McDonald’s Pokémon Cards Sell Because Of Scalpers

The Scalpers take advantage of a McDonald’s loophole to grab packs of Pokemon 25th Anniversary Trading Cards in Happy Meals, then sell them online for exorbitant prices, leaving fans disappointed McDonald’s customers (as reported by Kotaku and Polygon ) took to social media to vent their fury at the practice, which has seen boxes of Pokémon cards posted on websites, such as eBay, for eye treatment fees of up to $ 1,500.

@McDonalds @ Pokémon Hopefully you will do some form of inventory control for your promotional Pokemon cards, as some of your stock is sold in sealed boxes, which means they don’t even make it to your stores. same thing happened with Tim Hortons Hockey. Retail $ 1.99 pic.twitter.com/kX8qZyRX2V

– redphoenix sports cards (@redphoenixcards) February 9, 2021

Have you played Pokemon Trading Card Game?

YESNO

The limited edition packs, which are sold at select McDonald’s restaurants as part of the franchise’s historic anniversary, are said to be part of McDonald’s Happy Meals. According to the official Pokemon website announcement, Happy Meal buyers will receive a 25th Anniversary Trading Card Pack that contains four exclusive cards. There are 50 collectible cards for fans – all 24 starting Pokémon and Pikachu in standard and foil versions – but, like other Pokemon Trading Card Packs, the ones you get are entirely random. Buying McDonald’s Happy Meals should be the only way to collect them all, but the scalpers get around this, via a loophole, which allows them to buy the packs in bulk.

According to Kotaku, each McDonald’s restaurant appears to have a different policy on how these packs are sold, making it easy for scalpers to get their hands on them. Some people buy Happy Meals en masse to get the packages before throwing the food away. Others, meanwhile, simply show up at McDonald’s and ask to buy whole boxes, or arrive at 5 a.m. so they can buy packs before everyone else.

Understandably, angry parents and other collectable card fans took to Twitter to express their dismay at the packs being sold. Obviously, there’s only a certain amount of stock to go, and kids and other ardent Pokémon fans lack – or even come at a price – to acquire the cards for themselves.

Some Twitter users, including @ The3Composer, claimed that some McDonald’s outlets limited people to five packs at a time, but even those limits were only put in place after a scalper bought more than 450 packs in a single visit.

My mom works at a McDonalds in South Indiana, and her store only sells 5 packs per person per day, because someone bought 3 cases (about 450 ~ packs) from another store in the area, which was all he had.

– Jake Jacobson (@ Th3Composer) February 9, 2021

Many Twitter users have demanded that McDonald’s implement a company-wide limit on the number of packs a person can buy, but so far their efforts have remained on the ears of a deaf one. We have contacted McDonald’s for comment.

In other news on “ Extremely Expensive Pokemon Cards, ” a box of original Pokemon TCG boosters recently sold for $ 400,000, and Rapper Logic bought a single Shiny Charizard for over $ 200,000. last year.

Tom Power is a UK based freelance writer. Follow him on Twitter.