@McDonalds @ Pokemon I hope you do some sort of inventory management for your promo Pokémon cards, as some of your inventory is sold in sealed boxes, which means they do not even reach your stores. Although the same thing happened with Tim Horton̵
7;s Hockey as well. Retail $ 1.99 pic.twitter.com/kX8qZyRX2V– redphoenixsportscards (@redphoenixcards) February 9, 2021
Limited edition packages, sold at select McDonald’s restaurants as part of the franchise’s landmark birthday, will be included as part of McDonald’s Happy Meals. According to the Pokémon website’s official announcement, Happy Meal buyers will receive a 25-year anniversary trading package containing four exclusive cards. There are 50 cards for fans to collect – all 24 starting Pokemon and Pikachu in standard and foil versions – but like other Pokemon trading card packs, the ones you get are completely random. Buying McDonald’s Happy Meals should be the only way to collect them all, but scalpers circumvent this via a loophole that allows them to purchase the packages in bulk.
According to Kotaku, it seems that each McDonalds restaurant has a different policy for how these packages are sold, which makes it possible for scalps to obtain them relatively easily. Some people buy Happy Meals en masse to pick up the packages before throwing away the food. Others, meanwhile, simply show up at McDonald’s and ask to buy whole boxes, or show up at 5am so they can buy packages before anyone else.Naturally, angry parents and other business card fans have taken to Twitter to express their dismay at how the packages are sold. There is obviously only a certain amount of stock to go around, and children and other avid Pokemon fans are missing – or even being priced – to get the cards for themselves.
Some Twitter users, including @ The3Composer, have claimed that some McDonald’s outlets limit people to five packages at a time, but even these limits are only put in place after a scalp buys over 450 packages in one visit.
My mom works at a McDonalds in South Indiana, and her store is limited to selling only 5 packages per person per day, because someone bought 3 bags (around 450 ~ packages) from another store, which was all they had
– Jake Jacobson (@ Th3Composer) February 9, 2021
Many Twitter users have demanded that McDonalds implement a broad limit on how many packages a person can buy, but so far their efforts have fallen on deaf ears. We have contacted McDonald’s for comment.
In other “extremely expensive Pokémon cards” news, a box of original Pokemon TCG boost packs recently sold for $ 400,000, and rapper Logic bought a single shiny Charizard for over $ 200,000 last year.
Tom Power is a British-based freelance writer. Follow him on Twitter.
