New York, New York, the city so nice they named it twice. Mewtwo, the Pokémon so mean they named it “two.” Earlier this month they collided as part of a promotional event for Pokémon Go’s 10th anniversary, with invited players gathering in Times Square. Those attendees were rewarded with a rare Mewtwo. In the weeks since, predictably, this “Times Square Mewtwo” has begun popping up in eBay listings, with some asking prices as high as $10,000.
To celebrate the massive mobile game’s 10th anniversary, Scopely assigned community ambassadors through New York to invite some 2,000 players to an exclusive event. Only alerted to the location the evening of, the Pokémon Go players gathered in Times Square to participate in a raid and battle Mewtwo, recreating the game’s announcement trailer. While the invitation-only route was to avoid overcrowding, what burned international players was how these VIPs were rewarded. The Mewtwo attendees could capture not only featured an exclusive Times Square background, but boasted rare, perfect “Hundo” stats.
Critics of the event felt the raid and reward were counterintuitive to the game’s global spirit, as in-person community events rarely yielded such a powerful pocket monster. On top of which, as inevitable with anything Pokémon, the Times Square Mewtwo is already being scalped around the internet.
@RaspberryWeiner @scopely @PokemonGoApp I am LegoMasterBuild. I was not aware of any rules and regulations as far as reselling Pokémon online. I was one of the lucky few who got to experience the 10 year celebration in person. It was an amazing experience pic.twitter.com/irycWoZRFC
— Brendan Blyth (@bjb1226) July 16, 2026
eBay is being flooded with auction listings of the exclusive Manhattan Mewtwo. Most hovering in the $5,000 range, though some are bold enough to double the asking price. While this technically breaches Pokémon Go’s terms of service, those can be easy to ignore when you can wipe away a month or two of rent. One reseller, Brendan “LegoMasterBuild” Blyth confessed to posting one of the listings and apologized after removing it from sale. “I’m going to say sorry about the whole Mewtwo eBay listing,” says Blyth. “I went in-person. It was a great experience. Scopely, Pokémon Go, they ran the event perfectly. It was amazing. I wish everyone was able to participate.”
It joins the outright frenzy surrounding all things Pokémon, as collectors and resellers swarm, scam and steal any card, toy or collectible in Pikachu’s image. These weren’t the conditions when Pokémon Go launched in 2016, but the fever pitch has been intensifying since COVID, as influencers and collectors have channeled childhood things into speculative assets. Much has changed for the game’s creator Niantic as well, who failed to recreate the successful formula elsewhere, even with Harry Potter, and were sold to Scopely last year. Fans are enraged that the milestone anniversary kicked off by favoring select VIPs, but I like to think harvesting location data for military drones might be more scandalous than Mewtwo’s visit to Bubba Gump Shrimp.