A mere day after the catastrophic release of the special Van Gogh Pikachu Felt Hat card, the Pokemon Company has released an official apology for the aggravated scalper situation which continued on the Pokemon Center website this morning.
Through its official Twitter account, the Pokemon Company apologized to its fans about the collaboration items being sold out in minutes. Fortunately, they also affirmed that they’re already looking for other ways to bring the exclusive items to their fans through the Pokemon Center stores later.
As we noticed yesterday, the initially unique collaboration exhibition between Pokemon and the Van Gogh Museum, meant to celebrate the latter’s 50th Anniversary, ended up in a colossal mess as scalpers quickly flooded the location looking to hoard the exclusive promotional item: the Pikachu Felt Hat card.
It didn’t take long until videos from thousands of people storming through the Museum’s doors and causing mayhem started showing up on social media.
One of the possible reasons was a listing error in the official Pokemon Center website, which led people to believe the Museum’s version would be unique. Unfortunately, we all know how that ended.
The apology wasn’t that well received by fans on the platform. While it means that everyone will eventually get easier access to the card, it also means that scalpers who got their cards yesterday and managed to sell them have already profited. This led to some disappointed and sometimes angry responses.
Pokemon content creator Austin John Plays remarked the scalpers’ videos as “disgusting”, as well as displaying some of the insane prices the cards have been sold for.
Some cards went for over $270 on eBay, but someone managed to sell a copy for over $1.700, which is just inconceivable.
In order to prevent the situation from happening again, the Van Gogh Museum has limited its sales of Pokemon merchandise, according to a museum representative in an interview with Polygon. Quoting their words, “From tomorrow we [will] limit the sales to one piece per product per customer, in our web shop and museum shop. “.
It might be a little too late since people have already profited from ruining an art exhibition, but at least it won’t be happening again at the Museum. But whether The Pokemon Company will take better preventive measures against that in the future is still up for debate.
