The Pokémon Company hits back at scalpers by mass reprinting rare card, decreasing its value

Collecting Pokémon cards can be a very lucrative business, especially with scalpers clambering to pick up the latest rare additions to sell for egregious prices leaving genuine players in the dust.

One such item is the Pikachu card inspired by historic artist Van Gogh which was previously available to those in attendance at the Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands in 2023. Well, as reported by VGC (via PokeBeach), that very card is being reprinted which will inevitably devalue the cards acquired by greedy scalpers last year.

Check our interview with the voice of Ash, Veronica Taylor below!

The rare Pikachu card ‘Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat’ was given away for free to Pokémon fans who were able to attend the special event at the Van Gogh Museum on a specific day. Sadly, massive hordes gathered to claim the freebie to later sell for hundreds of pounds resulting in genuine fans missing out. The cards were made available for a limited time at a later date with qualifying purchases via The Pokémon Center online shop. But as you can imagine, those quantities didn't last long either.

On the PokeBeach podcast, it was speculated that independent stores may have sold the rare Pikachu card under the table as illegitimate sales. However, it's reported that the reprinted cards will now be issued with qualifying purchases of at least €29.99 at select major retail stores in the Netherlands.

The retail stores that are expected to run the ‘Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat’ promotion which begins on 10 February 2024 are Bruna, Game Mania, Intertoys, Media Markt, Primera, Smyths Toys Superstores and Top1Toys.

At this time, it’s not known how many cards each store will be issued, but it will be worth keeping ears to the ground if you want to beat the greedy scalpers to the punch. It is speculated, that around 100,000 ‘Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat’ cards will be distributed to retail stores in the Netherlands.

It’s unclear as to whether the ‘Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat’ card will be available officially at select retailers outside of the Netherlands, but we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed for that to happen.