Over the past year, collectibles and trading cards have seen an uptick in sales. With some cards selling for over thousands of dollars, people everywhere have been flooding stores to purchase trading cards such as NFL, MLB, and Pokémon Cards. Earlier this year, some stores such as Target, GameStop, and Walmart limited the amount of cards that individuals could purchase due to scalpers buying all of the cards and reselling them. Now, after some violent altercations, Target are suspending card sales indefinitely for safety reasons and limiting them to online sales only. Their reasoning is to prevent unruly behavior and to keep their employees and other customers safe from the ensuing chaos when cards are restocked.

Since the kick off of the 25th anniversary of Pokémon this year, The Pokémon Company has introduced a lot of exclusive 25th anniversary products and collaborations to celebrate. Unfortunately, due to the rarity of some of these items, scalpers have been trying to buy the majority of the products to resell them to people who want to simply collect cards or other Pokémon products. In February, McDonald’s gave out 25th anniversary Pokémon cards with their “happy meals,” but within days, the company had to release a statement saying,

With such significant demand for our promotional Pokémon TCG cards, and some fans even going to extreme lengths to get them, we’re working quickly to address shortages and also strongly encouraging restaurants to set a reasonable limit on Happy Meals sold per customer.

Hopefully, as the pandemic ends and more Pokémon cards and products become more readily available, retailers will be able to continue the sale of various collectibles. However, for now, collectors, scalpers, and kids alike will either have to order their cards off Target’s website, scavenge for cards at other retailers, or simply wait until Target continues selling them in stores.