Pokemon's Birthday Set Is Pulling Too Many Hits, and Retailers Are Clamping Down

Collectors opening Pokemon's new 30th Celebration packs keep reporting the same strange run of luck: pulling three Mewtwo Special Illustration Rare cards in a single sitting. Enough people have posted the same result that a thread titled "The hit rates are cranked" has become a gathering point for the reports, with one poster going by SkeettheVandelBuster summing up the mood: "From what I've seen so far the hit rates seem absurd," according to GamesRadar+.

The set behind the buzz is the 30th Celebration lineup, 27 products released to mark Pokemon's anniversary, with Mewtwo SIR, Mew ex and Pikachu ex as the cards everyone is chasing. It is already on shelves at retailers including Miniature Market and Walmart, while Amazon UK has restricted the release to invite-by-request only, a sign of how much demand the retailer expects to manage, per GamesRadar+.

The generous pulls have a downside for the retailers trying to keep the set in stock. Pokemon Center has started canceling orders it identifies as reseller activity rather than genuine collector purchases, an attempt to slow down buyers stocking up on hits to flip rather than keep, GamesRadar+ reports.

The Celebration boxes are only one piece of a much bigger rollout. Pokemon's official 30th anniversary wave began rolling out this week and will keep staggering out in stages over the coming months, adding day and night themed cards, new rare Pikachu versions, and reprints that reach back across three decades of the game, according to ABC15 Arizona. Beyond the cards themselves, the anniversary push includes stickers, posters, storage binders and special box sets, with some pieces already selling for thousands of dollars.

For anyone tempted to jump into all of it at once, ABC15 spoke with Michael Tincher, co-owner of Ted's PokePawn, who suggested a slower approach: pick up a handful of single cards built around one character or theme first, and only make a bigger investment once that interest proves it will stick, rather than chasing whichever product is generating the most noise that week.

The anniversary's reach outside card shops is its own signal of the demand fueling all this. Krispy Kreme released six limited-edition Pokemon doughnuts last month, one more example of a franchise turning 30 leaning into every possible tie-in. Whether the Celebration set's unusually good pulls end up cooling off the secondary market or just accelerate the flipping Pokemon Center is trying to shut down should become clearer as more of the 27 products reach stores through the fall.