The Pokémon Company has updated its annual figures and, unsurprisingly, the franchise continues to dominate the world. Since the launch of the TCG in 1996, more than 85 billion Pokémon cards have been printed. More than 10% of them were produced in the last year alone. And yet it is still not enough.
The Pokémon Company had distributed 75 billion cards as of May 2025, which means it has produced an additional 10 billion in the last 12 months (thanks GamesRadar). These cards came from sets like the incredibly popular Scarlet & Violet – Prismatic Evolutions expansion, spread across tons of different boxed products. Wizards of the Coast is not the only one turn paper into gold.
To put that into perspective, the Pokémon Company’s lifetime card production stood at just 34.1 billion as of May 2021, about a year after the pandemic began. This means that in the five years since then, more than double the total number of cards that existed up to that point have been printed. And yet, it doesn’t seem to have done anything to slow down the current Pokémon TCG chaos.
It’s still basically impossible to walk into a GameStop or Walmart and buy new booster packs from recent sets like a normal person. Unless you want to pay ridiculous prices or sift through online retailers, your best bet is to go out and wait in line outside the store on restock day. Or go commit crimes. A shocking number of people settle for the latter option, and often with very troubling consequences. and even violent results.
“We are aware that some fans are experiencing difficulty purchasing certain Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) products due to very high demand affecting availability,” the company said in a statement. a year ago. “We understand that this inconvenience may be disappointing for fans, and we are actively working to print more affected Pokémon TCG products as quickly as possible and to the best of our ability to account for this.”
Will the Pokémon Company ever be able to rein in growing demand, or will it take a stock market crash to scare away all the scalpers and find a little calm and kindness to the hobby? Will 15 billion cards be enough? 20 billion? Or should we start introducing identity checks for cardboard packages like they plan to do in Japan?