For the Third Time, TPCi Reiterates More Pokemon TCG Product On the Way

By: Water Pokémon Master · Posted Posted onMar 27, 2025 at 9:03 AM · 52 Comments

Ahead of this week’s release of Journey Together, TPCi has once again posted a statement echoing what they’ve already said twice this year: more Pokemon TCG product is currently being printed to address unusually high demand.

We’re aware that some fans are experiencing difficulties purchasing certain Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) products due to very high demand impacting availability. We understand this inconvenience can be disappointing for fans, and we are actively working to print more of the impacted Pokémon TCG products as quickly as possible and at maximum capacity to acknowledge this. Reprinted products are expected to be available at participating retailers as soon as possible.

For new Pokémon TCG expansions launching in the future, we are maximizing production to increase product availability upon release, and we will continue to reprint impacted products to replenish stock at participating retailers, including Pokémon Center, as soon as possible.

For Pokémon TCG product releases at Pokémon Center, we are committed to providing a smooth purchasing experience and employ technology that helps get products into the hands of fans first and foremost. Currently, Pokémon Center implements a virtual queue for certain products to help provide a more seamless purchasing process during periods of increased site traffic. We will continue to explore measures that help create the best possible experience for Pokémon Center customers.

We’d like to thank the community for their continued support and patience as we work to deliver more Pokémon TCG products to fans.

In the past TPCi has usually taken six to nine months to print more product, so we might see more Prismatic Evolutions by the summer or fall. Currently, what little stock that exists is being sold for much higher than MSRP.

In January I wrote an article on how demand for Prismatic Evolutions was much higher than supply, causing severe shortages to stores. Two weeks later, TPCi announced it promised to print more Prismatic Evolutions “as quickly as possible and at maximum capacity” due to “high demand.”

Earlier this week they also promised more Destined Rivals Elite Trainer Boxes would be available at the Pokemon Center later this year. The product sold out within an hour or two.

Last week Japan restocked some of their sets, including Terastal Festival ex.

Be patient, y’all! It takes time to print more product!

View thread (52 replies)
Frost said:
For the third time, I'm going to need more than words. We're entering month 6 of this and 2 million people were in queue for Destined Rivals preorders on Monday. Sorry this strongly worded letter isn't doing anything for me
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As I wrote in the article, it usually takes them six to nine months to print more product. The "for the third time" is my way of saying "be patient, peeps, they keep telling you they're on it!"
 
I wasn't mocking you WPM, I just don't trust their ability to actually solve their problems in any satisfying way. Remember when their solution to printing more Van Gogh Pikachu was sending 10 copies to local stores and it barely did anything?

We're about to enter the oft-mentioned "6-8 month" period since demand started spiking in early November, so I want to see something tangible soon, but after the amount of people in queue for Destined Rivals things seem even worse now.
 
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Yeah, I’ll believe it when I can see these products stay in stores and extend beyond ETB/Booster Bundle restocks. Print that Prismatic Evolutions Super-Premium Collection to the ground like you did with the 151 and Charizard ones and then keep doing that until the investors heck off.

Also, the big problem with this is that TPCi just doesn’t learn from its mistakes (almost every special set has had problems with stock. Remember when people scalped the Generations’ Mew and Celebi boxes? I sure do!) nor do they anticipate any sort of increased demand based on set contents (like with Surging Sparks) or related games being released (the current problem is partially due to TCG Pocket’s immense success).
Swolemander08 said:
Where have we heard this before, oh yeah that's right with PE
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And Celebrations, we can’t forget that disaster of a set’s timed releases.
 
"We’re aware that some fans are experiencing difficulties purchasing certain Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) products due to very high demand impacting availability."

Cool, they are pumping their product in their own statement. "Bro, it's totally due to massive demand for our cool cards, not because we're printing it low on purpose to fuel the FOMO".
 
Yaginku said:
"We’re aware that some fans are experiencing difficulties purchasing certain Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) products due to very high demand impacting availability."

Cool, they are pumping their product in their own statement. "Bro, it's totally due to massive demand for our cool cards, not because we're printing it low on purpose to fuel the FOMO".
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And your evidence that they're under printing is....?
 
I agree people should be more patient but that's always easier said than done.

Just by going off of some logic, if say 18% of all the cards ever made were printed a year ago then what exactly does TPC mean by printing more of whatever was impacted? They're going to print another 50% of each impacted set? 100% more by doubling it? What's stopping the same scalpers/botters/investors from just taking it all, all over again? These sets have rather difficult pull-rates so normal collectors are chasing after chase cards for a long time as well. If so many cards were printed in 2024 it's rather unbelievable that the demand wasn't met in the first place. That should've all been the products for the sets of 2025.

It just seems to me they're being rather vague just to take whatever heat off them they can. Their solution of throwing more product out at faster speeds is more like putting more band-aids on a severed limb. So... maybe if you want to be realistic, tamper your expectations. You may find products to still be scarce for the impacted sets come 6 - 9 months from now.
 
Frost said:
For the third time, I'm going to need more than words. We're entering month 6 of this and 2 million people were in queue for Destined Rivals preorders on Monday. Sorry this strongly worded letter isn't doing anything for me
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I keep hearing this 2 million people in the queue but what is that based on? There's no queue number in the source code.
 
Oh, and as far as bots are concerned I can only see two things stopping them: Legislation banning their usage or sites putting more stringent bot-blocking technology on their web stores.

And I don’t really see either happening. The former tends to happen every once in a while but the bills always die during the legislative process and the other is just game of cat-and-mouse that larger retailers can’t give a load of bull-dust about.
Yaginku said:
"We’re aware that some fans are experiencing difficulties purchasing certain Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) products due to very high demand impacting availability."

Cool, they are pumping their product in their own statement. "Bro, it's totally due to massive demand for our cool cards, not because we're printing it low on purpose to fuel the FOMO".
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Yep. It almost feels like someone from the TCG’s current chain-of-command (I’m inclined to think its all on the distributors but I wouldn’t rule out someone on TPCi’s payroll playing a part in it, especially with the pull rate of SIRs being altered mid-generation after short-term investors complained about how they’d lose value over the weeks and months following the first two SV-era sets) is stealing from WOTC’s early PTCG playbook. The only thing missing is price-fixing singles but that’s where the whole “investors buying out entire cards on TCGPlayer” bit comes into play.
tcgkauppa said:
I keep hearing this 2 million people in the queue but what is that based on? There's no queue number in the source code.
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People used the “Inspect Element” feature that’s found in most browsers and discovered that there was a “pos” value in the site data that would reset if you left the site or refreshed the page, actions that would reset said browser’s position in the queue as per the queue page’s warning text.
 
The Binder Guy said:
Oh, and as far as bots are concerned I can only see two things stopping them: Legislation banning their usage or sites putting more stringent bot-blocking technology on their web stores.

And I don’t really see either happening. The former tends to happen every once in a while but the bills always die during the legislative process and the other is just game of cat-and-mouse that larger retailers can’t give a load of bull-dust about.

Yep. It almost feels like someone from the TCG’s current chain-of-command (I’m inclined to think its all on the distributors but I wouldn’t rule out someone on TPCi’s payroll playing a part in it, especially with the pull rate of SIRs being altered mid-generation after short-term investors complained about how they’d lose value over the weeks and months following the first two SV-era sets) is stealing from WOTC’s early PTCG playbook. The only thing missing is price-fixing singles but that’s where the whole “investors buying out entire cards on TCGPlayer” bit comes into play.

People used the “Inspect Element” feature that’s found in most browsers and discovered that there was a “pos” value in the site data that would reset if you left the site or refreshed the page, actions that would reset said browser’s position in the queue as per the queue page’s warning text.
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Did you actually see that live? People love to throw inspect element around and how they "found" about "secrets" in the "code". That's a nice clickbait.

I'm a web developer myself and could not find this said "pos" which would change.

Like this one guy posted an image of an edited source code that he found the publish date for Destined Rivals. He had just edited the part of the page where product options are. Oh and of course the date ended up being wrong. Why would anyone publish a secret drop date in the source code? Only if it's meant to be found.
 
Yaginku said:
"We’re aware that some fans are experiencing difficulties purchasing certain Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) products due to very high demand impacting availability."

Cool, they are pumping their product in their own statement. "Bro, it's totally due to massive demand for our cool cards, not because we're printing it low on purpose to fuel the FOMO".
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People take there comments way too personally, why do people always think of some grand conspiracy pokemon is purposely under printing for 6 months to drive fomo when for 2-3 years it was stocked fine. Pokemon just has some beef with pokemon fans every 3 years lol
 
Which it sounds ironic, distribution channel says the inverse. We will be hit with a higher/strictier allocation, at the point some stores will be left out with nothing of the pre-orders, due the lack of printed product.
Allocation (cuts) are happening in English and both Spanish variants (Mexico and Spain)
 
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