t apply to them yet. That’s likely a mistake. The Pokémon Company does business all over the world, and policy experiments that work well in Japan don’t usually stay there. If any of those things were to come to the U.S. market, they would greatly change the way people collect. These include rules that stop people from buying in bulk, systems that make sure people who make purchases are who they say they are, and supply models that change based on demand.
It’s another thing if this all works or not. Even though many people have tried to stop scaling, it has been surprisingly resistant. Something is different about this place, though. It feels more structural and less reactive. It’s possible that the 30-year anniversary will finally make the company do what it should have done years ago.
