The Pokemon Company finally did something it should have done years ago – they finally bought a printing company for their cards.
Given the massive spike in popularity over the past 2 years, card and sealed product prices have skyrocketed and have even caused some retailers to stop carrying Pokemon cards completely. For almost 2 years, product was scarce and Covid-19 forced more of us to stay home and find other things to do besides going out with friends.
A lot of people took to collecting trading cards. Some went the sports route and others took the trading card game route. Once word got around that more people were buying Pokemon and other trading cards, prices spiked and the scalpers moved in. The quickly bought up any product they could find and quickly relisted it on sites like eBay and TCGPlayer at ridiculously high prices.
Thankfully, it would see the scalpers have moved on as there is now far more product available and prices have fallen back down, though not to the pre-pandemic levels.
Still, cards are hot and Pokemon has realized that to keep up with the demand they need their very own printing company to concentrate solely on making their cards.
The Millennium Printing Group is is the name of the printer they have recently acquired. Given their experience at printing Pokemon cards for several years before this, it would seem that things will continue business as usual for the most part for them.
Again, kind of strange that The Pokemon Company took this long to realize they should have their own printing company. Better late than never, I suupose!
In case you’d like more info, check out this article over on Kotaku.
