Pokemon Scalpers Swamp Van Gogh Museum, Forcing Changes to Museum’s Purchase Policy

By: Water Pokémon Master · Posted Posted onSep 28, 2023 at 12:42 PM · 32 Comments

The Pokemon and Van Gogh museum collaboration opened yesterday in Amsterdam.

But according to multiple fans on social media, the museum’s gift shop was overrun by scalpers buying up hoards of the museum’s exclusive Pokemon merchandise.

One attendee, Nathan Whincup, summed up the sentiments of many other visitors, stating, “The @vangoghmuseum Pokemon exhibit is lovely. Unfortunately it’s marred by scalpers hoarding multiple promo cards and picking the gift shop clean, and poor management of all of the above.”

Video circulating on social media depicts a chaotic scene as people scramble to grab merchandise from the gift shop:

A quick perusal of auction websites shows the museum’s Pokemon merchandise with outrageous markups. The “Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat” promo card is being listed for $300 to $400 each, even though the Pokemon Center will release the same promo soon. Some attendees somehow managed to get their hands on an unexplainable amount of them, even though each ticket holder can only receive one card, and only after completing a “Pokemon Adventures” activity.

Strangely, the museum’s gift shop did not initially implement a purchase limit. However, we’ve learned that starting today they will only allow one of each unique item to be purchased by each ticket holder.

This policy will also apply to their online shop, though it’s unclear how they’ll enforce it. Their Pokemon merchandise has yet to be listed. It was originally expected to go live today.

In related news, last weekend I reported on my Twitter that the distributor at my local Target was jumped by a scalper: