The Pokemon Trading Card Game has been more popular than ever with many stores running out of packs and structure decks everywhere. Helping feed this large demand for Pokemon cards is the new special Happy Meal promotion between McDonald’s and the card game.
For a limited time, McDonald’s customers can get specially marked Pokemon Trading Cards in contained in a pack alongside the purchase of a Happy Meal. All of the offered cards are reprints of existing cards depicting all of the regional starters throughout the Pokemon series as well as Pikachu.
While the promotion is mainly intended for children due to it being packaged as a Happy Meal toy, many adults are buying up Happy Meals in bulk to get as many of these cards as possible. Of course, there are some who just want to collect the cards, but there are also many who are buying just with the intention of reselling them. A common ground is also seen: those who likely want to hold on to these cards so their value appreciates over time, but that may not be the case.
One of the biggest influences on the popularity surge for the Pokemon Trading Card Game has been the high profile purchases of rare Pokemon cards. This includes the likes of Logan Paul with his $150,000 purchase of a Pokemon card and many popular card unboxing videos available on YouTube. Many want to get in on the collecting in case they find the next Charizard.
The biggest problem with this is that there never will be anything as expensive as the current high profile Pokemon cards. Even if people collect every recent modern card out there, they will most likely never turn a profit. This promotion with McDonald’s is also not the first time Pokemon cards have been offered as a toy with a kid’s meal. Burger King has done multiple promotions with Pokemon in the past with its first promotion being in 1999. The 1999 promotion offered solid plastic Pokemon cards made to look as if they were made of golden plates, making them have a very recognizable look.
When thinking about this promotion, one would think that these gold Burger King Pokemon cards would be incredibly valuable. The thing is, they aren’t at all. Looking at eBay listing for these cards, the prices do vary, but some offers are even below five dollars. With limited-time promotional items such as these from the 90s being not worth anything, this doesn’t bode well for those hoping to flip their bulk Happy Meal purchases.
Even though Pokemon fans and collectors will only have a limited amount of time to get these cards, this doesn’t mean these cards are necessarily rare. The reason for this is likely the same reason for the gold Pokemon cards from Burger King not being anything that could help pay rent for the month.
It can be estimated that majority of McDonald’s will be giving out these promotional cards with Happy Meals. According to Statista, as of 2019, there are around 13,837 different McDonald’s fast food restaurants in the United States of America alone. It can also be estimated that there are quite a large amount of Happy Meals being ordered at each of these McDonald’s every day. If the McDonald’s restaurant still has the stock of Pokemon card packs, a pack will be included with each of these Happy Meals.
In a scenario where only five Happy Meals were ordered from each of these McDonald’s in one day, there would then be 69,185 of these packs in circulation from this one day alone. With each pack containing four cards, this means that there are 276,740 cards in circulation from this scenario in circulation. Of course, way more than five Happy Meals are likely ordered from all these McDonald’s, meaning there is an insanely large amount of these cards out in the wild already.
Even though these cards are available for a limited time, they are being distributed in a way where so many different people should have access to them. These cards are not rare. They are reprints of existing cards made as a fun way for kids to start their own Pokemon card collection just as a bonus with their meal; trying to cash in to cash out later won’t work out, and scalping is ineffective here.
Many outside of the Pokemon circle are hearing about these McDonald’s Pokemon cards through the news of scalpers. There have been multiple cases of scalpers buying the cards in such massive amounts where certain McDonald’s locations are currently limiting the pack numbers per customer.
While it is most likely these cards won’t sell for much due to the oversaturation of them and just how many there are in the world, this probably won’t effect the scalpers until much later. For now, there are going to be a lot of cases where kids that are excited for free Pokemon cards with their McDonald’s getting nothing instead.
Another group greatly affected by these scalpers are the various McDonald’s employees that have to deal with them. Images are circulating online of scalpers purchasing hundreds of Happy Meals all presumably with McDonald’s food inside. This food of course needs to be prepared by those working at the restaurant with the added pressure of other customers around who also want to be serviced. As previously mentioned, there are multiple locations where there are hard limits of Pokemon packs that customers can get, but the fact that this needed to happen shows that there were plenty of terrible incidents.
For many Pokemon Trading Card collectors, this new widespread interest in the trading cards has sadly been more disheartening than joyful. Instead of many new fans and collectors to trade and play with there are instead many who treat the game like a possible moneymaker. There are many locations where single packs of cards are nearly impossible to come across anymore as well as many store requiring higher security for the cards on sale. It is unknown when this wave of greed will pass over the Pokemon TCG community, but this recent McDonald’s fiasco shows that it isn’t going away anytime soon.
Source: Statisca
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