Pokémon just banned graded cards

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Well, it seems like Pokémon is banning the sale of graded cards and some Pokémon Center goods at their official events. What is going on? Hey, Skater X.

[00:00:08]Uh, let's chat about this. So, this is coming from PokéBeach, one of the best resources for Pokémon TCG. Uh, there's a whole article there and we'll kind of look at that in a moment, but uh, TPCi has banned sales of graded slabs and Pokémon Center products at events. Now, this does only apply to official Pokémon events, like, you know, their World Championships, uh, their Los Angeles Regionals and and other stuff. Uh, I'm saying Los Angeles Regionals cuz that was here the other week, but uh, you know, Regionals and NAIC, uh, Worlds, all that stuff. If you don't know, official tournaments and events put on by Pokémon, they obviously have uh, the main event that are the competitions, obviously, for VGC, for TCG, Go, and Unite, and so on and so on. But, at these, they do allow other vendors to set up their booths and they have a little area for different vendors where they'll be selling stuff, you know, Pokémon cards, Pokémon card products, and just other related Pokémon products.

[00:00:58]And it's always kind of fun to go there and uh, to, you know, get some stuff.

[00:01:03]These are obviously vendors that are not affiliated with Pokémon. They're their own stuff. They're like, you know, card stores or online card stores or uh, game collectible stores. And I think that they're a really important thing to have at these events because, you know, while you do have your official stuff, right?

[00:01:17]The uh, official merchandise that you'll be able to get from Pokémon and their official Pokémon Center uh, pop-up that's set up for stuff like Worlds. Um, having these is really helpful. Mostly because probably one of the most important things that they'll sell at these vendor booths are single cards, which are very useful to have for players. Say if a player is uh, attending the event, you know, the TCG event, and uh, maybe they forgot to bring a card, maybe one of their cards gets lost or damaged, maybe they need to uh, I don't know. They need to pick up their entire deck out there, then they're able to do that. It is a very helpful. I mean, you know, let's say, what what was it? Um, uh, what's what's the card? It's not Poké Pad. It's one of the newer trainer cards that is extremely useful.

[00:01:58]They had it in spades at some of the vendor booths here. Though they'll also sell stuff like plushes and elite trainer boxes and sealed stuff. And you know, when I was at Los Angeles regionals the other week, I was kind of wondering like why I don't want to say why they were allowed to sell some sealed products at well above retail price because you know, considering the situation that's going on here. But I think I would have liked that. I know that with Yu-Gi-Oh's events um or at least for a while they did have a cap on individual cards. I believe it was you could not price an individual card over $100. I think that was the case. I may be wrong and I'm not I'm not super up to date with Yu-Gi-Oh events.

[00:02:35]But there are certain limits that you do need to put when you are hosting an actual event here. And so the banning of slabs graded slabs is understandable.

[00:02:44]You know, I I get that people want to grade their cards and just kind of have it there. But the fact of the matter is that it's really incentivized this whole culture of making Pokémon investment. Only buying cards, only flipping them, grading them and you know, encouraging PSA specifically probably when there are many other grading stuff. By the way, PSA ain't doing too hot as of late.

[00:03:07]Well, you know, probably probably for a while now. Dude, what is this?

[00:03:13]What were they doing? Anyway, that's the tweet from Rime Style. But point is Pokémon Center products as well. That's also kind of understandable. Though apparently the actual article it does go into Japanese specific Pokémon Center products which is a little sad because one thing I did like is that a lot of these vendors did have Japanese products which they do not sell on the international Pokémon Center websites for some reason. I was able to get I know we're making a lot noise. But I was able to get these sleeves. Did we get that? We got some good reflection. But these are Ares sleeves. Ooh, they're beautiful. I love them.

[00:03:44]These were only in Japan. They did not sell these elsewhere outside. And so you have to go through some other source.

[00:03:50]And uh having them at Worlds was very useful, but at the same time, it does make sense um if it was like just Pokémon Center in general stuff. So, here we are on the PokéBeach website.

[00:04:00]Here's the full article. Highly recommend you read it, but um it is uh going over some of the information, and yes, uh a lot of it was uh mostly uh like Japanese products or so. Uh here we are. This important line here, "We've also learned that vendors are barred from selling items over $1,000 or most products from Japanese Pokémon Center, including plush and TCG items." This restriction means high-end chase cards, such as Umbreon EX, can no longer be sold at events.

[00:04:25]Again, they want to discourage this investor bro thing that's going on with uh the Pokémon hobby. Uh though again, I think that's an interesting casualty of the Japanese Pokémon Center. Um I wonder if it's going to be, you know, Pokémon Center in general because I think that's also a thing of like uh you know, Pokémon Center has those uh exclusive Elite Trainer Boxes. I think it's a good idea if they discourage selling of those because a good amount of people will get into the queue on Pokémon Center, buy those when they can, or uh and then just turn around and resell them for however much the the market price is, right?

[00:04:57]Which is just it's just the thing I hate right now about the hobby just in general.

[00:05:02]>> [music] >> Um So, so I think that that's really important. And again, just that they really want to control their products as well, obviously. Which is understandable cuz if there's stuff that's on the Pokémon Center, you should be able to buy it from the Pokémon Center freely when you want uh uh stock permitting.

[00:05:20]And uh for the price that they set, right? That Pokémon sets. So, I think that that's the understandable one. Again, you know, I I think that maybe they just need to fix the thing of like, "Okay, bring the Japanese products stateside, please."

[00:05:32]>> [laughter] >> Uh but again, you know, over $1,000 putting a cap That's a big cap still um cuz I I know some cards get over $100. I have some cards that are worth I did not pay over $100 for any single card, but I have some that happen to be worth, you you 200 or [music] so.

[00:05:47]Uh so, I the thousand makes sense, but it's just crazy just the fact that like there are some cards that uh do have market values of that much.

[00:05:55]Uh you know, very interesting, too, I will say. Uh it's mentioned later on in this article, right? Uh let's see. "At last year's Worlds, it did not escape notice that PSA's booth was originally supposed to be set up in the vendor area on the main floor. However, shortly before the event began, it was moved out of sight to a corner on the of the second floor." "Clearly, Pokémon officials, perhaps at the request of the Japanese grading companies, did not want grading companies featured at their event." That's what I was going to say.

[00:06:19]That was a big thing. There was a PSA booth at Worlds in uh 2025. And [music] I did notice that it was away. Um it was on the second floor. I remember it being in a completely different building.

[00:06:32]Um yeah, in a completely different building, like set up basically underneath the escalator uh on the section where actually, you know, weirdly enough, in this building here, where you where you go to pick up your badge. So, you know, people would see it maybe on the first day when they're there picking up their badge, but obviously after you do that, you're going to go about and walk around and explore and do whatever else, meet up with whoever you want. And uh that's not to say that the PSA booth was um you know, not attended. Obviously, it was. But just the fact that just the fact that apparently it was moved uh right before the event is very interesting. Very, very interesting. So, uh I I would not be surprised if this year at Worlds, PSA does not have an official booth there. Which um again, I I I understand. I understand wanting to get your cards graded, authenticated, and so on. If you're a collector, I will understand wanting to protect them and so on. However, the way that the hobby has become, it just really incentivizes, okay, here it is. Here is this card. It has a number associated with it. Uh the value is not changing or not value the the um quality of the card is not changing, so the value would can go up or down. And so, now it is an asset that you can then buy and sell and resell. Which I think is not necessarily a good thing. I you know, I'm not against selling cards that you happen to have to get some money.

[00:07:47]I'm you know, about to uh sell some of my personal cards because I need I need the money. They increased my rent.

[00:07:54]Which by the way, if you're enjoying the videos on this channel, uh leave a like, comment, and check out some of the other videos so we can reach monetization.

[00:08:00]Anyway, um Yeah, just just the fact that that's it.

[00:08:05]I think this one this section is extremely interesting. At a recent card show, I spoke to an enterprising 11-year-old Rob D who had taken over an abandoned vendor booth to sell cards. He told me he'd been vending for the last year and only bought product from Pokémon vending machines at MSRP. When I asked if he played the Scarlet and Violet games, he said no. He also said he never watched the TV show.

[00:08:28]Incredible. Incredible. 11-year-olds are not even playing Pokémon, not even watching Pokémon. They're just learning from the from uh I don't I hesitate to call them YouTubers who are, you know, bringing up the whole like, all right, this is Pokémon, it's a business, it's an investment, you're going to make money, and so on and so on. It's like, I don't know, what are we doing? What are we doing here? Again, I understand I understand the uh need or the want to want to resell your stuff. I understand the idea of keeping value. Uh you know, all all my Pokémon collectibles, I understand that they have value attached to them and should I ever need the money, then I can sell them and make more money than I had spent on them, then that's at least comforting. But I think that that goes for any physical thing, any collectible thing is is that the main value it has is the enjoyment that it gives you. The main value it has is, you know, how happy it makes you and the value that you place on it. However, when time comes, if you do not need it anymore and you decide that you want what it is worth, that's fine.

[00:09:32]However, there's a culture around Pokémon TCG, uh obviously, that going into treat it like an asset.

[00:09:39]Again, you know, this kid uh never having played the video games, never watching the TV show, uh the value that this card has to him is immediately tied to the market value, or immediately tied to what somebody else would pay for it, or immediately tied to, you know, him uh spending MSRP and then selling it for market value immediately after that, like What? Yeah, the vending machines were a big mistake. The Pokémon vending machines were a big mistake. Dude, I should talk about those sometime.

[00:10:07]I should talk about the vending machines sometime.

[00:10:09]But, uh yeah, it's uh it's just interesting.

[00:10:12]Again, great article, should read the whole thing.

[00:10:14]But, uh I don't know, man. Reactions to this post are pretty interesting. Uh obviously, we got Joe Merrick chiming in here, uh saying Pokémon's doing a thing, which by the way, I think they are. Uh again, this is not discouraging completely the whole idea of grading cards. You can still do that, and obviously, this is only at official Pokémon events, right? Because that's the thing that Pokémon themselves can control. And again, probably coming from uh the bigger compa- the bigger form of it, the Japanese side, to say like, "Hey, listen, we don't like this happening. We don't like this culture uh uh coming into our hobby. Let's change things." Uh again, obviously, at whatever card show you're going to, you can still sell your slabs, you can still uh sell Pokémon Center stuff. So, it's not going to uh stop the problem completely, but it is going to at least separate it from the uh vibe that Pokémon wants to set up, the uh idea, the visuals, the identity that Pokémon wants for their uh for their company, which um in this light, in this area, is a good thing. I have a few other things to say about Pokémon and the stuff they do.

[00:11:19]But, you know, in terms of this, in terms of uh potentially encouraging the resellers and so on. And like, here's the thing. I understand having um exclusive merch. I think that's a fine thing. I think it's really nice. I love my little Pikachu from Anaheim uh World Championships that has this little letterman jacket because it's going to give me so many memories because of the fun that I had the event because I just really like the style and because it's very important to me as somebody from Southern California who basically lives in Anaheim every other week or so, right?

[00:11:49]Um though the idea of like again just treating everything like an asset treating everything like something that you can resell. That that's the idea that Pokémon wants to get away from and I think that definitely they can mitigate things a little bit better in terms of how they're supplying the product and in terms of cracking down on some more aspects as well and just I think that maybe they should kind of cut back on some exclusive merchandise.

[00:12:14]Again, a little plush for World Championships fine. Some playmats for the events fine.

[00:12:20]Maybe you can kind of limit some of those things as well.

[00:12:23]We talked about the Target one. I think the Target one was another was another mistake entirely.

[00:12:29]And I think mainly most of the negative stuff that we're seeing about this is most of the like the Japanese stuff, right? Cuz I think that was the important thing is is that there's a lot of stuff that Pokémon can do to really really change some of the stuff. Like I said, sell some of those Japanese merchandise on international Pokémon Center, please. That would be a big help.

[00:12:53]Also, you know, [music] make sure product is a little more available.

[00:12:57]I'm I'm interested to see. The the other thing I did bring up at the beginning is that you know, Elite Trainer Boxes making sure that those are sold for retail because um if a vendor is an actual vendor, they should be getting these from a supplier, right?

[00:13:15]And they should be able to order the what is it? The the product vendors, right? The ones that give I don't know entirely how all of this works, but hypothetically if you have Elite Trainer Box and you're selling it, you should have got it for a lower price already from the distributors and then so then you could sell it on for the price that it's supposed to be rather than like, you know, I don't know, $200, $300 for an Elite Trainer Box. So, I think that there are some more If anything, I think there are some more restrictions that they should put in place. Right?

[00:13:45]Again, it doesn't completely get rid of all of them, but it when you are controlling your event, you can do and say whatever you want and I think that Pokémon is right to step in and to put these limitations here for their own events. Again, whatever other card show not run by Pokémon, you're free to do whatever.

[00:14:06]So, I think that's just about all I got to say for this one here.

[00:14:09]You know, fun little fun little topic.

[00:14:12]Let me know what you think in the comments below.

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