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Pokémon Justice: Japanese store bans adults from buying Pokémon cards
A Japanese store is enforcing a policy to block adult resellers and making new Pokemon cards more accessible to children.
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Pokemon trading cards (Shutterstock/Angelina Pilarinos)
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ollecting Pokémon cards is not just for children but is a universal hobby. Recently, Hareruya 2 in Akihabara, Tokyo, which calls itself the world’s largest Pokémon trading card specialty store, enforced a new policy to ensure that children have a fair chance at purchasing the cards before it gets swept up by adult buyers.
On April 30, Hareruya 2 tweeted that they had allocated a section of Pokémon cards specifically for young adults. However, the store has limited the number of packs each person can buy. Parents and guardians of young adults are also banned from purchasing the collectible cards.
The popularity of the Pokémon card collection has grown significantly in recent years, with public figures like YouTube star Logan Paul spending US$5.2 million on a rare card. The fan website Nintendo Life reported that in 2021 Pokémon cards sales worldwide amounted to 34.1 billion.
Hareruya 2 store manager Sho Watanabe explained that the decision to create the kid-friendly sale section was made for more accessible Pokémon cards to children to prevent resellers from buying up all the stock.
“Many shops exhaust their entire stock [of Pokémon cards] as soon as they go on sale, and people are active late at night or early in the morning, seeming to buy [the cards],” Watanabe said, as quoted by Japanese news site Livedoor.
“By allocating half our stock for general customers, shops can continue to sell [the cards] to students and young children. Selling [goods] to children not only pleases them but also their parents. [We] feel that this sales method enables us to satisfy the greatest number of customers when the items are in such limited supply.”
