Pokémon TCG Scalpers Are About To Get Angrier After New Policy

Published Sep 28, 2026, 5:17 PM EDT Nicholas Becher is a gaming journalist with an MFA in Creative Writing from FAU. With extensive experience playing video games, he covers all forms of gaming content at Screen Rant, from breaking news to the latest fan theories. Most-played games range from Clair Obscur to Civ to Elden Ring to Halo 2 and beyond. Sign in to your ScreenRant account Pokémon TCG's highly anticipated 30th Celebration set officially launched earlier this month, but the landmark release has once again been overshadowed by one of the hobby's biggest ongoing problems: scalpers. High demand has resulted in long lines and rapidly disappearing inventory, with fans reporting stores being cleaned out shortly after restocks despite ongoing efforts to keep scalpers at bay. Retailers and The Pokémon Company have increasingly fought back in recent months and even appeared poised to take scalpers head-on with the 30th Celebration launch. Pokémon Center has employed virtual queues and purchase limits, while suspected bot orders were reportedly canceled ahead of launch. Target has also imposed strict per-customer limits at many locations, with some stores restricting shoppers to one or two of each product. Those measures, combined with the set's unusually generous pull rates, have seemingly burned some would-be resellers, with scalpers reportedly frustrated that their attempts to profit from the anniversary release haven't gone according to plan. And it appears Target is ready to kick things up a notch with a new policy that will make scalping even more difficult (via X). Target could soon have another weapon in its ongoing fight against Pokémon TCG scalpers, with evidence suggesting the retailer is preparing a lottery-style purchasing system for hot-button releases such as the 30th Celebration set. The feature has not yet been officially announced by Target, but information reportedly discovered in the retailer's website backend matches the image shared by X user Mohak, seen below. Under the potential system, customers would enter a drawing with one entry permitted per account and no payment required upfront. Buyers would then be selected at random and notified after the drawing, giving successful entrants 24 hours to complete their purchase. If inventory remains available, customers who were not initially selected could potentially receive another opportunity. In effect, Target would be moving away from the familiar first-come, first-served online drop where milliseconds can determine who actually gets a product. That could be particularly important for Pokémon TCG players/collectors. Automated checkout tools have long given scalpers an advantage during conventional restocks, with desirable products disappearing before an ordinary collector can reasonably navigate through the checkout process. Pokémon itself has acknowledged continuing availability problems caused by extraordinary demand and has responded with increased printing and virtual queues at Pokémon Center, while Walmart has already begun putting high-demand collectibles such as 30th Celebration products behind its own drawing system. Scalping has become one of the hobby's most persistent problems over the last several years. Limited-edition products in particular can vanish from retail almost immediately, appearing on secondary marketplaces at substantial markups and leaving collectors and especially younger fans either empty-handed or facing prices far above MSRP. The problem became serious enough that Target temporarily stopped selling trading cards in stores in 2021 following a physical confrontation, and retailers have since experimented with purchase limits, virtual queues, anti-reseller policies, and other restrictions. More recently, Mercari even temporarily prohibited listings of sealed 30th Celebration products in Japan in cooperation with The Pokémon Company (via PokéBeach). A drawing/lottery system potentially removes one of scalpers' biggest advantages: speed. A checkout bot cannot simply beat thousands of human shoppers to the purchase button if everyone enters the same randomized pool. It still would not make scalping disappear, however. So-called raffle bots and similar automation can be used to enter drawings across numerous accounts, meaning a determined reseller can potentially manufacture more chances than an ordinary buyer. Walmart's comparable system has already faced concerns about users entering through multiple accounts. Target would therefore need strong account, payment, address, and anti-bot safeguards for the one-entry rule to have real teeth. Even so, a lottery system could make buying Pokémon cards substantially fairer. It may not eliminate scalpers, but forcing them to compete in a randomized drawing rather than letting automated bots simply win the checkout race would at least take away one of their most powerful advantages.