10 Billion Pokémon Cards Were Printed Last Year — and It Still Wasn’t Enough to Stop Shortages and Scalping
The Pokémon Trading Card Game continues to face unprecedented demand despite record production levels. The Pokémon Company manufactured over 10 billion cards in the fiscal year ending March 2026—more cards than there are people on Earth—bringing their all-time production to 85 billion cards. This represents 11.7% of all Pokémon cards ever printed being produced in just the past year alone.
Despite these staggering production numbers, supply shortages persist as a major challenge. New card releases continue to be plagued by scalping, in-store conflicts, and rapid sell-outs. Collectors, particularly those seeking rarer card varieties, struggle to find product in stock. The situation has become severe enough that retailers and social media have been flooded with reports of hoarding, conflicts between customers, and widespread scalping activity.
The Pokémon TCG’s 30th anniversary year has only intensified demand. The popularity of rare cards has also spawned a concerning trend of thefts, with dozens of incidents reported involving stolen cards worth thousands of dollars. While the general sentiment online suggested that The Pokémon Company needed to increase production, the released statistics demonstrate that the company has dramatically ramped up manufacturing efforts—yet demand still outpaces supply.
The disparity between production volume and continued shortages highlights the extraordinary global demand for Pokémon cards and raises questions about whether even doubling production would be sufficient to meet collector demand and combat scalping practices.