Pokémon TCG 30th Anniversary Pre-Orders Are a Complete Disaster

The Pokémon TCG 30th Celebration set — marking the franchise's 30th anniversary — opened pre-orders today, and it went about as badly as you'd expect. Queue times hit six hours at peak, technical errors booted people back to waiting screens, CAPTCHAs misfired, and some customers who kept retrying got flagged as bots and banned from purchasing entirely.

The set itself is a big deal: it features fan favorites like Pikachu, Mew, Mewtwo, Eevee, Ditto, and Lucario, plus a staggering 30 different Pikachu variants. Products range from booster packs bundled with stickers, binders, or figurines to special foil promo cards and the highly sought-after Elite Trainer Box, priced at $60 through the official Pokémon Center site. Pre-orders are currently exclusive to that site — but the ETB sold out almost immediately, and copies are already listed on TCGPlayer for hundreds of dollars. By the end of the day, only a handful of lower-demand products remained available.

None of this is new territory for the Pokémon TCG. Scalping has been rampant for years, The Pokémon Company has shown little interest in ramping up print runs to meet demand, and retailers have started hiking prices on their own to cash in. Most stores now cap purchases per customer, and some — like Pokémon Center itself — have resorted to breaking seals at checkout to stop resellers from buying sealed product. It's a market that consistently fails the actual players and collectors it's supposed to serve, and anniversary sets with obvious hype attached only make the chaos worse.

For anyone still hoping to grab something from the 30th Celebration set, the outlook isn't great. The most desirable items are gone from the official store, and retail allocations will almost certainly get marked up when they arrive. The community is venting frustration online, with many pointing out — not for the first time — that kids who just want to play the game are the ones getting squeezed out.