Pokemon x Van Gogh Launch Was Essentially Ruined By Scalpers: Watch

If there is one thing you can count on in the Pokemon community, it is scalpers. Every fandom has its share of dedicated resellers, but the Pokemon franchise has been inundated with them in the past few years. From trading card drops to limited-edition merchandise, secondhand Pokemon sales are truly wild, and the IPs new collaboration with The Van Gogh Museum has gone viral because of its rowdy resellers.

As shared on X (Twitter), footage of the Pokemon x Van Gogh launch was hard to watch. The event kicked off in Amsterdam as the Vincent Van Gogh Museum welcomed Pikachu to its line up. The event promised to showcase special Pokemon artwork in the style of Van Gogh, and a slew of merchandise was also available on site. However, the thing resellers came for was a limited edition Pokemon card featuring the crossover art.

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As you can see here, the Pokemon x Van Gogh art features characters like Pikachu and Eevee in gorgeous color. These cards were announced ahead of the event, and many expected they’d be able to turn the cards for a profit. However, in order to get a card at the event, you could only acquire it with a purchase. And so, the race for special merchandise began.

The crowding for Pokemon goods began as soon as the Van Gogh event launched, leaving fans to hustle hard if they wanted a chance at buying something. The same issue also went down stateside as The Pokemon Center posted the Van Gogh Pikachu plush for sale. As soon as the link launched, the items were sold out, and a number of legitimate fans (including myself) were blocked from accessing the page due to an influx of suspicious traffic.

Obviously, Pokemon is no stranger to scalping. You can already find items from the Van Gogh event selling for anywhere from $50 USD to nearly $1,000 for a simple card. The madness left a number of dedicated fans empty-handed as you might expect. So these days, it is hard to imagine newcomers even wanting to get into the collector’s game.

What do you think about this latest Pokemon debacle? Let us know what you think in the comments below as well as on Twitter and Instagram. You can also hit me up @MeganPetersCB to share your take!