“Prismatic Evolutions” Demand Higher than Supply, Allocations Severely Cut to Local Stores
Your local Pokemon stores are in pain.
Despite TPCi printing a similar amount of Prismatic Evolutions as previous holiday sets, many local stores have been forced to limit or even cancel customer preorders.
By our polling, an average U.S. store is receiving less than 10% to 15% of what they requested to buy from distributors.
Why is the average store not getting enough Prismatic Evolutions product? I spoke to Ben DeGuire, owner of Player 1 Services in Maryland, one of the largest Pokemon stores in the U.S. His sentiments echoed what I heard from other stores.
“I think a large part of the issue is that stores who do not normally order Pokemon are requesting to buy this set from distributors. Think small book stores, tabletop game stores, and other TCG-adjacent stores.” DeGuire frequently speaks to Pokemon’s distributors.
“This means there is nowhere near enough product to go around. Distributors are still giving loyal Pokemon stores a higher percentage of the supply, such as my store. But the actual amount of product a store receives is diluted because so many other stores want the product. Strategically, distributors want to give the product to as many stores as possible to retain as many accounts as possible.”
As a result, local Pokemon stores have been blindsided by low allocations. “If a Pokemon store requested something like 100 Elite Trainer Boxes, for example, then the distributor might say they are only allowed to buy 15. This is even if the store is very well-established in the card community and consistently spends a lot of money on TPCi’s products.”
“I don’t think a lot of Pokemon stores thought it was going to be this bad,” DeGuire contends. “Thankfully my store anticipated the allocations would be brutal for this set, so we only allotted a modest amount to preorders. We will sell most of our product in-shop. If you are a newer store that kept preorders open before you found out how much you were going to receive, you likely ran out and had to cancel preorders.”
But why didn’t TPCi anticipate the demand for this set? Shouldn’t they have crunched the numbers and printed enough?
“One could argue TPCi should have foreseen this set was going to be more popular than other sets, and attempted to print more of it than other sets. But I think they are already printing at capacity and they simply need more lead-time or additional printing facilities to satisfy the demand.” Indeed, it doesn’t seem TPCi would purposefully leave money on the table with such obvious anticipation. It is an Eeveelution set, after all.
What about the big box retailers? From what we know, it appears Target, Walmart, and Best Buy will receive their typical allotment of Prismatic Evolutions.
However, the product may be cleared out by scalpers before fans can even set their eyes on it. Currently the Elite Trainer Box for Prismatic Evolutions is $127 on the secondary market (it retails for $55). The set hasn’t even released yet.
The “Blooming Waters Premium Collection” for 151 — last year’s holiday set — just released early at some Costco stores. The product may be the last chance to buy 151 booster packs at retail.
But at one Costco, the product was gone within minutes (source):
“It is unhealthy for card collectors and players if you cannot get access to a set at release,” DeGuire stated. “2025 should be a fun and explosive time for all aspects of Pokemon, and everyone deserves access to play and collect. We all love Pokemon, but a better balance is needed for the long-term stability of this hobby.”
Historically, TPCi does not order new print runs for holiday sets. They only tend to release additional products with packs in them, like the aforementioned “Blooming Waters Premium Collection” for 151 that came out long after the set’s initial product lineup. We’ll see if this also holds true for Prismatic Evolutions — maybe they’ll change up their strategy!
You can read everything about Prismatic Evolutions here. The set’s first products will release on January 17th.
