More retailers are getting into the Pokémon TCG price gouging game. After GameStop started hiking its prices for new product to the same territory as online scalpers, Polygon now brings word that Target is inflating the cost of some boxes of Pokémon cards, presumably to take advantage of their popularity and scarcity.
Scalpers strip Pokémon stock both in brick-and-mortar stores and online for MSRP, and then resell it for vastly inflated sums to the customers who can no longer find it for themselves. Retailers, it seems, have realized this is a missed opportunity, and are increasingly cutting out the middle-man and just increasing the prices themselves. Target now appears to join their number, tacking on an extra couple of bucks to the most popular products seemingly to milk unaware customers desperate to find anywhere that has anything to sell.
The increasingly unscrupulous GameStop’s gouging is by far the most egregious example we’ve seen of retailers paying the same wholesale price for Pokémon product, but then ludicrously hiking the cost for customers simply because there’s so much fevered demand for the product. Seeing Target getting in on the action, albeit with much more modest—if equally questionable—increases, seems to suggest the whole industry has gone cowboy.
Polygon reports that Target’s price increases were introduced June 26 and have remained in place since, and obviously introduced with no warning or explanation to customers. Reporter Patricia Hernandez (that name seems oddly familiar) has been covering Target’s recent fight against scalpers, including breaking seals on products before they leave the store, and even requiring ID, which only makes this new move all the more galling. Instead of fighting against scalpers to protect legitimate customers, Target is just becoming the scalper itself and screwing over its legitimate customers.
It’s worth noting that Target’s prices were already higher than they ought to be, with something like the Ascended Heroes Booster Bundle (a box of six packs) having an MSRP of $26.94, previously being sold at $29.99, and now that’s gone up to $31.99. It’s now almost 20 percent higher than it should be. The same has happened to booster bundles from a number of other popular sets.
We’ve reached out to Target to ask why these price increases are happening, and will update the article should the company let us know.
Capitalism, baby.