EB Games Australia's Pokémon TCG bait-and-switch leaves fans paying above MSRP anyway

EB Games Australia — GameStop's local brand — ran a deliberate bait-and-switch on pre-orders for the Pokémon TCG 30th Anniversary Celebration set, and even after the "fix," customers are still being overcharged.

The chain initially listed the upcoming 30th Anniversary products at wildly inflated prices, framing it as an anti-scalper strategy. In an Instagram post attributed to EB Games MD Shane Stockwell, the company called the original prices "outrageous" by design, arguing that scalpers would be deterred while genuine fans would push through. Now EB says it's moving to a "next phase": reviewing pre-orders, filtering out buyers it deems ineligible, and notifying successful customers of a lower price. An Elite Trainer Box will be charged at $120 AUD (around $83 USD) instead of the inflated figure. The problem is that The Pokémon Company International hasn't announced official pricing for the 30th Anniversary set yet, and the standard MSRP for an ETB sits at $60 — meaning fans are still paying double. The Ultra Premium Collections are worse: previous UPCs have retailed at $120 USD through the Pokémon Center, but EB Games Australia's "corrected" price lands at $305 USD.

The Pokémon TCG has been in a sustained frenzy for years, with demand spiking around major releases and scalpers routinely clearing shelves to resell at multiples of retail. The 30th Anniversary set, due in September, is one of the most anticipated releases in the card game's history and has already triggered price-gouging controversies at other retailers in the US and elsewhere. EB Games is the dominant games retailer in Australia and New Zealand, operating under GameStop's corporate umbrella, which gives its pricing decisions outsized influence on the local market.

Rather than apologizing, EB's post praised customers who "trusted" the scheme and criticized those who reacted negatively to the stunt pricing — a move that has not gone over well with the community. Fans who couldn't afford or justify the fake inflated price were simply locked out of pre-ordering entirely, and those who did pre-order are still facing prices well above what any other market is paying. The review process for weeding out "ineligible" pre-orders also remains opaque, with no clear criteria published.