10 Billion Pokémon Cards Got Printed And It Still Wasn’t Enough

The Pokémon Firm up to date its annual figures and, to no person’s shock, the franchise continues to dominate the world. It’s now printed over 85 billion Pokémon playing cards because the TCG launched in 1996. Over 10 % of these had been produced within the final yr alone. And but it’s still not enough.

The Pokémon Firm had distributed 75 billion playing cards as of Might 2025, that means it produced one other 10 billion over the past 12 months (thanks Gamesradar). These playing cards got here from units just like the extremely common Scarlet & Violet–Prismatic Evolutions growth, divided up throughout tons of various boxed merchandise. Wizards of the Coast isn’t the one one turning paper into gold.

To place this in perspective, the Pokémon Firm’s lifetime card manufacturing was at simply 34.1 billion again in Might 2021, roughly a yr into the pandemic. Which means within the 5 years since, greater than double the overall variety of playing cards that had ever existed as much as that time had been printed. And but it doesn’t appear to have carried out something to sluggish the continued Pokémon TCG chaos.

It’s nonetheless principally inconceivable to simply stroll right into a GameStop or Walmart and purchase new booster packs from current units like a traditional individual. Until you need to pay ridiculous costs or sift via resellers on-line, your greatest wager remains to be to exit and line up exterior the shop on restock day. Or to go do crimes. A surprising variety of persons are settling for the latter, and sometimes with very unsettling and even violent results.

“We’re conscious that some followers are experiencing difficulties buying sure Pokémon Buying and selling Card Recreation (TCG) merchandise as a result of very excessive demand impacting availability,” the corporate mentioned in a press release a year ago. “We perceive this inconvenience might be disappointing for followers, and we’re actively working to print extra of the impacted Pokémon TCG merchandise as shortly as doable and at most capability to acknowledge this.”

Will the Pokémon Firm ever get a deal with on rising demand, or will it take a market crash to scare away all of the scalpers and restore some sense of calm and kindness to the passion? Will 15 billion playing cards be sufficient? 20 billion? Or ought to we begin instituting ID checks for packs of cardboard like they’re thinking about doing in Japan?