Thirty years ago, catching Pokémon meant booting up a Game Boy. In 2026, apparently, it means getting to Target before sunrise and hoping the person in front of you doesn’t clean out the shelves.
The Pokémon Trading Card Game’s highly anticipated 30th Celebration expansion arrived worldwide on Sept. 16, and fans have been extremely normal about it.
By which we mean: not normal at all.
Videos of the launch have flooded social media, showing enormous lines of would-be buyers waiting outside retailers and, in some cases, rushing for the cards once doors opened. One video, posted by a Pokémon card collector on X, captured adult shoppers sprinting toward a display and frantically shoving merchandise into their baskets. “It’s like wild chickens during feeding times 😭😭,” the poster wrote.
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It’s the kind of scene that feels ripped from a Black Friday sale in the early 2000s, except everyone is here for Pikachu (and not Elmo).
The viral video is hardly an isolated incident. According to local news reports, fans and resellers lined up for hours outside Targets across the U.S., with some stores selling out shortly after opening. In San Antonio, customers camped outside Best Buy ahead of the launch, while retailers introduced increasingly elaborate rules to keep the drop under control, including purchase limits, staggered entry, and restrictions on when customers could begin lining up.
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Pokémon card collectors wait in line outside a Best Buy to purchase the new 30th Celebration set in Pasadena, California..
Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images
The chaos wasn’t limited to the U.S. Thousands of collectors reportedly queued overnight in the UK, where fans complained that products disappeared almost immediately after going on sale. In Sydney, video showed a massive line snaking through a shopping center ahead of the Australian launch.
So, why all the pandemonium?
Pokémon TCG: 30th Celebration is designed to make longtime collectors lose their minds. The anniversary expansion features foil cards throughout, the return of classic cards, new Mew and Mewtwo Futuristic Rare cards, and, perhaps most dangerously, 30 different Pikachu illustrations to collect.
Then there’s the resale market. Pokémon cards have become increasingly valuable collectibles, creating an ecosystem in which major releases attract not just fans but buyers hoping to flip scarce products for a profit. That rare Mew card? It’s worth roughly $3,800 on the resale market. Scalping has become an especially sore subject in the Pokémon community, and the 30th anniversary release is pouring gasoline on the fire.
Less than a day after release, ICv2 reported that 30th Celebration Elite Trainer Boxes with an MSRP of $49.99 had sold on eBay for more than $300. That helps explain why retailers are treating a Pokémon card release like a crowd-control exercise.
Of course, there’s something beautifully absurd about watching adults camp overnight, navigate virtual queues, and sprint through stores for a trading card game many of them first encountered as kids.
Thirty years later, it turns out you still gotta catch ’em all. You just might have to elbow your way to the display first.
