The Pokémon Company has issued a statement from the official Pokémon TCG Twitter account, promising a reprint for its upcoming set Prismatic Evolutions, which players and collectors alike have been scrambling to secure preorders for in the weeks leading up to the set’s official launch on January 17.
Pokémon posted a tweet on Wednesday which makes it clear the company is aware of the issue. “We are actively working to print more of the impacted Pokémon TCG products as quickly as possible and at maximum capacity,” it states. “Reprinted products are expected to be available at participating retailers as soon as possible.”
The highly desirable newest Pokémon set Prismatic Evolutions is widely sold out online, and it’s proven very difficult for your average collector or kid interested in the set to get hold of preorders for the cards. Launch day tomorrow promises to be a madcap Black Friday-style scramble.
Meanwhile, dozens of Elite Trainer Boxes are selling on the secondary market for about $400 a pop, and images shared online of shoppers emptying a store’s entire early stock, or whole rooms lined with hundreds of the boxes – their owners looking on proudly as if at the carcass of a large animal they’ve just shot – make it pretty clear what’s happening. The scalpers are out in full force on this one.
Will a reprint fix the issue? It obviously depends on how soon it comes, and how much product is put into circulation. Many fans will be hoping the set gets reprinted into the ground, leaving scalpers holding the bag. It’d be nice if market prices dropped to less ridiculous levels, but we’re not going to get our hopes up just yet.
For starters, this seems to be a pretty boilerplate statement from Pokémon, matching past communications about reprints almost word for word. That doesn’t prove anything by itself, of course, but it does suggest the company doesn’t see Prismatic Evolutions as a particularly ‘special case’, as it didn’t take the time to craft a unique response.
And as we’ve seen with Scarlet & Violet 151, reprints don’t automatically solve problems with a set’s scarcity and resell value – especially if demand is very high. The biggest 151 cards have actually been rising in price in recent months, despite the set seeing heavy reprints.
Scalpers and their bots are set up to purchase new stock as soon as it shows up, so unless a critical mass of product comes in, intentionally designed to mess with scalpers, the next reprint may not have much impact.
It seems like the Pokémon TCG is in a feedback loop right now. A combination of the upcoming Eevee set and influx of interest from Pokémon Pocket started the ball rolling around Surging Sparks and, as excitement and prices rose, more and more people jumped on the bandwagon, buying into the hype and hoping to make some cash. It’s led to a big shift in the Pokémon community, and we’ve even seen stores refuse to stock Prismatic Evolutions due to the attitudes of new customers.
Will the bubble burst, or is Pokémon going to continue from strength to strength throughout 2025? Only time will tell, but we can say for sure it’s going to be an interesting year for the Pokémon card hobby.
And we’ll be here to report on all of it, of course. For some interesting reading right now, I recommend our 50+ entry guide to the most expensive Pokémon cards ever sold. You might also enjoy our list of the best Pokémon packs to buy that aren’t ludicrously hard to locate.
Source: Wargamer
